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f3c8b6b
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To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
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individualism
preference
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Robert Louis Stevenson |
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87e1879
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For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs--as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.
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evolution
man
slavery
humanity
sacrifice
great-ape
great-apes
apes
belief
preference
superstition
humans
torture
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Charles Darwin |
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e1db6d4
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Sur quelque preference une estime se fonde, Et c'est n'estimer rien qu'estimer tout le monde.
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preference
judgment
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Molière |
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1afbd85
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How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself?
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war
man
condemnation
preference
decision
peace
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Isaac Asimov |
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8bbf670
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For a merely conscious being, death is the cessation of experiences, in much the same way that birth is the beginning of experiences. Death cannot be contrary to an interest in continued life any more than birth could be in accordance with an interest in commencing life. To this extent, with merely conscious beings, birth and death cancel each other out; whereas with self-aware beings, the fact that one may desire to continue living means that death inflicts a loss for which the birth of another is insufficient compensation.
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utilitarianism
preference
ethics
experience
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Peter Singer |
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03f6b87
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For preference utilitarians, taking the life of a person will normally be worse than taking the life of some other being, because persons are highly future-oriented in their preferences. To kill a person is therefore, normally, to violate not just one but a wide range of the most central and significant preferences a being can have. Very often, it will make nonsense of everything that the victim has been trying to do in the past days, months or even years. In contrast, beings that cannot see themselves as entities with a future do not have any preferences about their own future existence. This is not to deny that such beings might struggle against a situation in which their lives are in danger, as a fish struggles to get free of the barbed hook in its mouth; but this indicates no more than a preference for the cessation of a state of affairs that causes pain or fear. The behaviour of a fish on a hook suggests a reason for not killing fish by that method but does not in itself suggest a preference utilitarian reason against killing fish by a method that brings about death instantly, without first causing pain or distress. Struggles against danger and pain do not suggest that fish are capable of preferring their own future existence to non-existence.
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utilitarianism
preference
ethics
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Peter Singer |
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afc1f00
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I agree with Varner and Scruton that the more one thinks of one's life as a story that has chapters still to be written, and the more one hopes for achievements yet to come, the more one has to lose by being killed. For this reason, when there is an irreconcilable conflict between the basic survival needs of animals and of normal humans, it is not speciesist to give priority to the lives of those with a biographical sense of their life and a stronger orientation towards the future.
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utilitarianism
preference
ethics
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Peter Singer |