Are You An Evil Person For Eating Meat? - Peter Singer

1. 0:00 – 1:48

   Intro

   1. PSPeter Singer0:00

      My argument is not based on the idea that we should love animals or have warm feelings to them. It's based on the idea that this is a major ethical issue, a major ethical wrong that we are doing to those who are not members of our species. (wind blows)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:16

      It's nearly 50 years since you first published Animal Liberation. Why re-release the book now?

   3. PSPeter Singer0:25

      Well, partly because it is, uh, nearly 50 years. And although I did revise it in 1990, that's still 33 years. And the book isn't just, you know, timeless philosophy. It, it has some of what I hope is timeless philosophy in it, but it, it's applied to the real world. And the real world includes, um, industrial animal production, uh, which is a vast industry that is terrible for animals, the planet, climate, uh, health, everything. Um, but it's changed, of course, that industry has changed over the last, uh, 50 or 33 years. Um, I also talk about the use of animals in laboratories, um, and I described experiments that were done the last time I revised the book, so experiments from the 1980s, not very relevant if you want to know what's going on with animals in labs today. So those are two main reasons. Um, lots of people ask me about, "Well, you know, has... have we made progress for animals over the time since you wrote Animal Liberation?" Um, I wanted to answer that question. Uh, and I did want to talk about climate change and its relevance to our choice of what we eat, because that obviously wasn't in the 1975 edition. I had no knowledge of climate change, and it was barely in the 1990 edition either.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:44

      What ways do you think we've made progress with regards

2. 1:48 – 5:32

   Progress in Our Treatment of Animals

   1. CWChris Williamson1:48

      to animal welfare, and in which ways have we gone backward?

   2. PSPeter Singer1:53

      We've made progress in restrictions on some of the worst forms of close confinement of animals in industrial animal production that I focused on in the earlier, uh, book. Um, so for example, laying hens, egg-laying hens were in very small wire cages, uh, where they couldn't even stretch their wings. Even if there'd only been one hen per cage, they couldn't have stretched their wings fully, um, but there might be four or five hens in those cages. They have been prohibited in some places. So they've been prohibited in the European Union. The United Kingdom has maintained those prohibitions after leaving the, uh, European Union. Uh, some states of the United States where citizens can bring initiatives to the ballot and have a vote on them, uh, California is the largest of those states, uh, have, uh, also restricted those cages, and as well, individual stalls for, uh, veal calves and sows, uh, where again, they, they couldn't turn around. The stalls were so tight they could hardly walk a step. Um, so there are some places where those things have been banned. Um, another big form of progress is that there are many more vegetarians and vegans. There were virtually no vegans when, in 1975, when the book was published. Uh, there are now, uh, I think, supposed to be 1.3 million vegans in the United Kingdom, and varying figures for the United States that, uh, some, some surveys go much higher than that in the US. So, you know, uh, there's greater awareness of animals and the idea that animals might have rights is no longer a matter for ridicule, as it was when the book first came out. So there's lots of, um, ways in which we've gone ahead. The big way in which we've gone backwards is that there are more animals in industrial animal production now than ever before. Uh, and that's, uh, at least partly because of the rise of China, uh, the fact that China has become a lot more prosperous, which is great. We don't want people to be in extreme poverty. But, um, so hundreds of millions of Chinese now use their extra income that they have to buy more meat. Um, and China has been building these enormous factory farms, like 26-story buildings just full of thousands and thousands of pigs, obviously never getting to go outside, just living their entire lives, uh, on the concrete floors of these buildings. Uh, and because of that, uh, and, you know, expansion of other... chicken production, uh, uh, fish factory farming, aquaculture as it's, uh, called, too nice a word for what it really is. Um, you know, so there are far more animals suffering now from human abuse than there were in 1975.

   3. CWChris Williamson4:41

      I suppose that the increase in human population just means that there is a greater requirement for food. So even if you've had an increase in the proportion of people that are eating vegan or vegetarian, there is overall a significant more number of people who are eating full-stop. And regardless what proportion of those may have s- slightly increased to eat non-animal products, a lot more will be eating animal products.

   4. PSPeter Singer5:05

      Yes, I think that's exactly right. Um, that is what's happened. Uh, we... In some countries, you know, uh, meat consumption is stable or even is falling. It's fallen in Germany and in Sweden in recent years. But, um, it's growing in those countries where meat consumption used to be low. Um, and so we are certainly getting more meat being produced.

   5. CWChris Williamson5:30

      For the people who aren't familiar with

3. 5:32 – 14:14

   What is Peter’s Animal Liberation Argument?

   1. CWChris Williamson5:32

      the ideas in Animal Liberation, what's the key overview of your argument? What makes it, uh, different or novel or unique?

   2. PSPeter Singer5:41

      Well, my argument is not based on the idea that, uh, we should love animals or have, uh, warm feelings to them. Uh, it's based on the idea that this is a major ethical issue, a major ethical wrong that we are doing to those who are not members of our species. Um, and I argue that-... the kind of wrong is analogous to the more familiar wrongs that we have done in the past and, to some extent are still doing, such as, uh, racism and sexism. So in saying that, I'm not comparing the experience of animals, uh, to those of Blacks or women, but I am saying that what these phenomena have in common is that there is a, a dominant group. Um, it might have been those of European descent who, uh, went to Africa to buy slaves or capture slaves and enslave them. It might be, uh, men who, uh, were able to take power from women and essentially to ha- make women into, into their property. Um, and in this case, of course, it's humans as a whole who do exactly that with animals. Animals legally are property, um, everywhere in the world, uh, you know, domestic animals. Uh, and, uh, we... although we may treat our companion animals reasonably well, um, with the animals that we, uh, raising for food or using as tools for research in laboratories, uh, they are just things for us to use. They are means to our ends, and we don't give their interests consideration. And as long as a being can feel pain, that being has interests that we ought to be taking into account. And the fact that they're not members of our species doesn't, in any way, justify us disregarding those interests.

   3. CWChris Williamson7:33

      Is the goal here to reduce suffering then?

   4. PSPeter Singer7:36

      Primarily, the goal is to reduce suffering, yes. Um, it's not a matter of rights particularly. It's not specifically talking about the wrongness of killing. It's focused much more on the fact that any being capable of feeling pain, uh, has interests, um, particularly an interest in not suffering, and that's an interest that we violate on an absolutely vast scale. We're talking about hundreds of billions of animals, um, that humans, uh, cause suffering to by the conditions in which they raise them each year.

   5. CWChris Williamson8:11

      In your opinion, does some animals have a different capacity for suffering?

   6. PSPeter Singer8:16

      Yes, I think the capacities for suffering vary, um, with the nature of the species. Uh, that's certainly true. And, uh, we don't have great ways of comparing the suffering. Uh, uh, essentially, I suppose, we see it more closely in those nonhuman animals who either are... seem to be like us 'cause they're closely related to us, like chimpanzees and, uh, bonobos and, and orangutans and so on, um, or in those animals with whom we live like dogs and cats, and some people can be very close to horses, of course. So, uh, there we recognize it quite well. We don't recognize it nearly so well in, um, chickens and fish, for example. But we do now have... And this is another important difference between 1975, we do now have a growing body of scientific research on the capacities of nonhuman animals to feel pain, which animals feel pain, what kinds of things cause them to suffer. So, uh, we know a lot more about that than we, we did before. Um, but we certainly don't know everything. And, uh, if you move to a species very different from us like an octopus, um, although the behavior of the octopus shows intelligence and an ability to solve problems, it's not easy for us to know what an octopus is really feeling. But it does seem like it's a conscious being. It's likely to be feeling pain and likely to be able to suffer.

