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Peter Albert David Singer AC FAHA (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher who is Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Singer's work specialises in applied ethics , approaching the subject from a secular , utilitarian perspective.
Peter Singer has applied utilitarianism to problems of animal ethics. [114] Animal ethics is the branch of ethics studying human behavior towards other animals. Hedonism is an influential position in this field as a theory about animal welfare.
In a similar vein, Peter Singer, for much of his career a major proponent of preference utilitarianism and himself influenced by the views of Hare, has been criticised for giving priority to the views of beings capable of holding preferences (being able actively to contemplate the future and its interaction with the present) over those solely ...
The felicific calculus is an algorithm formulated by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) for calculating the degree or amount of pleasure that a specific action is likely to induce.
Hedonism is subdivided into egoistic hedonism, which only takes the agent's own well-being into account, and universal hedonism or utilitarianism, which is concerned with everyone's well-being. [46] [43] Intuitionism holds that we have intuitive, i.e. non-inferential, knowledge of moral principles, which are self-evident to the knower. [46]
The demandingness objection is a common [1] [2] argument raised against utilitarianism and other consequentialist ethical theories. The consequentialist requirement that we maximize the good impartially seems to this objection to require us to perform acts that we would normally consider optional.
The term "equal consideration of interests" first appeared in Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer's 1975 book Animal Liberation. [2] Singer asserts that if all beings, not just humans, are included as having interests that must be considered, then the principle of equal consideration of interests opposes not only racism and sexism , but ...
The paradox of hedonism, also called the pleasure paradox, refers to the practical difficulties encountered in the pursuit of pleasure. For the hedonist , constant pleasure-seeking may not yield the most actual pleasure or happiness in the long term when consciously pursuing pleasure interferes with experiencing it.