Practical Ethics

Practical Ethics

Peter Singer

Language: English

Pages: 356

ISBN: 0521707684

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


For thirty years, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been the classic introduction to applied ethics. For this third edition, the author has revised and updated all the chapters, and added a new chapter addressing climate change, one of the most important ethical challenges of our generation. Some of the questions discussed in this book concern our daily lives. Is it ethical to buy luxuries when others do not have enough to eat? Should we buy meat from intensively reared animals? Am I doing something wrong if my carbon footprint is above the global average? Other questions confront us as concerned citizens: equality and discrimination on the grounds of race or sex; abortion, the use of embryos for research, and euthanasia; political violence and terrorism; and the preservation of our planet's environment. This book's lucid style and provocative arguments make it an ideal text for university courses and for anyone willing to think about how she or he ought to live.

Ethical Chic: The Inside Story of the Companies We Think We Love

Music and Ethical Responsibility

Choosing Children: Genes, Disability, and Design (Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics)

Confronting Managerialism: How the Business Elite and Their Schools Threw Our Lives Out of Balance

The Street Porter and the Philosopher: Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To abolish private enterprise, worldwide. That may be a nice idea, but it is not going to happen. Private enterprise has a habit of reasserting itself under the most inhospitable conditions. Under communism, as the Russians and East Europeans soon found, black markets emerged, and if you wanted your plumbing fixed swiftly, it was advisable to pay a bit extra on the side. China, though nominally still communist, has become more prosperous only by accepting private enterprise. Only a radical change.

Of people with disabilities, the principle of equal consideration of interests will give them much greater weight than it will give to the more minor needs of others. For this reason, it will generally be justifiable to spend more on behalf of disabled people than we spend on behalf of others. Just how much more is, of course, a difficult question. Where resources are scarce, there must be some limit. By giving equal consideration to the interests of those with disabilities, and empathetically.

Reciprocity. The prospect of returning to such a basis is not appealing. Because no account of the origin of morality compels us to base our morality on reciprocity, and no other arguments in favour of this conclusion have been offered, we should reject this view of ethics. At this point in the discussion, some contract theorists appeal to a looser view of the contract idea, urging that we include within the moral community all those who have or will have the capacity to take part in 64.

Fetus to have convulsions and die between one and three hours later. This method is rarely used today, but it has been abandoned primarily because of risks it poses for the pregnant woman rather than from any concern to avoid causing the fetus to suffer. Today, late abortions are likely to be carried out by the use of prostaglandin, a synthetic hormone that causes contractions similar to labour but may also cause convulsions and can result in live births. To prevent the risk of live births,.

Fertilization as the time at which 150 Practical Ethics the embryo gains a significantly different moral status. Indeed, if we were to require an 80 percent probability of further development into a baby – the figure Noonan himself mentions – we would have to wait until nearly six weeks after fertilization before the embryo would have the significance Noonan wants to claim for it. At one point in his argument Noonan refers to the number of sperm involved in a male ejaculation, and he says.

Download sample

Download