   7. CWChris Williamson9:48

      If it's the case that different animals perhaps have different, uh, capacities for suffering, does this mean that there's a, a hierarchy with which we should care about the suffering of different animals? A human should be placed above that of a pig, should be placed above that of a vole, should be placed above that of a aphid?

   8. PSPeter Singer10:06

      Well, um, I wouldn't put it quite like that. Um, I think that there isn't a hierarchy in, in, in a sense that similar amounts of pain are similarly important, whether they're the pain of a, a human or any of the animals you just mentioned. Uh, the question is, what do we regard as similar amounts of pain and how do we know? But, um, uh, you know, I, I don't think that there's a kind of hierarchy of moral status. I think that there are just questions that we need to ask about what do different species feel, what do we know about the feeling. And, you know, some species may feel pain more acutely than we do. Um, after all, we know that many species have much more acute sense of smell. Dogs do. Um, they may have more acute vision. Uh, raptors, um, you know, have incredibly sharp vision. Um, uh, so it's hard to say. You know, you can't really say, "Well, humans just feel more pain than any other animal." Um, that's unlikely. Uh, but, um, yes, we could say, "Well, some animals, you know, don't have enough neurons really perhaps to feel pain." So, you know, maybe some of the insects don't feel pain, um, and are more kind of like miniature robots, you know. Maybe. I, I, I don't know but, but that's possible.

   9. CWChris Williamson11:32

      Yeah, I understand. I think, uh, oysters, like bivalves and, and stuff like that, there's some k- well, I guess, uh, skepticism around whether or not they can feel pretty much anything at all.

   10. PSPeter Singer11:44

       Yes, I'm, I'm skeptical about oysters because, you know, pain evolves so- as a s- a warning signal, a signal of, of danger. Um, and beings that, uh, then have this capacity for pain can move away from that danger and escape it. But an oyster doesn't move. Um, uh, an oyster just sits on a, on a rock basically. And, um...... you know, so it's- it's hard to see why an oyster would have evolved a capacity for pain, um, given that, you know, there's- there's some cost to having those- those capacities. You have to have, uh, some neural matter and, uh, that has to, you know, be fed and- and whatever, kept going. So yeah, I- I- I don't have any objection to eating oysters, um, you know, because I don't think they're- they're sentient beings. That's- that's a good example of an animal that, uh, I don't think can feel pain.

   11. CWChris Williamson12:35

       What would you say to the people who believe that humans are the ones that are guiding this planet? Why should I care about the suffering of some non-human animal? I can care if another human suffers because they're a- a- a complex creature like me. But animals are being bred, they've always been bred for a very long time for our consumption. This is the way that it's always been. Why should we be bothered about the suffering of other animals?

   12. PSPeter Singer13:06

       Well, um, I- I don't think the fact that we, uh, are dominant is a reason for discounting their interests, and that was also true of Europeans, for example, with their more advanced technology, their guns, so on, that- but, uh, we don't feel that that justified them in, uh, dominating other animals. Uh, as for the fact that, you know, it's always been like this, that's a- a very (laughs) , uh, common conservative argument. Uh, but you could also, you know, men could certainly have always said that, uh, well, you know, men have been the leaders of societies, um, you know, w- women have needed men's permission to do things, to, who they marry, to, um, to have any possessions even. You know, even in the 19th century in England, uh, a married woman did not own any property. Whatever property she brought into the marriage, uh, on the day they were married belonged to her husband. So, um, you know, one could have said, "Well, it's- it's been like this for a very long time," but we certainly don't think that that justifies, uh, that arrangement.

   13. CWChris Williamson14:07

       Yeah, the, uh, marital naturalistic fallacy, perhaps.

   14. PSPeter Singer14:11

       (laughs) Right, yes, I think that's what it is.

   15. CWChris Williamson14:13

       Yeah.

4. 14:14 – 27:30

   An Animal’s Experience in 2023

   1. CWChris Williamson14:14

      Um, what is the typical life like of an animal that will arrive on somebody's plate in 2023? What are some of the numbers, uh, that are involved and sort of some of the experiences?

   2. PSPeter Singer14:29

      Well, the animals, uh, who we raise, uh, in the largest numbers are- are fish. And I'm not now talking about those fish who are captured wild from the oceans. Um, I'm talking about fish we raise in, uh, commercial fish... I wouldn't really call them farms, commercial fish production. Um, and, uh, a recent estimate of that is 124 billion fish raised every year. Um, and- and they are very closely confined. They are in small, you know, ponds or nets. Um, they're, some of them, like salmon, have an instinct to swim across the oceans, uh, and, uh, they don't have any kind of humane slaughter. Uh, the other thing that's worth noting, particularly, uh, you know, suppose you buy a salmon, um, farmed f- salmon, as most salmon are- are nowadays, um, you're not responsible just for the life and death of that salmon. That salmon had to be fed and the salmon is carnivorous. So trawlers had to go out in the ocean and catch fish to be ground up, low value fish to be ground up into pellets to be fed to that salmon. And an estimate that I've seen says that every salmon, by the time they're ready to be killed and sold, has consumed, uh, 147 other fish in total. So you're responsible for close to 150 fish being killed by the one salmon that you buy. Um, in, next in terms of numbers, uh, is chicken, um, and something like 70 billion chicken are raised worldwide, uh, each year. Uh, these chicken are- are sold, uh, very young. They've been bred to grow extremely fast, so they reach the weight that the chicken you buy in the supermarket, um, in something like six weeks. Uh, so really they're babies. But there's a problem with the fact that they are bred to grow so fast, uh, or several problems. Uh, they suffer from bone deformities because they put on weight, they're incredibly obese and their bones are still immature. Uh, and one of the problems is that their legs may collapse under them. Uh, so the industry accepts something like 5% mortality in these young birds, one in 20 will die, and, uh, those deaths may be caused by the fact that their legs have collapsed under them, they can no longer walk to food or water. Um, nobody is gonna pay them individual in- attention, it's just not worth the cost, they're too cheap. There's 20,000 birds in a single shed. Um, somebody might walk through the shed and pick up the corpses after they've died, but, uh, they won't get any, um, individual help if their legs do collapse under them. And even those whose legs manage to keep them, uh, standing until they're ready, at six weeks they're ready to be rounded up for slaughter, um, experts who've looked at this have said that they are in pain for the last two weeks because their, uh, body weight, uh, it hurts them just to stand. But they can't really sit down either because they're living on a- a kind of a litter that is full of their droppings, of these 20,000 birds and maybe previous batches of birds. Their droppings are just left on the floor of the shed. And, um, bird droppings are strongly alkaline, so when they mix with air and with moisture, they form a caustic solution. So if they were to spend a long time sitting on this litter, they would actually get, uh, caustic burns on their thighs. Uh, so they can't really do that either. Um, you know, one observer, a veterinarian, said, "It's like somebody with arthritis who's forced to stand, uh, you know, all day all, for- for the last, uh, 20% of their life."So I think, you know, that's really a- a- a again, a- a way of bringing up animals that, um, does ... takes no account of their well-being, their suffering. If it did, we wouldn't breed birds that are so unsuited to, um, to the kind of thing that they are, um, except for the fact that they put on weight quickly and you can make more money out of a faster growing bird than a slower growing bird.

   3. CWChris Williamson18:37

      What comes next? Which animals after the chickens?

