Free Speech is for everybody or for nobody.

The worst policy is selective free speech.

Disability activists disrupt Peter Singer talk.

//A University of Victoria event last week featuring philosopher Peter Singer (Princeton), organized by the university’s Effective Altruism club, was disrupted by protestors objecting to Singer’s views about disability.

The Martlet, a University of Victoria Newspaper, reported about the event a few days ago but is down now (Google suggests the site was hacked, but it may just be down owing to unexpected site traffic).

The event included a screening of this TED Talk on effective altruism by Professor Singer, followed by a Skype session with him during which he was supposed to answer questions from the audience at the University of Victoria.

According to The Martlet, the protesters claimed that “giving Singer a platform was implicitly supporting the murder of disabled people, and that his views supported eugenics.” The paper provides the following account of what happened at the event:

Prior to the event, a candlelight vigil was set up in the main SUB hallway in honour of the the Disability Community Day of Mourning, which was coincidentally on the same day. A chalkboard with the names of disabled victims of filicide — murder by one’s caregiver or family member —stood on display for passersby to see.

As people slowly entered the auditorium, a small group of students stood on stage with a microphone and read out a list of names of disabled people killed throughout 2016 and 2017.

“People who were their caregivers, who were meant to provide stability and care and love, decided these people weren’t worthy of life,” said Tareem Sangha, one of the students on stage.//

Singer's views are, in my opinion, noxious and not really distinguishable from that of the Nazis on this subject.

But he is presenting arguments, and the arguments must and should be debated in the proper manner in the proper forum.

Expressing feelings of sadness is not a debate.

The only good thing that might come out of this is that Singer is supported by the academic left as one of their guys in tweaking the noses of conservatives.  It might be the case that the academic left might become cognizant of the fact that the game of disruptions and speech suppression is one that can be played by everyone.

The interest in self-preservation, more than an appeal to disinterested justice, may be more effective in protecting speech.

"Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my fnger."

David Hume

Peter Singer discovers problem when his utilitarian ethics clashes with leftist ideology.

Killing babies? Not a problem.  Not being able to argue against Global Warming?  Big problem.

Peter Singer was in Oxford last week. The bestselling advocate of utilitarianism was the star contributor to a conference in which he talked with a group of Christian ethicists. Given Singer's inflammatory views on matters such as euthanasia and infanticide, the dialogue was striking for its agreements, particularly the common cause that can be made between Christians and utilitarians when tackling global poverty, animal exploitation and climate change.

However, it was on the last issue that the conference demonstrated real philosophical interest too. 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.

Climate change is a challenge to utilitarianism on at least two accounts. First, the problem of reducing the carbon output of humanity is tied to the problem of rising human populations. The more people there are, the greater becomes the difficulty of tackling climate change. This fact sits uneasily for a preference utilitarian, who would be inclined to argue that the existence of more and more sentient beings enjoying their lives – realising their preferences – is a good thing. As Singer puts it in the new edition of his book, Practical Ethics: "I have found myself unable to maintain with any confidence that the position I took in the previous edition – based solely on preference utilitarianism – offers a satisfactory answer to these quandaries."

Second, preference utilitarianism also runs into problems because climate change requires that we consider the preferences not only of existing human beings, but of those yet to come. And we can have no confidence about that, when it comes to generations far into the future. Perhaps they won't much care about Earth because the consumptive delights of life on other planets will be even greater. Perhaps they won't much care because a virtual life, with its brilliant fantasies, will seem far more preferable than a real one. What this adds up to is that preference utilitarianism can provide good arguments not to worry about climate change, as well as arguments to do so.