Peter Singer, philosopher HARDtalk

Now on BBC News, it's time for HARDtalk.

When we talk of power, we think of tangible institutions,

From Socrates to Marx, philosophers have challenged us

to rethink the way we see the world and our place in it.

So too my guest today, Australian philosopher Peter Singer.

His writing on the relations between rich and poor,

on medical ethics and animal rights have seen him variously described

as the most influential and dangerous philosopher alive today.

Does he believe ideas can change the world?

Peter Singer, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you. For five decades, you

have been writing powerful pieces, books, looking at the way our world

works, considering the philosophy of our world, and ethical issues. After

five decades, do you believe in the power of philosophy, of thought, to

change the world? Absolutely. I have seen it happen. I have seen it

change individual lives, but through those lives changing, I have seen

ideas changing the world. It is interesting because you have chosen

to republish this little book, Famine, Affluence and Morality more

than four decades after you first register. It now has a foreword by

Bill and Melinda Gates, who say this is a book whose ideas, the time for

these ideas, has finally arrived. I would put it to you that when you

talk about relations between rich and poor, things are as difficult

and challenging today as when you first rated. I don't agree with

that. -- first wrote it. We are making definite progress. You can

see before in the number of people who are in extreme poverty, the

number of people going to bed hungry, the number of children dying

before their fifth birthday. That figure is less than half now what it

was in 1990, although the population of the world has increased. If I may

interact, at the beginning, isn't that because the world is more

prosperous? If you look at sub-Saharan Africa, there is a level

of prosperity that is higher than was 40 years ago. It is not because

of your proposition that the rich, all of us in the comfortable rich

world, should as an individual obligation, if everything we can to

those in want, the poor? That is not happening. That is not happening,

but there are a number of wealthy people who are giving a lot, and

Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett are examples who are giving

intelligently to have the biggest impact they can. There is also an

emerging movement of effective altruism of younger people without

that much money who are making sure they give effectively. That is

contributing to the declines is a mention. I'm not denying that

increasing prosperity has had a lot to do with it, but effective aid

grams certainly saved lives, enabled more people to get an education,

safety water, and they are happening in part because of aid programmes.

If we go down to the foundations of your ideas, I think you will agree

they are utilitarian, any basis of them is we as individuals in human

societies only to ourselves and to the wider human collective to work

towards and pursue the greatest happiness of the greatest number,

and you say that means when it comes to relations between rich and poor,

all of those in comfort should give everything to the point where they

themselves risk impoverishment, give everything beyond that threshold, or

above that threshold, to those in need in other parts of the world.

You say that the rivers are utilitarian visible. -- delivers.

That would deliver the greatest good and reduction of suffering, but it's

true. Although that might be theoretically the starting point we

ought to go to, I'm so every list and I know what the world is like

and that people are not only moved by ideas -- I'm also a realist. They

are also motivated by personal desires. At the same time as

indicating that would be the logical combination of the argument I'm

prepared to accept that people are going to go some distance in that

direction, but not all the way. I have travelled all over the world as

a journalist and foreign correspondent and I have come across

arguments which suggest this idea of giving, of charity, of aid, as

applied to some of the poorest countries and people on earth, often

doesn't work in the way people would wish. Let's go through a few of the

counterarguments. One of the most basic is that individuals who give,

when they are faced with these massive problems in different parts

of the world, can have no idea of the way the money they give is

spent. Whom actually benefits, where it goes, how efficiently it is

spent. These are big problems. That is what the effective altruism

movement is changing. Now there are people doing full-time research,

independent research, not working for charities, looking at the impact

of particular charities. There are people doing randomised control

trials, the same gold standard used by drug charities when they test new

drugs -- drug companies. So we now have the data, which we didn't have

as recently as ten years ago almost nobody doing this research, but we

now have good data that shows that distributing in sectors, such as

malaria, does reduce the number of people getting malaria and the

number of children who die from malaria. That is a result they can

no longer be doubted given the quality of the data. We have

indications that giving cash handouts to people in poor villages

in East Africa makes a tangible difference in the lives of those

families. We have a lot of data that did not exist. But the president of

Rwanda on this programme said to not give Africa, me and my country, aid.