   4. PSPeter Singer18:40

      Uh, well, I think pigs would be the- the next in terms of- of quantity, um, and that's particularly so in China. China is now the world's largest producer of pigs. Although, countries like the United States have a lot of pigs as well, um, but, uh, uh, pigs are also almost all kept indoors nowadays. Uh, the, uh, they're also bred to grow very fast. They're closely confined in pens. Uh, the pigs that, whose meat you, uh, you know, pork or ham or bacon you actually buy will have been kept in- in small groups, um, but always indoors and with little room to move around. The- the worst situation is their mothers, the- the breeding sows whose role is just to produce litter after litter of piglets, uh, and they are still quite commonly kept in individual crates or stalls, just metal bars, um, too narrow for them to turn around, and, uh, uh, they're ... they've got no straw to bed down in. They're, um, either on concrete floors or on metal slats because that's the easiest and cheapest way to hose off the manure, uh, so they have nothing to do. These are, you know ... Uh, pigs are very intelligent animals and, uh, comparable to dogs, and yet they're just locked up all day. Uh, they have nothing to do except, uh, they do get fed and then maybe they consume their- their food for half an hour or so. Uh, and that's it, um, and if anybody kept a dog like that in- in conditions where a dog couldn't run around or even turn around, uh, everybody would say, "That's cruel. They ought to be prosecuted." But because these are pigs, because they come under commercial farming laws which typically, um, allow these practices, uh, not, as I said, not in the European Union, uh, not in the United Kingdom, not in California, but in the states of the United States where most of the pigs are reared, uh, states like Iowa or Nebraska or North Carolina. There's no such laws preventing them being kept in this way. And in China, there's- there's no real animal welfare laws for farmed animals at all. There are some laws relating to how they can be slaughtered, but there's nothing, uh, no national laws about how they can be reared, so, uh, I've seen photos of just vast sheds with rows and rows of these sows standing in those stalls.

   5. CWChris Williamson21:05

      Again, just to reiterate here, your position isn't that we should be cuddly towards animals because they're cute and they're nice and they're supposed to be walking around on a farmyard. It's that there is an associated amount of suffering that goes along with this, and there is no reason that we as humans shouldn't care about the suffering of other animals that are on this planet, especially I would imagine animals that we have brought into this world ourselves.

   6. PSPeter Singer21:34

      Right. We're fully responsible clearly for their welfare. We- we do that very deliberately, bringing them into the world and then put them in these conditions, um, and that is really what I'm objecting to. Um, I'll also add that this is not an efficient way of feeding people. Some people will say, "Well, the world's population is growing. You know, we need to feed them. We've got to do this." But the- the truth is just the reverse. This is a waste of food, because when you take animals off the fields where they might get at least some of their food by themselves, then, um, you have to feed them, and to feed them, um, I've already mentioned with the fish, you have to go out and catch fish and grind them up for- for the carnivorous fish we- we farm anyway. Um, and for the chickens and pigs, uh, we have to grow grains or grow soybeans which we could eat ourselves and, uh, feed- feed them to the animals. And in the process, the animal wastes most of the food value because the animal has to keep their body warm, you burn up calories to ... just to keep your body warm, and even if they are very confined and can't really move around, um, they still waste ... Uh, it varies a bit according to the species, but if we're talking about feeding grains to cattle, they waste at least 90% of the food value. If we're talking about pigs, they probably waste something like 60 to 70% of the food value. If we're talking about chickens, 'cause they grow so fast, they're a little more efficient, they've ... perhaps waste two thirds of the food value. We get one third back. Um, so, uh, yeah, it's, um ... it's not a good way of feeding the world. It's not a good way of preserving the planet.

   7. CWChris Williamson23:11

      What about the role of milk or eggs or cheese?

   8. PSPeter Singer23:15

      Right, yes, well, um, the egg-laying hens, uh, again, uh, in those places I mentioned, the European Union and some, a few states of the United States, uh, they can't be kept in s- the wire cages that otherwise, say, the majority of US hens are kept in, uh, these very narrow wire cages where they can't stretch their wings. Um, and, uh, uh ... So but even- even where they're not kept in cages, they can still be very crowded, um, and, you know, I think it ... you could say that in genuinely free range egg production where the eggs ... where the hens are actually allowed free to roam outside, um, and have grass that they can, you know, use and they can peck at insects in the grass or, uh, look for worms or something like that. You know, yes, you can do that and you can produce eggs. They're more expensive, but you can produce eggs that way, but the overwhelming majority of eggs come from hens who never go outside, um, and as I say, in- in many countries, the majority are still in cages.... uh, with, with dairy, um, there's again, uh, been a big move to intensify dairy to produce... have large dairies. The, the traditional dairy farm maybe had 50 cows, maybe 100, 200 cows would have been a decent size dairy farm. Um, and they were able to go out each day on, on grass and graze, and that's not too bad a life in itself. Um, but the larger farms with 1,000 or more cows, uh, they essentially keep them in, in stalls and they bring food to them. But the other big problem with, with, uh, dairy products, which many people don't really think of, is that the dairy cows have to be made pregnant at regular intervals to keep producing milk. So roughly every year, the cow will give birth to a calf, and, uh, the calf is taken away from the cow within hours of birth, because otherwise the calf will drink the milk that the producers want to sell. So, um, the separation of the cow and, and her calf is a painful process, uh, for both of them. Um, there's a very strong bond between cows and their calves. And, uh, you know, dairy farmers have acknowledged that sometimes f- when they've taken the calf away and then the cow calls for that calf for hours and hours, and sometimes even when the cow comes... if, if the calf was taken away at a particular spot, and the cow is taken past that spot, the cow will stop and will call for her calf. She remembers the calf being taken away. Uh, and the fate of the calf isn't good either. If, if, if the calf is female, she may be raised as a dairy cow herself. But if the calf is male, she's likely to go... or sorry, he is likely to go into the veal industry, um, or possibly be raised for hamburger. But dairy, dairy, uh, cows, you know, aren't really very good for meat production. They're not bred for that. So, um-

   9. CWChris Williamson26:23

      I imagine that male chicks are similarly useless.

   10. PSPeter Singer26:27

       The male chicks of the laying breeds, the egg-laying breeds, yes. Um, and they are generally just thrown into a kind of a grinder which grinds them up, um, immediately after the, after they're, they're hatched, then their, their sex is selected. The females are put on one side and the males get ground up. There are some moves in, uh, Europe to develop technologies that, um, either enable you to sex the egg, and therefore destroy the egg before the, the chick is hatched, or even, um, enable it... make it possible that the hen will only lay eggs of females. Um, and that would solve the problem with the male chicks. Uh, and I s- I think Germany and France are, are trying to legislate at least for the, uh, se- sexing in the, in the egg rather than the chick to prevent the suffering of these millions of male chicks that get ground up. Uh, but in the United States, that isn't being done yet. And in, you know, here where I am in Australia, it's not being done either.

   11. CWChris Williamson27:28

       I imagine that one of the

5. 27:30 – 31:41

   Is There an Ethical Way to Farm Animals?

   1. CWChris Williamson27:30

      most common objections after you put forward a case like that, and, you know, by the sounds of things, the life of these animals isn't tremendously enjoyable. I don't think that anyone, even the most ardent meat-eater, would say, "Yeah, I'm really proud of being part of a system that causes animals to go through that kind of situation." But there are ways that we can do this. We can look at regenerative farming. We can ensure that chickens not only are free-range but have a natural range, they've got tons of hectares that they can go over. Is there a problem with eating an egg if it's been created by a chicken that's had a fantastic life, that's been looked after, that's been cared for, protected from foxes? The same thing goes for... I'm sure there is a way that you can get milk from a cow that doesn't involve the emotional turmoil that they go through. I- in your opinion, are there any ways that you can do ethical animal farming?

