351 | Peter Singer on Maximizing Good for All Sentient Creatures
episode
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
1h 16m
3 speakers
7 chapters
transcribed 4 months ago
Transcript
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. We all in life struggle with the question of what is the right thing to do? How do you behave like a good person? What is the moral thing to do, the ethical thing to do? Once you get into the professional philosophy sphere, you start asking, what do you mean by the right thing to do? Is there something called the right thing to do? Is that an objective truth about the universe? Do people just make it up? And if it's out there, whether we make it up or not, how do we find it? How do we calculate? How do we decide what is the right thing to do under various conditions? Probably, although there are many different approaches, the most popular current approach is utilitarianism, some version of saying that
There's some quantity, the utility, the greatest good, the total happiness or pleasure or well-being of conscious creatures, human beings, however you want to slice it, that we should try to maximize. The more people are happy, the more their well-being is fulfilled, etc., the better off, the more moral we're going to be. And probably the most prominent proponent of utilitarianism in modern philosophy is today's guest, Peter Singer. Peter Singer has been a very active voice in both developing utilitarian philosophy, but also in implementing it. He has had an impact on the real world more than most philosophers have had. He's both been very, very careful in thinking about what it means to increase the total happiness of humanity.
And he's famously willing to follow the implications of his reasoning wherever they may lead. He believes that we all have moral intuitions or feelings. Some of them are not right. And so sometimes if you're careful about doing moral philosophy, you're going to be led to conclusions that are a little bit surprising or counterintuitive at first. But if you trust your logic, you should nevertheless accept them. Among the areas in which he's had influence on are effective altruism. The idea that we shouldn't just be philanthropic and give money to good causes, but we should sort of target our giving to the most impactful causes.
What ethical dilemmas do we face in deciding what is right?
Also, animal rights and fights against factory farming. He wrote a very influential early book called Animal Liberation. which basically makes the argument that if animals have feelings, if they have preferences or happiness or well-being, then they should count for how we should increase the total happiness of conscious creatures here on Earth. He continues to be super active in both philosophizing and fighting for these causes, especially against poverty worldwide. And nowadays, he has expanded his efforts into podcasting. He and Kasia de Lazari-Radek have started a podcast called Lives Well Lived. And so he has a wonderful microphone set up, which makes him a great podcast guest, right? So we're very happy to have Peter Singer on today's podcast to think about all of these questions, how to be a good person, why this approach is better than the others, and what it means for the real world.
So let's go.
Thank you.
Peter Singer, welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. Thank you, Sean. Great to be with you. So obviously a lot of what we're going to talk about falls under the umbrella of ethics. But as you know, being a professional philosopher, there's also meta-ethics.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:59
2
What ethical dilemmas do we face in deciding what is right?
2:59–7:24
3
How does Peter Singer define utilitarianism?
7:24–15:41
4
What role does effective altruism play in modern philanthropy?
15:41–17:35
5
How does animal welfare factor into utilitarian ethics?
17:35–19:25
6
What are the implications of factory farming on animal rights?
19:25–44:49
7
How should we approach end-of-life decisions ethically?
44:49–1:15:54
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
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363 | Chandra Sripada on How LLMs and Humans are Cognitive Cousins
Mindscape Ask Me Anything, Sean Carroll | August 2026