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Critique Of Ethics And Intuitions By Peter Singer

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Introduction: In the essay Ethics and Intuitions by Peter Singer, it talks about the intuitions that people have in certain situations that have been presented. Psychologists try to use an fMRI imagining trying to figure out what part of the brain response to the certain situation. In this paper I shall give a summary about the article, and then move on to the critique. In which I have agreed with Singer that intuitions are wrong.
Summary:
In the essay Singer starts off with Jim Rachels example of the telephone and a reporter. The reporter gives a few facts about something is to have done, ethical issues are involved. Rachels has noted that the reporter want a short quote and more importantly a bad quote. Rachels rejected the idea that the role of moral philosophers is to take a common moral intuition as data and to find the theory that fits those institutions. “Philosophers have considered are: whether ethics is objectively true, or relative to culture, or entirely subjective; whether human beings are naturally good; and whether ethics comes from nature or from culture” (Singer 333). The past …show more content…
Singer brings up the example of nonhuman relatives, a monkey. A monkey will present its back to another monkey to pick out parasites, and then later on, the other monkey will do the same and the roles will be reversed. This brings up the conclusion that the reciprocal behavior has been observed in birds and mammals. The same goes with humans, when someone has lice, someone will have to take it out and then later on the favor will be returned. Some people might regard the reciprocators may regard reciprocity as good and ‘right’ and cheating as bad and ‘wrong’. Hume says that the basic right includes the “ability to detect cheats and the sense of indignation required to exclude them, is natural in the sense that it has evolved… part of our biological nature”(Singer 337). We share this with our closer nonhuman

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