Interesting “diavlog” between Peter Singer and libertarian economist Tyler Cowen, focusing mostly on Singer’s new book The Life You Can Save. (I mentioned the book here; I still haven’t read it, though I do have a request in at the library.)

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I think at one point Cowen gets into some fairly outlandish thought experiments that aren’t particularly relevant to evaluating a moral theory. I generally think that moral rules exist to equip us to deal with the world as it is, not with a highly hypothetical, if possible, world. For instance, he seems to suggest that Singer’s consequentialism has counterintuitive results because it implies that one ought to want one’s granddaughter to be genetically programmed to be more altruistic, even to the point of selling her baby to benefit 30 people living in dire poverty. And this seems to conflict with moral sentiments most of us currently have. But, of course, as Singer points out, to truly result in the best consequences, this engineering would have to have been perfected, the daughter would have to experience no sense of loss or separation from her child, etc., etc. Once you’ve changed so many of the features of the real world in your thought experiment, its relevance as a counterexample becomes less clear. Similar things happen with other objections to utilitarianism. The classic case is the secret murder of an innocent person to provide some great social benefit; once all the details of such a situation has been tweaked to make it realistic, much of the initial sense of counterintuitiveness tends to dissipate (e.g., if no one would find out, if it wouldn’t undermine the rule of law, if no one else would be adversely affected, etc., etc.). I’m not a utilitarian per se, but I do think there are good responses to many of the most common objections. And other moral views do seem to have a consequentialist “tipping point” where rights or duties or whatever yield to some kind of utilitarian calculus. (I’m not sure if Cowen really objects to utilitarianism on these grounds or if he’s more playing devil’s advocate.)

More importantly though, am I the only one who thinks Peter Singer sounds eerily like Jermaine from Flight of the Conchords?