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Entries Tagged as 'Peter Singer'

The Euthyphro Objection Part II: Arbitrariness

October 31st, 2007 4 Comments

In his work Practical Ethics Singer proposes a version of the Euthyphro dilemma to criticise a divine command theory of ethics, Some theists say that ethics cannot do without religion because the very meaning of “good” is nothing other than “what God approves”. Plato refuted a similar view more than two thousand years ago by […]

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The Euthyphro Objection Part I: Against Divine Commands & Avoiding Strawmen

October 28th, 2007 2 Comments

Perhaps the most common argument against an appeal to divine commands in ethical reasoning is the Euthyphro dilemma, first articulated by Plato and utilised by numerous critics of divine commands ever since. A representative example of this line of argument occurs in Peter Singer’s widely-acclaimed monograph Practical Ethics. In the first chapter of Practical Ethics, […]

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What’s Wrong with Whaling?

February 17th, 2007 3 Comments

With governments refusing to help ships that engage in it and ‘peace’ activists apparently willing to ram ships to prevent it, one assumes that whaling is a grave moral evil. It is, apparently, obviously so. Unfortunately, I fail to see why. How is killing a whale any different from fishing for marlin or shark or […]

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