Aged just encourages dependency and allows corrupt regimes to continue

with their corruption -- aid. It encourages poor governance to

continue. That is what we have seen in some new parts of the world,

especially Africa. We have seen that, but I'm not advising people to

give money to governments, I'm advising them to give them to NGOs

like the malaria foundation, that are giving it to people on the

ground, in the village, and are independently assessing the

follow-up. When I was walking in Iraq after the fall of Saddam, the

country was in chaos. Many people were suffering from lack of medical

care. We went to one hospital in one of the poorest parts of Baghdad and

people were dying because the medical facilities were so poor. We

provide a particulate young girl, a baby, who had a terrible heart

condition. We knew without treatment, they could not be

provided in hospital, she would die. The reaction to my story was

phenomenal, and one of the two's bleeding heart surgery is lodged a

massive rescue effort for this girl -- Britain's bleeding heart

surgeons. She had a sophisticated heart operation and was sent back to

Iraq. The story ends sadly. She was brain-damaged by the lack of oxygen

and left in a neighbourhood in Baghdad with parents who had no

money to care for her, and despite the passion and care, one could

argue she would have been better left to die. Not only would that be

possible, but the money spent on this expensive heart surgery could

have saved 100 or perhaps a thousand lives. This is the thing I would

argue against, taking one identifiable individual, hitting

them on television, everybody relates and says they must give to

that, and thousands of pounds go to that individual. What they don't do

is give to people they can't see, where in fact for less money, they

could save the lives of many who don't have any brain damage or

convocations. So you are saying, however it is done, the human

instinct to find stories we can relate to, usually involving the

tribe or the community or the nationstate that you belong to, you

say you have to try, however hard it is, to cut those feelings,

sentiment, that emotion out? You can have the emotion that you want to

save lives and people in extreme poverty, but you want to do good.

But the emotion that says I've heard the story of this party to a child

or person, and I want to help that person, that is distorting. -- this

particular child. To make this real, I have to make this personal. If one

should not be personal and focus on individuals and even on one's and

family, in the spirit of being truly ethical, have you avoided thinking

about your own children's financial security? Have you not set up any

funds are then? Will you be determined not to leave any of your

wealth to them? I haven't, and I'm not completely impartial in that

respect. That is what I was saying earlier, but perhaps having your own

children makes a difference in that way. I accept that I am not a saint.

I'm not a perfectly ethical human being in that sense. I think I am

pretty representative of most people. We have to accept that

people will give preference to their own children, as I do, but there

have to be limited to that. I don't big my children need every luxury I

can afford to provide for them or every financial security I can

divide for them given they are fortunate enough to be citizens of

an affluent nation. We have to say yes, people will do more for their

children, but it doesn't mean they can't also do a lot for sledgers. A

final thought on this idea between rich and poor in dealing with want

in the world -- do a lot for strangers. Bernard Williams

responded to what you wrote and your sense of obligation to all humanity,

not just those closest to you, and he responded by saying that the

danger of your philosophy was that you reduce people to little more

than devices for the efficient production of desirable outcomes,

and your brand of utilitarianism it was the value of integrity and the

notion of personal responsibility and personal goals. Although it

appears to provide a guide for life, he said in fact it robs human action

of its point. It wasn't in the end about the way humans think and

operate, that was his point. I think that is a misleading use of the word

integrity. I can't see why a person who says I want to do more to make

the world a better place and help people, and I find that a fulfilling

and worthwhile project, why such a person should like integrity. All

I'm Chang to do is persuade more people to take that up as their

project rather then take up various other projects they might have which

will do less good for the world and be possibly less fulfilling --

trying to do. Another area in which you have been writing and thinking

is how to make sense of the value of human life, especially those human

lives that are in one way or another severely disabled or impaired? It

seems to many people you have decided there is a way of grading

the value of human life, and those who are severely disabled have a

much reduced value. I certainly would not put it like that. What I

would say is there are cases where we have to make decisions about

whether other people will live or die.

making their own decisions. If they were, you should read them. For

example, infants can't make their own decisions -- they should make

them. People make decisions in hospitals in every major city in the

world, typically by withdrawing the respirator keeping alive a premature

newborn baby who has had a massive Brown Harwich where the prognosis is

bad because of the extent of the bleeding that the child will ever

lead an independent life -- own Harwich. You don't think it is right

to refer to that child is a fully fledged human person with all fully

fledged human rights. Undoubtably they are human beings. But the

17th-century philosopher John Locke said a person with a sense of

themselves as existing overtime, saying being existing overtime, on

that philosophical account of what it is to be a person, which I think

is consistent with the roots of the time in a gibbering, -- ancient

Rome, you are not a person if you don't have some sense of self

awareness. We are talking about the power of

ideas to change the world. You wrote this in 9093. Do you still believe

it? Killing a defective infant is not equivalent to killing a person.

Sometimes it isn't wrong. I wouldn't use the word defective today. I

would say severe intellectual disabilities. But I still stand by

it. It is not a person as I am using the term. Sometimes it isn't wrong.

To show that, doctors are doing that today and no one is affected. The

only difference is that they are doing it by withdrawing life-support

at a respirator, knowing that the premature infant will die without

it. -- or a. I am saying, why is it critical if it is based on

breathing. If it is a brain haemorrhage, then, if the infant

does breathe after you withdraw the respirator because the lungs are

more developed then you predicted, how does that changed the decision?

It should still be possible if the parents wanted. -- change. The

parents should decide this, not philosophers. No doubt, this is

difficult staff. But your critics, I remember some of the protests when

you got this award from Princeton, your critics in the Let them Live

movement had the most graphic protest about your appointment. I

wonder if those people, severely disabled themselves, telling them

that you are devaluing them, and some of them accused you of dabbling

close to eugenics, whether that had a personal impact on you. It didn't.

