En ny sang?

Muligens sitatmining og misforstått, men enkelte tunger synger nå om at Peter Singer er i ferd med å endre syn på moralske begrunnelser.

Fordi han ellers ikke har tilstrekkelige etiske argumenter for å bekjempe klimaendringer.

Ellers som ingressen noe overraskende oppsummerer:

Without belief in moral truths, how can we care about climate change? Peter Singer admits his brand of utilitarianism struggles with the challenge of climate change in a way Christian ethics does not.

Det hele handler om hvorvidt det finnes noe som er moralske sannheter, eller om vi - i ærlighetens navn gitt virkelighetens natur slik Singer har hevdet - kun står igjen med en ren nyttemoral.

Singer admitted that his brand of utilitarianism – preference utilitarianism – struggles to get to grips with the vastness of the problem of climate change. Further, there is an element that comes naturally to Christian ethics which his ethics might need in order to do so. It has to do with whether there are moral imperatives that can be held as objectively true.

Paradoksalt nok handler dette om at en rendyrket konsekvensetikk med mål av typen "mest mulig lykke for flest mulig" i nåtiden og i fremtiden, altså også for senere generasjoner og andre arter, kan ha uheldige konsekvenser.

Med stadig flere på jorden kan det bli mindre og mindre etisk ut fra Singers logikk å gjøre noe som reduserer summen av lykke - eller til og med at fremtidige generasjoner kan foretrekke å være lykkelige innendørs i virtuelle verdener slik at en eventuell global temperaturøkning ikke er så farlig.

This brings us to the issue that Christians find comes naturally, namely the claim that there exists objective moral truths. In recent moral philosophy, such an assertion has been unfashionable. The Enlightenment thinker David Hume can be blamed. He argued that the reasons anyone has for action will always actually be based upon their desires. "'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger," he asserted. Further, as wants and desires cannot be said to be true or false, so it makes no sense fundamentally to assert that moral judgments are true or false too. This subjectivism has been held in different ways by individuals from AJ Ayer to Simon Blackburn.

Nå kan det selvsagt sies mye om dette, men Singer er i hvert fall fortsatt ikke skuddredd.

He described his current position as being in a state of flux. But he is leaning towards accepting moral objectivity because he now rejects Hume's view that practical reasoning is always subject to desire. Instead, he inclines towards the view of Henry Sidgwick, the Victorian theist whom he has called the greatest utilitarian, which is that there are moral assertions that we recognise intuitively as true. At the conference, he offered two possible examples, that suffering is intrinsically bad, and that people's preferences should be satisfied.

Ikke at Singer står veldig nær en omvendelse, men han kjenner i det minste en snev av anger.

He has not yet given up on preference utilitarianism. Neither is he any more inclined to belief in God, though he did admit that there is a sense in which he "regrets" not doing so, as that is the only way to provide a complete answer to the question, why act morally? Only faith in a good God finally secures the conviction that living morally coincides with living well.

Selv om det som Feser påpeker i en kommentar fortsatt er en del å gå på, er jo dette en ... interessant vending. Ikke minst fordi en kristen etikk bygger fundamentalt på at skaperverket har verdi i seg selv.

What difference does this make to climate change? Tim Mulgan, professor of moral and political philosophy at the University of St Andrews, explained why ethical objectivism may be vital to making a robust ethical case against environmental degradation. Only a doctrine of creation can affirm that we are fundamentally linked to the natural order manifest on Earth.

Vi får spisse ørene og følge med på om Singer eventuelt antar en slik etikk av mer enn pragmatiske grunner.