   2. PSPeter Singer28:21

      There are ways that I think can be regarded as ethical. Um, you can have a debate about whether they are as ethical, uh, ethical enough to eat those products. But, but I think the debate is, is an ongoing one and a reasonable one. So, um, while I'm not gonna say I endorse those forms of animal production, I am gonna say I don't have a, a, you know, a conclusive objection to saying that they're wrong or that they shouldn't be done. So for people who want to continue to eat animal products, if they conscientiously search out those products, um, I'm prepared to say, yes, they're, they're trying to live an ethical life, uh, and, and that's a reasonable attempt to do so. Um, they'll probably be able to succeed with, with free-range eggs, depending a little bit where they're living. Um, but, you know, there are free-range eggs being sold in most countries labeled as such. Uh, you may need to check up on how many hens there are per hectare or acre. Uh, but, um, that's possible. Uh, don't kid yourselves that the hens will have a long life because once they stop laying, which is, you know, well before they normal- they would normally die, um, they will be killed. I don't think many commercial producers will keep feeding hens who lay no eggs. Um, the male chicks may still get killed. That's another issue. Um, and, uh, but with the dairy products, uh, it's really, really hard to find dairy producers who leave their cow- their cow- their calves with the cows. Um, in, uh, Animal Liberation now, I think I mentioned three of them, one in England, one in Germany, and one here in Australia. Uh, the dairy products are a lot more expensive, um, uh, but, um, yeah, if people can do that, um, then okay. Uh, still a question of if, if, if the cows are producing male calves, uh, what are you gonna do with them? Are you gonna keep them? Um, but at least the, the Australian producer that I've had some contact with, um, uses, uh, sperm selection. They use artificial insemination for...... producing the calves, and they select the sperm, and they get very, very few male calves. So that's one way of dealing with that. Um, I think their, their, their milk is about three times as expensive as, uh, milk from standard commercial producers, so you have to be prepared to pay for it. But if you really want to continue to eat animal products and you want to have an ethical relationship with animals, um, I guess that's one way of doing it.

   3. CWChris Williamson30:55

      Think about how much more tasty all of that morality is going to be, though. That's really gonna add on to the flavor profile.

   4. PSPeter Singer31:02

      Yeah, and I think people will appreciate it more. That's true. You know, um, I'm old enough to, uh, remember when I was a child when chicken was a treat, because it was expensive and, uh, you know, w- in my family, you, you got it on your birthday. Um, and, you know, it did, it, it did seem something special then. Um, (laughs) I don't think many people think that chicken is a special treat now. Um, but maybe if you only eat animal products from really, animals who have really good lives, and they're killed without pain and suffering, uh, you would eat these animal products quite rarely, and you would think of them as a special treat and you would enjoy them more, perhaps.

6. 31:41 – 35:00

   Is it Ethical to Have Pets?

   1. PSPeter Singer31:41

   2. CWChris Williamson31:41

      One of the, uh, progressions that I've seen from some of the more, uh, militant corners of the veganism movement is saying that owning any type of pet would be something which is unethical as well. I think a lot of people struggle to understand how, uh, you know, owning a dog, that most people see not only as just a, something that they care about, but literally a part of the family. These people, you know, treat them as if they're essentially a surrogate child. In fact, some people, uh, decide not to have children in place of a ton of dogs or cats. What is your position on the owning of pets?

   3. PSPeter Singer32:18

      Uh, I don't discourage people having ... Uh, I prefer to think of them as companion animals. But I don't discourage people from living with companion animals. Um, uh, I don't like, you know, you said owning them, well, that is the legal situation, of course, now. I'd, I'd rather think of them as, as you said, as, as members of the family and companions. Um, and I, I don't think you ought to be able to own them. But, um-

   4. CWChris Williamson32:40

      In the same way that you don't own your son or daughter.

   5. PSPeter Singer32:43

      Exactly. Yes, that's right. Um, but, uh, I do think that, you know, many people with companion animals do give them good and rewarding lives. Obviously, not everybody. But, but many do. And it's also, I think, important for our understanding of non-human animals. Uh, I already mentioned earlier that people who live with dogs or cats have a sense that, uh, you know, what they're like, that they're complex beings, that they not only feel pain if you tread on their paws, but they have, uh, you know, emotional suffering when they're, they're bored, when you leave them alone at home. At least, dogs are. And, um, and, uh, you know, they welcome you when you come home, and they love to go for a run, and there's a lot of things that we learn about animals through being close to a, a dog or a cat, uh, or a horse. Um, and, and that has led many people onto appreciating that the way they're treating or the way they're complicit in the treatment of, uh, pigs and, and cows and chickens, uh, is wrong. Um, one of the, uh, perhaps, you know, the leading animal advocate, uh, and strategist of the animal movement in the United States in the last quarter of the 20th century was a man called Henry Spira, who, um, was a close friend of mine. And, and he was somebody who was always like, for progressive causes. He marched for civil rights in the American South. Um, he, uh, was a merchant seaman and joined a, a reformist union to try to improve conditions for workers. Uh, after the Cuban Revolution, he went there to see it himself, uh, what was happening. Um, but he had no thoughts about animals until a friend of his, uh, was going overseas, said, "Hey, look after my cat. I've got no one else to look after my cat. Here's, here's, here's a cat." Um, and, and the cat basically charmed him, as he says. And, uh, suddenly, he had this epiphany that, uh, here he was petting one animal and sticking a knife and fork into another, um, and, uh, was there something wrong with that? And, uh, he happened to come across my Animal Liberation at the same time, and, uh, that combination started him off, uh, on a career that really improved lives for many animals.

   6. CWChris Williamson34:59

      Have you considered

7. 35:00 – 40:18

   Providing Aid to Suffering Wild Animals

   1. CWChris Williamson35:00

      the suffering of wild animals, and whether it's our duty to somehow step in and ameliorate that?

   2. PSPeter Singer35:08

      I have considered that. Um, I would say I was prompted to consider it by some other philosophers who started thinking about that issue. Um, I didn't really think much about it in the early, uh, versions of the book. But, um, I have, uh, a few pages about it in Animal Liberation now. Uh, I certainly think that we should consider the interests of wild animals, and there are relatively simple things that we can do. Um, the largest number of wild animals we harm is, again, fish, and, uh, we harm them by hauling them out of the ocean in, uh, and letting them die in cruel conditions, because, you know, they will suffocate in nets, for example, or, um, die slowly. So, uh ... An- and we're overfishing the oceans. So avoiding, uh, wild-caught fish is good for wild animals and good for the sustainability of the oceans. Um, and I think also things like, um, trying to install, uh, glass that birds won't fly into, that's another major killer of animals. Uh, and I think, you know, if you do have a cat, um, keeping your cat indoors at least at night, um, if not all the time depending a bit where you live is important for wild animals. Because although, you know, (laughs) many cat lovers deny it, um, there's very strong evidence that pretty much any cat, uh, left outside, especially at night, becomes a predator, and kills, uh-... you know, small animals, small birds, uh, small rodents. Um, so yeah, keeping, keeping your cat indoors at night is a good way of reducing the suffering of wild animals.

   3. CWChris Williamson36:45

      If that's the case, and you lived in an area, let's say, that was overrun with wild pigs, there are some places in America that have this problem, and some people get in big helicopters with .50 cal machine guns on the side of them and just chew through reams and reams and reams of animals, how do you balance the ethical decision there? If these animals were left, they would destroy an ecosystem which downstream from that has a ton of other animals that live in it. The only, uh, interjection that we can make is to kill them. But by doing that, you're killing an animal in a pretty inhumane way on the side of a gunship loaded with a belt-fed machine gun.