Because, as I said, I stand by my views. They were misunderstanding

what I was saying. These were people capable of understanding what I was

saying and deciding whether they were satisfied with their life. Who

knows, some of those people, at birth, they have been the sorts of

babies whom doctors were saying to their parents, you might want to

think about medical interventions. Your thought might have been,

utilitarian philosophy says it isn't worth it. The parents should make

that decision. Just like you and I would do that if an Abernant. -- an

abnormality would make us reconsider. Many of these people

would not have lived if their mother had known about the disability when

she was pregnant. That is not an argument against abortion. The final

point on this branch of medical ethics. You said on radio that

Obamacare, his changes to the insurance system of healthcare in

the United States, should be more overt about rationing, the country,

the US, should acknowledge the necessary need to end the lives of

severely disabled infants as an option. It is expected. You have a

national institute for health excellence which recommends the

healthcare authorities that some treatments are too expensive to

provide on the NHS. They are open about saying we have to ration

resources We don't have the resources to do everything.

Therefore, some things are too expensive. In the US, they are too

afraid, all the politicians and officials, they are too cowardly to

say it. They pretend they don't ration. But they do. And they don't

do it as sensibly as they do here because they don't have an open

debate about its. When you hear people in the US talk about the

sanctity of life, what is your response? The sanctity of life is a

religious doctrine that has no defence outside particular religious

views, for example, the idea that all humans are made in the image of

God and have an immortal soul or that God has commanded us not to

kill. That is not an idea that would otherwise be justified. It has no

place in the public debate? I don't object to people mentioning it, but

they should be challenged if they are in public. Why do you think that

just because they are member of Homo sapiens, they have a right to life?

That, for example, a nonhuman animal, like a gorilla shot in

Cincinnati zoo last week does not. Even though the gorilla has far more

self-awareness and ability to form relationships with others than a

member of this piece is Homo sapiens with severe brain damage. -- the

species. Interesting that you would go in that direction. I wanted to

talk about animal rights. On this subject you have been most outspoken

for many years. Let's stick with the gorilla example. Many people

remember what happened. A three-year-old child ended up in a

gorilla enclosure and the decision was taken to shoot the gorilla

because of the danger faced by the child. In your view of animal

rights, was that murder? Unnecessary murder? I won't call it murder. I

won't second-guess their decision. They had a very difficult decision

to make and does circumstances. Perhaps I would have rather tried

the tranquiliser dart in the hopes that that would save the life of the

gorilla and the child, but their argument was that that would take

some time to have an effect and may be the gorilla would be agitated by

it. -- maybe. I can understand their decision. But the real issue is that

we treat animals like humans in so many ways, including in zoos, but

also, of course, treating them as things to it, which is far less

necessary and defensible than what the zoo did. Will promise when it

comes to animal rights is that all the creatures that can feel and be

aware of suffering, and also aware of contentment and happiness, your

view is that that includes many creatures, and they have the same

right to not experience suffering that we humans have. And therefore,

many of the ways in which we treat animals, is in many ways racist to

other species, just like racism is unacceptable in human culture. This

is why, as I said, with the sanctity of life view, it seems a privileged

to be a human above all other beings. -- privilege. I have a

utilitarian view. I give similar weight to similar interests. If

roughly the amount of pain and animal can feel is the same as a

human, the same circumstances, then putting pain on that animal would be

just as bad to any human. Are you not, in your approach to this

question of relations between the human species and animals,

challenging the very basic tenants of evolution and Darwinian theory?

We are taught from the earliest age that evolution is based on struggle

and the survival of the fittest. The line doesn't worry about the

feelings of the wildebeest. -- lion. We humans, coming out of caves and

eating animals, we have always survived by frankly being the

fittest and surviving through being the cleverest, the fittest, the

smartest. You are challenging that. I am not. I am interested to talk

about that and that is how we got many of our quality. But I am

challenging the ability to draw many conclusions from this very. That is

the fallacy. I don't think we can say that because this is the way we

evolved that this is the way we should continue. You seem to believe

that we are making better choices today than when you started writing

about them 50 years ago. I definitely do. I see that all the

time in terms of the way people are living. We see that in regards to

animals. Far more people are aware of the needs of animals and are

vegetarian and vegan, I mean, we couldn't even have used that word

vegan, 50 years ago, and understood it. And there is the emerging

movement of altruism. I found that interesting. I wrote that essay more

than 40 years ago. It was taught in philosophy classes for a while but

people didn't take it as seriously as perhaps a guide to how they might

live their life. Now we have people doing that and finding it a

rewarding way to live. We have to end there. Thank you very much for

coming on HARDtalk. Thank you very much, Stephen. THEME SONG PLAYS.

Wednesday was a stormy day across the country with the Midlands

seeing the best and the worst of the weather.

But it was quite a humid day and that sparked off