Episode #208 ... The moral evolution of a philosopher. (Peter Singer)

Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is Philosophize This. So the goal of the episode today is to track the changes in the ethical views of the philosopher Peter Singer throughout the different stages of his career. Peter Singer, being a man who's considered to be one of the most influential philosophers talking about ethics today, He's written books that have sold millions of copies on everything from animal rights to end of life care to effective altruism. But one of the most interesting things about Peter Singer as a philosopher is just how much his views have changed over the years. What I mean is, at the beginning of his career, Peter Singer was somebody who didn't believe in moral facts. Morality was a kind of thing to him where it couldn't possibly be true or false no matter how hard he tried. Whereas these days, as a 78 year old man, after fifty years of thinking and writing about this kind of stuff, He's gotten to a place today where he thinks that morality is actually something that is objectively true. Now how did that whole transformation take place? Today's episode is the story of it. And by the end of this story, hopefully, along the way, I'm gonna do my best to do three things. One, the story of his moral evolution will be a great excuse for us to talk about several different important modern ethical approaches that people are holding these days. It'll allow you to see if any of these align with you. Second thing is, I hope by talking about these different types of metaethics and normative ethics and how they combine together to make up an approach to morality, my hope is that it'll allow you to have a frame of reference to understand your own ethical evolution better, whatever that's gonna look like in your case. And the last thing I hope this episode can do is to serve as an inspiration. For anybody out there who's truly curious about knowing this world around them, people that wanna honor this world they live in, the true complexity of it, the type of person whose set of beliefs is not just some extension of their own ego, not just something they have so they can win a debate. If you're not a sophist in other words, but instead someone who's truly seeking a better understanding of the world, then the life of Peter Singer is the story of a man who is not scared to change his mind no matter how long he's been holding a position. And it's the story of a man who's not scared to hold a position if it's the one he thinks is worth defending. It's a level of maturity that we could definitely use more of in this world we're living in. Because I mean, along the lines of the solutions we've been talking about lately on this podcast, and these philosophers that aren't calling for …