   4. PSPeter Singer37:28

      Yeah. Um, we have similar problems with wild animals in Australia too. Uh, look, I, I respect the environmental values that, uh, we want to preserve. And, uh, it, it's our fault f- for having introduced these, uh, non-native species, and, uh, they've escaped or they've, sometimes they've been deliberately released to, to breed. And, and we've created this havoc. Um, it's obviously not the fault of the pigs, but, um, I agree with those who think that, uh, uh, you know, there are at least some situations where we can't just let it go. Um, I would like to see more humane ways of dealing with the problem than the helicopter gunships that you mentioned. Uh, so, uh, ideally, we would put some research into developing a, a bait that will sterilize the animals, and therefore, that would deal with the problem more humanely over the long term.

   5. CWChris Williamson38:25

      Oh, yeah.

   6. PSPeter Singer38:25

      Um-

   7. CWChris Williamson38:25

      Interesting.

   8. PSPeter Singer38:26

      So yeah, I mean, th- uh, they're, in, in very small scale, that can be done. There's a couple of islands, uh, in, off the, the Delmarva Peninsula in Maryland, uh, Chincoteague and Assateague, I think, they're called, um, wh- where there was a problem with feral horses, uh, feral ponies. And, and people care more about horses than they do about pigs. So, uh, when people said, "We need to shoot all these ponies," uh, people said, "No, you can't do that." Um, and then they, they did find ways of, of sterilizing them. Um, but, uh, you know, on a large scale over large territory, uh, you probably can't, can't do that very easily at the moment. But, uh, yeah, you might be able to develop a bait that the pigs would take that the native animals would not take, um, and that would sterilize them.

   9. CWChris Williamson39:13

      Yeah, it's a, it's a fascinating decision criteria there. So, I got introduced to your, uh, position probably about four or five years ago from a friend. And I am a meat eater. I still am now. But it's been, by far for me, the most compelling consideration around my consumption of animals. Where is it being sourced from? How do I feel about eating it? Even little things. I know that as a utilitarian, this probably doesn't count, but having a little bit more reverence for the food that you eat and for where it's come from, um, has, has been something that was, that was changed upon understanding a more moral and ethical framework, as opposed to a screechy person who was shouting about how terrible you are because ... and then some placard that gets waved in your face. It seemed like a much more scalable, um, uh, way of thinking about animal welfare. Given the fact that the net outcome that you're looking for is to just reduce animal

8. 40:18 – 46:55

   Peter’s Thoughts on Modern Veganism

   1. CWChris Williamson40:18

      suffering, and you've been talking about this for nearly 50 years and are now revisiting it again, what do you think about the modern iteration of the veganism movement and its sort of many hydra-headed, uh, version of, of, of how it's progressed? What have you observed that's been, that's been interesting being on the front lines of this for so long?

   2. PSPeter Singer40:43

      Yeah, there are a lot of different tactics used. Um, and, uh, it's hard to know which tactics are the most effective. That's a, a difficult problem in, in social science research to work out what influences people. Um, I, I'm perfectly clear that, that really violent actions just put people off and give, give the whole movement a bad name. And I'm glad that they seem to have ceased. There was a period in the '80s when some activists were using violence and, you know, relatively little. I mean, there was a lot of publicity about it. Um, the number of people who were hurt by it, um, was, you could count on the fingers of your hand, I think. Um, but, uh, still, it, it was not a good, uh, thing to be doing for an ethical movement. Um, and the sort of in-your-face thing, I guess, y- yes, people find it offensive. We don't know whether it gets them to think in the end or not. But, um, I've been impressed by the recent use of, uh, what's called open rescue techniques, where people have gone into factory farms and, uh, videoed what's going on there. And if they've seen particularly ill, uh, animals, or particularly maltreated animals that looked like they were not gonna survive very long anyway, they've rescued them. They've taken them out. They've taken them to a vet. Um, uh, if, if, if the vet says, uh, "No, this animal isn't gonna live," then, uh, they put them down. Um, but otherwise, they treat them to try to help them. And then they show, uh, the video footage, and they show the individual animals because then people can focus on individuals. Um, and it's interesting that the, uh, uh, there's been a move to prosecute these people, um, because after all, they are taking-

   3. CWChris Williamson42:28

      Property.

   4. PSPeter Singer42:29

      ... property, pigs, pigs or chickens, whatever they are, they're property. Um, and there've been a, a couple of recent cases where the prosecution has badly backfired. Uh, so, uh, uh-... two, two rescuers took pigs from a farm in Utah and, uh, they were put on trial on felony theft charges. I think they could have spent five years in, in prison. Uh, and they didn't deny that they'd taken the pigs, um, but the jury, and, and this is, you know, Utah's a fairly conservative state and they were in a rural part of the state. You'd expect it to be more conservative, more farm-friendly. But the jury refused to convict them. Uh, and then there was a second case in California after that, too. So i- i- it's a way of getting the randomly selected members of the public on the jury to express their view of what's going on in these places. And it's clear that they don't like it.

   5. CWChris Williamson43:20

      In your opinion, is it moral to convince people to become vegan through an immoral method? So something like, uh, lying to them or emotional coercion or something like that?

   6. PSPeter Singer43:31

      Uh, no, I don't think it is, and I think it's likely to backfire because, uh, you know, there will be people who will expose what's going on and, and it's-

   7. CWChris Williamson43:39

      We- let's say that it didn't. In this situation, let's say it didn't backfire. Let's say that the outcome was that nobody got rumbled, but en route to doing it, it was a, an immoral, uh, means to a moral end in your view.

   8. PSPeter Singer43:51

      Well, uh, as a utilitarian, I, I do think that it is sometimes justified to do things that would not be right in themselves, but when they lead to importantly good ends, um, can be justified. So if you're talking hypothetically, um, I think that could be justified. If you're talking about would I advise, uh, a vegan activist to use those methods, the answer is no because, you know, we can't specify that i- it is only going to have the good consequences and not have the bad consequences.

   9. CWChris Williamson44:25

      Yeah. It's, um, it's an interesting, an interesting consideration and one that I've spoken to a bunch of different friends about. You mentioned before, uh, we discussed this, um, kind of, uh, spectrum, I suppose, between factory farming and, and regenerative farming and living at home with a chicken that lives in the backyard or whatever. It seems to me that, um, factory farming is the thin end of the wedge that, again, most people that hear the stories about the kind of experiences that you've just described from animals, very few of them are going to be ardent, proud, flag-waving supporters of it. Um, it does seem like that gets spread out to in- uh, to cover absolutely everything, that it's not just the factory farming. It's also the regenerative farming. And lots of people, I think, are changing, uh, their eating habits because of a, a fear of environmental impact as well as just what's happening to animals and, and emotive imagery and stuff like that. In your opinion, do you think it's a, almost a failing of moral philosophy to have sufficient impact, that you need to rely on concerns about climate change and so on and so forth? Should it be the case that we are able to motivate humans morally without having to layer on top multiple different arguments?

   10. PSPeter Singer45:37

       It should be the case that the argument against inflicting suffering on animals is, uh, sufficient to persuade people. Um, yes. Ideally, that would be the case. Um, when I wrote and released, uh, Ana- the first version of Animal Liberation in 1975, I thought that this argument was so obvious and compelling that it would have that effect. Um, that was a bit naive. Um, but, uh, um, ideally, it would if we were more rational, if we were more moved by ethics, uh, more ethical. I'm sure it would. Uh, but, um, you know, in saying that, um, I think the arguments about not eating meat because of climate change are also ethical arguments. Um, they're not appealing to self-interest really, because, you know, from self-interested point of view, what I would like is to keep doing what I li- enjoy doing and hope that everyone else will stop doing these things that will have bad effects, uh, on the planet.

