Nathan Nobis

A forthcoming book

Peter Singer Under Fire:

The Controversial Philosopher Faces His Critics

Edited by Jeffrey A. Schaler

Published by Open Court Publishers

Expected release: 2008

Volume III in The Under Fire^TM Series
General Editor: Jeffrey A. Schaler

Volume I: Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolitionist Faces His Critics
Volume II: Howard Gardner Under Fire: The Rebel Psychologist Faces His Critics

About the Authors

Introduction, by Jeffrey A. Schaler

Autobiography by Peter Singer

Part I: The Moral Status of Animals

The Human Prejudice
By Bernard William
Response by Peter Singer

Justifying Animal Use
By R. G. Frey
Response by Peter Singer

Part II: The Sanctity of Life

Singer on Abortion and Infanticide
By Don Marquis
Response by Peter Singer

Singer’s Unsanctity of Human Life: A Critique
By Harry J. Gensler
Response by Peter Singer

Unspeakable Conversations, or,
How I Spent One Day as a Token Cripple at Princeton University
By Harriet McBryde Johnson
Response by Peter Singer

Not Dead Yet
By Stephen Drake
Response by Peter Singer

Part III: Global Ethics
Famine, Affluence, and Psychology
By Judith Lichtenberg
Response by Peter Singer

What Do We Owe to Distant Needy Strangers?
By Richard. J. Arneson
Response by Peter Singer

Should Peter Singer Favor Massive Redistribution or Economic Growth?
By Tyler Cowen
Response by Peter Singer

The Ethics of Assistance: What’s the Good of It?
By David Fagelson
Response by Peter Singer

Part IV: Ethical Theory

Singer’s Unstable Meta-Ethics
Michael Huemer
Response by Peter Singer

On Peter Singer’s Practical Ethic
By Marcus Düwell
Response by Peter Singer

Separateness, Suffering, and Moral Theory
By David Schmidtz
Response by Peter Singer

Singer on Moral Theory
By Jan Narveson
Response by Peter Singer

Animal Liberationist Bites Dog
By Beryl Lieff Benderly
Response by Peter Singer

Peter Singer Bibliography

With the assistance of Veronica Adams

Index

Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Justice, Law and Society at American University’s School of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. A psychologist, psychotherapist and writer, he wrote Addiction Is a Choice, which became the centerpiece of a controversial John Stossell TV documentary, and edited Drugs: Should We Legalize, Decriminalize, or Deregulate? and co-edited Smoking: Who Has the Right? He is the Executive Editor of Current Psychology: Developmental, Learning, Personality, Social, published by Springer. His website is www.schaler.net and his email address is schaler@american.edu . He lives with his wife in Ellicott City, Maryland, has one daughter and two granddaughters.

AJC Opinion

Aquarium should admit captivity hurts these fish

By RANDY MALAMUD and LORI MARINO
Published on: 06/15/07

We are saddened and disturbed by the untimely death of Norton, the second whale shark to succumb while in the custody of the Georgia Aquarium.

The aquarium justifies holding whale sharks for the purpose of educating the public, preserving endangered animals and conducting research. None of these points holds water.

The aquarium has produced no credible evidence that visits to their whale shark exhibit (or any other exhibit, for that matter) translate into better understanding of whale sharks (or any other species).

Looking at these animals in downtown Atlanta may seem educational, or at least, harmless, but in fact it teaches us exactly the wrong ecological lessons.

Instead of cultivating our understanding of the importance of an animal's habitat (and thus, the need to stop desecrating the oceans with the runoff from our industrial and commercial activities), aquarium displays suggest that habitats are irrelevant to the animal's well-being. Perhaps the most important fact about whale sharks is that they are classified as a vulnerable species (only one step better than endangered) by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

The Georgia Aquarium has done nothing to "educate" the public about the fact that by purchasing these animals from Taiwanese fishermen, they financially support the very industry that has led to their threatened status.

Whale sharks are so wonderfully mysterious to us: There's so much we don't know about them (how long they live, where they travel, how they feed, how they reproduce, how far they swim, even how many of them there are).

Can't we leave these mysteries unknown and leave the sharks in peace?

Every animal has an innate dignity, and keeping them captive in these tanks is a transgression of that dignity. We aren't meant to see whale sharks in this way: It isn't natural. The whole enterprise of spectatorship, as it takes place at the aquarium, is fundamentally and inherently flawed. If we aspire to honor and understand nature and ecological harmony, then we cannot continue to displace and degrade animals as we have done in the past.

The Georgia Aquarium should step up and do the right thing by admitting that they made a mistake in taking these animals into captivity and stop hiding behind the empty promises of education, conservation and research. They can set an ethical example for the rest of the captivity industry.

It is their choice as to whether they will rise to the occasion.

• Randy Malamud is professor and associate chair of modern literature, ecocriticism, and cultural studies at Georgia State University. Lori Marino is senior lecturer in neuroscience and behavioral biology at Emory University. Contributing to this column were Ron Broglio, assistant professor of literature, communication, and culture at Georgia Tech, and Nathan Nobis, assistant professor of philosophy and religion at Morehouse College.

Links

Atlanta Nutrition -- AtlantaNutrition.com -- Trulie Ankerberg-Nobis

Current Writing and Research

See www.NathanNobis.com
A recent "sermon" (!!??) I gave, called "Reasonable Humans and Animals."
An attempt at a paper for a 'popular' audience (actually written last year or so): "Moral Nihilism, Intellectual Nihilism & Practical Ethics"
Defending moral realism, by way of defending epistemic and intellectual realisms. 'Intellectual oughts' and other evaluative judgments seem as peculiar to me as 'moral oughts,' but since intellectual oughts should be understood realistically -- i.e. as sometimes being stance-independently true -- there's no good reason to think differently about moral evaluations. There's lots of ways I have been trying to work through this issue; things get annoying once the 'minimalist' arrives on the scene and wants to say everything a realist says.
Related evaluative issues regarding intellectual / epistemic obligations and epistemic / intellectual virtues (e.g., intellectual courage).
A book on critical thinking in ethics called Why Think That? A Guide to Making Moral Progress. An application of basic predicate logic to argument identification and analysis in ethics and a discussion of non-rational barriers to making moral progress in thought, attitude and deed.
Applied ethics courses have been taught for about 30 years now, as the history is told. I'd like to have a better, empirically-supported clue whether any broader goods have come from "the applied ethics movement."
Causal impotence problems: many good states of affairs ought to obtain and bad states should cease obtaining, but I -- and other individuals, when acting alone -- are seemingly powerless to actualize them, in full or even in part, because my acts will not make a causal change to the entity in question. Nevertheless it seems that there are personal moral obligations here. Identifying and defending these obligations is a challenge, I think, and I'd like to try to say more about this.