I’ve been trying to put into words why this article is so strange, and I think I figured it out. Peter Singer is making a logical argument, but the author is arguing that making Singer’s argument is immoral. Neither of them realize that the author is arguing one meta-level up, so they’re just talking past each-other.
I think the author’s argument is basically that Singer is making a lot of assumptions that don’t apply in the real world, and if people accept the argument, they are likely to mistakenly believe that it applies to the real world. For example, politicians are unlikely to understand the difference between “in a perfect world, disabled people should be able to get assistance killing themselves” and “it should be legal to assist disabled people in killing themselves”. At first I was annoyed by the author not understanding logic (like how they brag about making an emotional argument to philosophy students), but now I’m even more annoyed by philosophers not realizing that “in a perfect world” arguments can have bad real-world effects.
I’ve been trying to put into words why this article is so strange, and I think I figured it out. Peter Singer is making a logical argument, but the author is arguing that making Singer’s argument is immoral. Neither of them realize that the author is arguing one meta-level up, so they’re just talking past each-other.
I think the author’s argument is basically that Singer is making a lot of assumptions that don’t apply in the real world, and if people accept the argument, they are likely to mistakenly believe that it applies to the real world. For example, politicians are unlikely to understand the difference between “in a perfect world, disabled people should be able to get assistance killing themselves” and “it should be legal to assist disabled people in killing themselves”. At first I was annoyed by the author not understanding logic (like how they brag about making an emotional argument to philosophy students), but now I’m even more annoyed by philosophers not realizing that “in a perfect world” arguments can have bad real-world effects.
It’s disappointing that even experts can have trouble understanding (or discussing) the viewpoints in their fields.