"circle of empathy"

The phrase is commonly associated with ethicist Peter Singer, but Jaron Lanier uses it too.

You have to draw a Circle of Empathy around yourself and others in order to be moral. If you include too much in the circle, you become incompetent, while if you include too little you become cruel. This is the "Normal form" of the eternal liberal/conservative dichotomy.

Lanier's Third Law: You can't rely completely on the level of rationality humans are able to achieve to decide what to put inside the circle...

Best guess for Circle of Empathy: Danger of increasing human stupidity is probably greater than potential reality of machine sentience. Therefore choose not to place machines in Circle of Empathy. edge.org

Empathy is essential, but it's essential to extend it in the right directions.

generation 0

"Should This Be the Last Generation?"

I'm glad my parents did not seriously ponder that one. Peter Singer does, in his guest column for The Stone.

Bill McKibben went out on a limb a few years ago with Maybe One: A Case for Smaller Families. Peter Singer goes him one better. How about none? Zero? What if we just let ourselves be the end of the human line? And what if, contrary to fact, everyone could be encouraged to join us in this mass species suicide?

I wonder what the Times's non-academic readers will make of the philosopher's dispassion towards the prospect of universal, self-inflicted euthanasia?

Thought experiment or not, I find it unsettling to weigh the very existence of homo sapiens (and of life in the universe, for all we know) in so coldly calculating a fashion. Singer does arrive at the right conclusion, but is this really the right way to get there?

I do think it would be wrong to choose the non-sentient universe. In my judgment, for most people, life is worth living. Even if that is not yet the case, I am enough of an optimist to believe that, should humans survive for another century or two, we will learn from our past mistakes and bring about a world in which there is far less suffering than there is now. But justifying that choice forces us to reconsider the deep issues with which I began. Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?

There are clear limits to the value of a calculus that tries to translate everything into a statement about the stipulated utility of separate individuals. These are good questions, but there are better ones. For instance: what is life going to make of itself, not just during my own brief stint on the ground but much further on?

And, how do we calculate the relevance of that eventuality? I don't know, but I do know we ought to give it some thought..

Singer on health care

Philosopher/ethicist Peter Singer has a new Times Magazine piece, "Why We Must Ration Health Care." It's been #1 on the "most e-mailed" list for two days. (Take note, all you philosophers who think it's a waste of time to address a wide audience.)

He concludes with an interesting riposte to all those Fox News types who say Americans won't stand for "socialized medicine... just ask the Canadians and Brits." Well, Gallup did ask if they had confidence in their health care systems. The score: 73% in Canada and the U.K., 56% here.