   11. CWChris Williamson46:31

       Tragedy of the commons, yeah.

   12. PSPeter Singer46:32

       Yeah, the tragedy of the commons. Exactly. So, um, so to, to avoid the tragedy of the commons, you either need government regulation, um, or you need individual ethical action. We don't have government regulation that's taking the right stand on, uh, industrial animal production yet, um, so we need ethical action.

   13. CWChris Williamson46:54

       Why do you think

9. 46:55 – 57:35

   Why Didn’t More People Change from Peter’s Movement?

   1. CWChris Williamson46:55

      it is the case that the argument you put forward 50 years ago, that you thought, "As soon as everybody hears this, evidently they, they're gonna change their ways. This is going to be the beginning of a kind of diet virus that's going to cause everybody to become ethical," why, why, why hasn't that convinced more people?

   2. PSPeter Singer47:18

      I think it's just that, uh, eating habits, uh, go very deep and are hard to change. Um, I mean, the contrast here would be with some other ethical change like, um, the dramatic improvement in attitudes towards, uh, gays and bisexual people and lesbians and so on, um, which, you know, I don't think many people... Say in the year 2000, I don't think many people thought that within the next 20 years, uh, a lot of countries would accept not only that we shouldn't prosecute, uh, gays for their sexual acts, but that we should allow them to marry in this- exactly the same way as we allow heterosexuals to marry. Um, that was a dramatic change. But there's less at stake for... You know, most people don't have very much at stake. They have an attitude, but they don't feel, "I'm gonna have to change my lives, my life if gays can marry."

   3. CWChris Williamson48:14

      Yeah, it's not saying that you need to be gay. It's saying that you need to allow other people to be gay.

   4. PSPeter Singer48:18

      Right, exactly. It's not saying you need to marry someone of your, your same sex. If people tried that, they would not get very far.

   5. CWChris Williamson48:24

      (laughs)

   6. PSPeter Singer48:25

      Um, but, uh, uh, the, the, the animal movement or the case that I was putting forward was saying, "You need to change what you eat." Um, and that's much more difficult, you know, for a whole lot of reasons. I mean, may- there may be some sort of, we, we evolved to have a taste for meat because that's a very dense nutrient that was available to our ancestors and those that ate it did better than those that didn't. But, of course, that's not the case anymore today. It's, it's more of a health risk. Um, or it may be that it's, it's embedded in our culture, and, you know, we think, "Oh, but if I stopped eating meat, w-... I wouldn't have the traditional Thanksgiving turkey or, uh, whatever other, you know. Wouldn't slaughter the- the- the sheep for the feast of the Eid. Um, so, so, meat is- is culturally embedded in, uh, uh, in ways that make it harder to change. Uh, and there's also that sense of, a lot of people say, "Well, you know, their family eats meat. What are they gonna do when they go and eat with them? Um, like, are- are they gonna tell their friends that they should stop eating meat? Isn't that being a bit self-righteous?" Um, it's, you know, we're fairly conformist in that, uh, there are some people who are prepared to say, "No, I'm gonna break with that tradition and, uh, be a- a- a non-conformist." But I think there are a lot of people who don't want to be among the leaders of the change and would rather follow than lead.

   7. CWChris Williamson49:49

      Given that vegetables and vegan products, no matter how correctly they're sourced, are also associated with an increase in death and suffering of animals, stuff that happens just during harvesting and so on and so forth, it's inevitable that that's going to end up happening, does this not mean that there is a moral obligation for every human to try and limit their calorie consumption to as little as possible? "I shouldn't eat one calorie more than I should. I should also eat a vegan diet, but that vegan diet shouldn't be a single calorie over because as soon as I do, that is unnecessarily impacting animal life upstream."

   8. PSPeter Singer50:31

      I think if you really start worrying about every calorie, you're gonna go crazy and you're not gonna be very effective in doing anything else. Um, so I think that's, you know, that's some sort of saintly ideal, if you like, and it's similar to arguments that I've put forward in relation to global poverty. Um, again, you know, a long time ago when I was, um, perhaps a little too much of a, um, a demanding, uh, ethicist that, uh, we should give away all of our assets, uh, until we reach the point of marginal utility and until we reach the point at which sharing something more, giving something more to a person in extreme poverty would lower us to the same level of poverty or suffering as the person we were helping.

   9. CWChris Williamson51:12

      Mm-hmm.

   10. PSPeter Singer51:13

       That's also, I think, um, you know, not a realistic ethic to put forward, and as a consequentialist, I want to put forward ethical views that will achieve the maximum benefits. So I no longer, uh, make that argument in terms of- of how much we should give away. I suggest instead, um... so in my book, The Life You Can Save, I suggest, um, more reasonable percentages of incomes that scale up as you earn more. And, uh, similarly, I think, in terms of, you know, trying to get people to move towards, uh, a- a- a vegan diet or at least a more conscientiously ethical diet that, uh, has concern for what animals are experiencing, I think saying you can't eat a single calorie over what you need to maintain your body is, uh, is- is not gonna work.

   11. CWChris Williamson52:01

       For the people, like me, who aren't, um, philosophy-pilled, talking about the blending of the position of a utilitarian with that of a consequentialist, am I right in thinking that a utilitarian would be looking to maximize the utility from whatever the choice is or the framework is that's being put forward, but the consequentialist understands that there are real world restrictions on that that need to be filtered through? So it's, is it almost like a blending of the two positions?

   12. PSPeter Singer52:31

       No, I don't think that's quite right. I think that utilitarians will also want to produce the best consequences. Uh, you know, u- utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism. Consequentialism is the genus. Utilitarianism is the species. And the difference between them is not, um, their attitudes to what's realistic or what's not. It's their attitude to what are the consequences that we want to maximize, that we wanna focus on. The utilitarian will say the consequences are, uh, well-being, the well-being of all of those capable of having a well-being, which means, in my view, all sentient creatures. And we want them to suffer as little pain as possible, to- to suffer as little, uh, to have, experience as much pleasure, to be as happy as possible. That's the utilitarian view. The consequentialist will say, "I agree that whether an action is right or wrong depends on its consequences, but I don't think that well-being is the only consequence that matters. I think it's, for example, it's good that people should have greater knowledge, whether they use that knowledge to enhance well-being or not. I think it's important that people should be free, whether they use their freedom in ways that enhance well-being or not." Um, and, you know, then there's a whole list, and- and that's the thing about consequentialists in general once you move away from specifically utilitarian consequentialists. There are about 50 things that people have put on lists that they think of as intrinsically good and they want to maximize, and everybody then takes their pick of these 50 things, uh, as to which are the ones that I want to maximize and- and why? And- and then you have to say, "Well, are you sure this is really good in itself? Are you sure?" Like, with knowledge. "Are you sure knowledge isn't good because it can help us to improve well-being? Are you sure that just having additional knowledge is good even if it has no further consequences?" Those are the kinds of debates that- that you then have to have.

