Ethics in the real world 82 brief essays on things that matter ; with a new afterword by the author

Peter Singer, 1946-

Book - 2017

"In Ethics in the Real World, Singer shows that he is also a master at dissecting important current events in a few hundred words. In this book of brief essays, he applies his controversial ways of thinking to issues like climate change, extreme poverty, animals, abortion, euthanasia, human genetic selection, sports doping, the sale of kidneys, the ethics of high-priced art, and ways of increasing happiness. Singer asks whether chimpanzees are people, smoking should be outlawed, or consensual sex between adult siblings should be decriminalized, and he reiterates his case against the idea that all human life is sacred, applying his arguments to some recent cases in the news."--Cover.

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Subjects
Genres
Essays
Published
Princeton and Oxford : Princeton University Press 2017.
Language
English
Main Author
Peter Singer, 1946- (author)
Edition
Paperback edition
Physical Description
xvi, 359 pages ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes index.
ISBN
9780691172477
06911724717
9780691178479
  • Big questions : The value of a pale blue dot ; Does anything matter? ; Is there moral progress? ; God and suffering, again ; Godless morality / with Marc Hauser ; Are we ready for a "morality pill?" / with Agata Sagan ; The quality of mercy ; Thinking about the dead ; Should this be the last generation? ; Philosophy on top
  • Animals : Europe's ethical eggs ; If fish could scream ; Cultural bias against whaling? ; A case for veganism ; Consider the turkey: thoughts for thanksgiving ; In vitro meat ; Chimpanzees are people, too ; The cow who ...
  • Beyond the ethic of the sanctity of life : The real abortion tragedy ; Treating (or not) the tiniest babies ; Pulling back the curtain on the mercy killing of newborns ; No diseases for old men ; When doctors kill ; Choosing death ; Dying in court
  • Bioethics and public health : The human genome and the genetic supermarket ; The year of the clone? ; Kidneys for sale? ; The many crises of health care ; Public health versus private freedom ; Weigh more, pay more ; Should we live to 1,000? ; Population and the Pope
  • Sex and gender : Should adult sibling incest be a crime? ; Homosexuality is not immoral ; Virtual vices ; A private affair? ; How much should sex matter? / with Agata Sagan ; God and woman in Iran
  • Doing good : The one-percent solution ; Holding charities accountable ; Blatant benevolence ; Good charity, bad charity ; Heartwarming causes are nice, but let's give to charity with our heads ; The ethical cost of high-price art ; Preventing human extinction / with Nick Beckstead and Matt Wage
  • Happiness : Happiness, money, and giving it away ; Can we increase gross national happiness? ; The high cost of feeling low ; No smile limit ; Happy, nevertheless
  • Politics : Bentham's fallacies, then and now ; The founding fathers' fiscal crisis ; Why vote? ; Free speech, Muhammad, and the Holocaust ; The use and abuse of religious freedom ; An honest man? ; Is citizenship a right? ; The spying game ; A statue for Stalin? ; Should we honor racists?
  • Global governance : Escaping the refugee crisis ; Is open diplomacy possible? ; The ethics of big food ; Fairness and climate change / with Teng Fei ; Will the polluters pay for climate change? ; Why are they serving meat at a climate change conference? / with Frances Kissling ; Dethroning king coal ; Paris and the fate of the earth
  • Science and technology : A clear case for golden rice ; Life made to order ; Rights for robots? / with Agata Sagan ; A dream for the digital age ; A universal library ; The tragic cost of being unscientific
  • Living, playing, working : How to keep a New Year's resolution ; Why pay more? ; Tiger mothers or elephant mothers? ; Volkswagen and the future of honesty ; Is doping wrong? ; Is it OK to cheat at football? ; A surfing reflection ; Afterword to the paperback edition.
Review by Choice Review

One of today's most influential thinkers, Singer is internationally recognized as a seminal philosopher on utilitarian moral theory, the ethics of life and death, globalization, world hunger, animal rights, and environmental ethics. In recent years he has become a "public philosopher," offering crystal-clear writings that reveal a deep appreciation of what is important in life. Almost all of the 82 brief essays collected here were previously published, via Project Syndicate, in newspapers and magazines around the world, and most are readily available via the internet. One could argue that a book comprising dozens of previously published essays by one individual is a waste of paper. That might be true of many authors, but not the prolific Singer. He has written on a wide variety of philosophically important and timely issues, with the result that he is controversial as well as influential. The essays in the present volume address issues well beyond Singer's normal range of commentary. In sum, this book not only provides a broad-based introduction to Singer's moral philosophy but also will serve--absence of references, footnotes, and bibliography notwithstanding--as an excellent textbook for any course in applied ethics. For philosophers, Singer's work provides a model for how to transition from the ivory tower to the domain of public philosophy. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --Ronald F. White, Mount St. Joseph University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Collected opinion pieces from a renowned ethicist.Australian philosopher Singer (Bioethics/University Center for Human Values, Princeton Univ.; The Most Good You Can Do: How Affective Altruism is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically, 2015, etc.) has written, famously and controversially, about such issues as animal liberation, abortion, equality, altruism, global health, and attainment of a common good. His new volume gathers 82 short piecesall under 1,000 wordsmost of which were contributions to Project Syndicate, a news service for more than 450 media outlets in 153 countries. Singer acknowledges that such pieces often are ephemeral and lack the nuances and qualifications that could be explored in a longer essay. Because his tone is characteristically sedate, the short form unfortunately flattens the impact of some emotionally laden topics: whether physicians are justified in carrying out euthanasia on severely impaired newborns; whether adult sibling incest should be considered a crime; whether demented, aged adults should be treated with antibiotics; and whether obese individuals should be taxed for excess weight. Among the essays on Doing Good are several pieces about how to evaluate charities for giving; Singer argues that supporting the Make-A-Wish Foundation to fulfill the superhero fantasies of a five-year-old is less responsible than contributions to organizations that provide surgeries, mosquito nets, and treatments against blindness. In a section on animals, Singer, who has not eaten meat for 40 years, exposes the cruelty involved in the poultry industry, cattle farms, and fishing; it is not merely the method of killing animals that he objects to, but the suffering that animals experience while alive. In a previously unpublished piece, he suggests bringing up at Thanksgiving dinner the ethical implications of eating turkey. Many pieces could well inspire conversationsand argumentsthat deepen and complicate the crucial moral and ethical issues that Singer presents. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.