   13. CWChris Williamson54:21

       Could you imagine a situation in which a human who was bought into the world of, uh, ethical veganism and was talking about this sort of stuff on the internet, let's say, or- or- or on any kind of platform, but was struggling to eat a sufficiently well-balanced diet that allowed them to maximize the impact that they could have on the world existed. So this person believes in the precepts of it and is talking about it online and is doing it in a- a very compelling way and encouraging other people to consider their approach to what their diet looks like too. But their individual, um, challenges that they're facing with their own health mean that they then consider moving from a vegan to a meat-based diet. Now, whilst they're on this meat-based diet, they're going to continue talking to the world and encouraging as many people as possible-... would it be, uh, uh, an ethical position for that person to hold to say, "Look, I'm going to do something personally which I would see as unethical or immoral in order to encourage and maximize the impact that I can have on the rest of the world"?

   14. PSPeter Singer55:30

       Yeah, I've actually had... You know, that's not a hypothetical. I've, I've had people come to me and say things somewhat similar to that. Um, I think, you know, i- it took me a while to accept this because I've always felt great on, uh, vegetarian and, and vegan diets, um, and, uh, others that I know have too. But, um, there are some people who seem to have a, a, a different constitution and who don't do well, uh, certainly not on an exclusively vegan diet. So, if you are one of those people and... but you see the point of the cause, um, yeah, I, I would say to preserve your health and to maintain the ability to be a, an active force for good in the world, um, you should seek out those animal products that, um, will be sufficient to maintain your, your health and vigor and will do the least harm to animals, to the climate, and so on. So, um, for example, we were talking earlier about free range eggs from, from hens who are genuinely free range and have grass to range around on. Uh, um, I think that's, that's, that's an example of something that I would see as doing... minimizing harm, providing some animal protein, uh, and maybe that's enough for some people. You know, if it's not, then they need to look further, but they always need to think about who is... "Where can I get this product in a way where the animals are really cared for well, uh, where the greenhouse gases are not great or are offset?" Um, so, yeah, those are the sorts of questions. And I, uh, appreciate that a, a small number of people may need to do that to keep active and vigorous.

   15. CWChris Williamson57:13

       Loads of mussels. Just ton-

   16. PSPeter Singer57:16

       Well, generally you don't need mussels-

   17. CWChris Williamson57:18

       Like 50 mussels a day.

   18. PSPeter Singer57:18

       ... in this day. (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson57:19

       Like 50-

   20. PSPeter Singer57:20

       Oh, mussels. I see. Those mussels. Right. Sorry.

   21. CWChris Williamson57:22

       Yes.

   22. PSPeter Singer57:22

       I thought you were talking about, uh, eating enough animal products to build up their mussels and in fact there's-

   23. CWChris Williamson57:26

       No, no, the bivalves.

   24. PSPeter Singer57:27

       ... plenty of bodybuilders and-

   25. CWChris Williamson57:28

       Get some more bivalves.

   26. PSPeter Singer57:29

       Bivalves, yes. You could do that. Yes. That would be, uh, that would be a positive.

   27. CWChris Williamson57:32

       Go to town. Go to town on the bivalves.

   28. PSPeter Singer57:34

       (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson57:34

       Okay. So,

10. 57:35 – 1:02:15

    How Peter Amended His Book for a Modern Audience

    1. CWChris Williamson57:35

       um, obviously one of the things that you've done, uh, nearly 50 years between both... uh, between this version and, and the first version of this. The cultural climate has changed an awful lot during that time. The type of arguments that can be made that are accepted widely, uh, or even accepted (laughs) not so widely, uh, have changed a good bit. What were some of the, um, elements that you had to remove from the book in order to make it more palatable for a 2023 audience?

    2. PSPeter Singer58:04

       Well, um, a, a very glaring example of that was that in the first version of the book, um, I wanted to make the point at the beginning that this book was not written for animal lovers and that I didn't consider myself an animal lover, uh, and that was raising a major ethical issue. And to make that point, I used a parallel between, uh, this issue and, uh... or, or the way that I was approaching this issue and the way that, uh, whites in the 1950s and '60s who were supportive of the movement against, uh, racial segregation in the American South, um, would go down to march with, uh, Blacks in the South for, you know, against segregations of schools or universities or buses or restaurants or whatever. And, uh, to make the point that I, I was not an animal lover, I said... I, I quoted, uh, a, an epithet that was often used by white racists, so a- against these... by white Southern racists against these Northerners who came down to help them. And they used the N-word to suggest that they loved the people that they were helping. Um, and I... And I had that in... In the first edition, I had that word in quotes. Um, it was a quote, and I said it was a racist who was saying this. There was no way at all in which I was endorsing the use of that word. Um, but now that word has become such a strong taboo that you can't even use it in quotes in that sense. And, um, so the editor, uh, indicated that, that had-

    3. CWChris Williamson59:36

       (laughs)

    4. PSPeter Singer59:36

       ... to go and I accepted that view.

    5. CWChris Williamson59:39

       Yeah. I think if, if... no matter how, um, clean you want to or how, uh, appropriately you want to try and represent the original material, you're inevitably gonna have to do that. There's a couple of other bits as well that I'd, I'd seen, uh, to do with, uh, uh, men getting, uh... the ability of men to have equal abortion rights or the equal, um-

    6. PSPeter Singer1:00:02

       No.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:00:02

       ... was it access to opportunity? Something like that.

    8. PSPeter Singer1:00:06

       Yes, th- that's right. I was saying that, yes, I was saying that to say that animals have rights didn't mean that they had the right to vote or something like that, um, any more than, um, to say that, uh, there's a right to abortion means that men, uh, have e- equal abortion rights with women or some- something like that. I, I can't remember the exact wording. Um, yes. And, uh, of course now you can't refer to pregnant women-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:00:30

       Fraught.

    10. PSPeter Singer1:00:30

        ... as you should refer to pregnant people, uh, is the-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:00:33

        Fraught conversation.

    12. PSPeter Singer1:00:34

        ... I still find that-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:00:35

        So, I mean-

    14. PSPeter Singer1:00:35

        ... a little strange, I must say, but, uh-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:00:37

        (laughs) Well, thinking about this situation, and this is what r- particularly fascinated me about it. You're a man who is famous for his cold analytical approach, and you have had to remove some very powerful arguments that I've heard friends use. I've heard friends use that exact argument about the access to abortion and, and, and men's rights to abortion. You've had to remove some powerful arguments for the life of animals because of modern sensitivities. Is the... I mean, what, what do you think that says about our current ethical position in the modern world?

    16. PSPeter Singer1:01:18

        ... well, I think it says that, uh, perhaps we're, we're too sensitive, um, about some of these issues. And we, we should be more prepared to face some of these realities. But, um, I went along with the editor's suggestions on- on these issues because this book is about a particular cause, a particular issue. I want to attract as wide support as I possibly can because of the urgency to stop what we're doing to, uh, as I say, hundreds of billions of sentient creatures, um, and damaging our climate. Um, and I didn't want to get distracted by a small side issue, where people would say, "No-"

    17. CWChris Williamson1:01:54

        Hijacked by some nasty-

    18. PSPeter Singer1:01:55

        "... no, I'm not going to buy that book, I'm not gonna..." Yeah.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:01:57

        (laughs)

    20. PSPeter Singer1:01:57

        "I'm not gonna read that book." You, you've got to decide which wars you can fight, right?

    21. CWChris Williamson1:02:01

        (laughs)

    22. PSPeter Singer1:02:01

        I mean, uh, you can't win all the wars at the same time.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:02:05

        Yeah, I understand. So one other, um, modern discussion that probably wasn't a consideration when you first wrote this book was AI. And over the last six

11. 1:02:15 – 1:09:46

    Could AI Suffer & Should We Care?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:02:15

       months, we've seen a huge resurgence in discussions about it. It kind of really

    2. NANarrator1:02:18

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:02:19

       ... lulled, you know, Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence was 2014, something like that, I think, and that really kind of kicked off this concern about paperclip maximizers and alignment problems and mis- machine extrapolated volition. And then it went quiet for forever because it didn't seem like AI was making any progress, and then ChatGPT comes out and everything goes ballistic again. Have you considered the potential for AI agents to suffer and our obligations to them?

    4. PSPeter Singer1:02:50

       Yes, absolutely. Um, I have thought about that and, in fact, uh, with some others, I'm organizing a Princeton, uh, a conference at Princeton University in, uh, October, um, which will include that topic, as well as talking about the impact that AI is having on animals. Which is significant because, uh, some industrial farms are now being basically run by AI rather than, you know, by individual humans in the same way. Uh, plus, of course, there's all these decisions and dilemmas about self-driving cars, and do you program them to swerve to avoid the dog or only to swerve to avoid the child? Um, so, uh, I have been involved in AI ethical questions. And, uh, my answer to the question you asked about, uh, could there be conscious AI, could AI be a sentient being, um, and if so, what would its moral status be? I think the answer is, in principle, AI could be sentient or conscious. Uh, I don't think we have got close to that yet. I think that ChatGPT, uh, sort of fools us into thinking we're chatting with a sentient being. But when we understand what it's actually doing and how it's regurgitating some of the material that it's fed on, and how it adjusts, uh, I think we realize that there's no reason to postulate any consciousness. But if- if that did happen, and in principle it's possible for that to happen, then we would need to give that AI a moral status, um, at- at least like that of animals. And depending on its cognitive abilities, maybe it would be closer to- to that of, um, most humans.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:04:26

       Have you considered or thought of a way in which an AI agent would be able to convince you that it was having a felt sense of an experience? Because you can... I mean, five-year-old girls have got dolls that will cry if they're not picked up-

    6. PSPeter Singer1:04:49

       Right.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:04:49

       ... sufficiently frequently.

    8. PSPeter Singer1:04:51

       Yep.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:04:51

       Nobody is mistaking the doll for having the felt experience of being lonely. But, you know, you roll it all the way down, and it seems to me, I haven't thought about this a lot, but it seems to me that it would be very difficult to separate out AI agent performing what emotions look like from conscious agent experiencing them. Basically, is every AI just a P-zombie in disguise, with- with circuit boards?

    10. PSPeter Singer1:05:18

        Uh, so far. Um, but, uh, yeah, the- the question of how we're gonna know is- is really an interesting and important question, because, uh, many years ago, Alan Turing said, uh, if you can have a conversation with a robot, um, and you don't know whether you're having a conversation with a robot or with a real person, then we should assume it's conscious. But that is the case with ChatGPT. I mean, you can-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:05:42

        Absolutely.

    12. PSPeter Singer1:05:42

        ... fool people into thinking that. So, uh, I don't... And yet, as I say, once you understand what it's actually doing, what it's programmed to do, I think, you don't think it's- it's- it's conscious. Now, um, the problem is that these AIs are learning all the time, developing all the time, and I think we're going to get it into the situation where they're gonna be producing other AI, right, that they're- they're-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:06:12

        Yep.

    14. PSPeter Singer1:06:12

        ... getting to be smart enough to design other systems. And, uh, then we won't really know how the other system works in the way that we might know about the ones so far. And, uh, it'll be very difficult to- to tell whether- to tell whether it is conscious or not. Um, 'cause it's not simply a matter of- of saying, you know, looking at the- the algorithms there, 'cause- 'cause it's- it's learning things and developing. So, uh, yeah, I'm- I'm not really an expert in this field. Um, I've talked to some people who have more expertise than me, um, and I've started to see the difficulty of this problem.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:06:52

        I had Stuart Russell on the show, mm, 18 months ago, and he wrote Human Comp- he's written everything. He wrote literally the textbook on AI. It's in s- ungodly number of languages. And, um, he was saying, if you were... A- a lot of the time, uh, YouTube will be asked, open up the algorithm, show us what the algorithm's doing, or tell us- tell us how the algorithm works. And especially when you're looking at something like YouTube, his...... argument was the engineers at YouTube don't know what the YouTube algorithm is doing. It's got-

    16. PSPeter Singer1:07:26

        Right.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:07:27

        ... its own optimization, um, function that it is aiming for. It is trying to maximize time on site and click-through and watch time. And they just set this bunch of parameters and then it's run away, and it is now reinforcing, "Okay, let's do this a little bit more. Let's change for that, select for this kind of video. Once someone does this, then do this." And you realize that, yeah, I mean, if you've got recursive self-improving AI that are creating... either improving themselves or creating further agents that are their own, uh, progeny in one form or another, I mean, you definitely don't know two degrees removed. But even just one degree removed, what you've created after a sufficiently long amount of time learning is probably not really going to resemble what it was that you made it in the first place. So yeah, getting in there and going, "Oh, well, you know, we'll just see... W- where's the emotion algorithm? We didn't put the emotion algorithm in here, therefore-

    18. PSPeter Singer1:08:21

        Mm-hmm.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:08:21

        ... it can't... You know, the sadness, the sadness code doesn't exist within this." I think it's a, a really, really... And I, fundamentally, to me, that seems to be the most interesting and the most challenging question that's going to come up about this. At what point are we going to say that an, an AI agent claiming consciousness, sentience, the ability to suffer, et cetera, et cetera? Are we ever going to know? Because the only reason really that you believe that I have the capacity to suffer, that if you poke me with a pin, that I'm not just saying "Ow" performatively because I know that that's what you would do, and as everybody else on the planet is just some big robot that's been here to Truman Show (laughs) , Truman Show Peter Singer's life f- for the last however many decades. The only reason is that we, we kind of have this faith, right, between us, and we, we, we believe that that's the case. Very, very difficult with no proof. No one has ever been an AI agent that has a felt sense of this, and we can't use our theory of mind to, to try and believe it. I think that's going to be... I think that's going to be the biggest challenge that we face.

    20. PSPeter Singer1:09:29

        Yeah, I think that's a huge challenge. I agree, and I don't have an answer to it, um...

    21. CWChris Williamson1:09:34

        (laughs) Come on, Peter. You really have-

    22. PSPeter Singer1:09:35

        I don't, I don't know whether anyone does, but, but I certainly don't.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:09:37

        AI, AI liberation now. That's what I'm here for.

    24. PSPeter Singer1:09:42

        (laughs)

    25. CWChris Williamson1:09:42

        That's what I've come for.

    26. PSPeter Singer1:09:44

        Right.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:09:44

        Um, look, Peter Singer,

12. 1:09:46 – 1:10:54

    Where to Find Peter

    1. CWChris Williamson1:09:46

       ladies and gentlemen. Peter, I really appreciate you. You have got a tour of some kind that you are doing that people can attend. Where is that and when's it happening?

    2. PSPeter Singer1:09:56

       I do have a speaking tour, yes. I'm, um, going to be speaking in Washington, DC on May the 26th, in Los Angeles on the 29th, in San Francisco, uh, on the 30th of May, and in, in New York City on June 1st, and in London on June 4th. Um, and you can find that if you google, uh, "An evening with Peter Singer," and maybe put in "Think Inc.," uh, Think and then INC, which is the organization that is organizing the tour. You'll get information and tickets, and I would love to see you all there and, uh, get a chance to speak to you and to, uh, hear your questions.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:10:35

       Peter, I really appreciate you. Thank you for today.

    4. PSPeter Singer1:10:38

       Thanks very much.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:10:39

       What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:10:54