Link back to commentThanks Andrew. I think between us we are making good progress clarifying the issues here.
In your latest response, you agree with my rejection of cultural relativism and implicitly, I presume, my ground for opposing cultural relativism: that it is prepared to tolerate, and in some cases demand, lower levels of protection from serious harms for people because of their group identity, such as at-risk aboriginal children.
And what underlying principle leads me to oppose cultural relativism on this ground? Answer: the universalistic principle that all people, irrespective of identity, deserve protection against such harms (among other values, such as the right to speak freely and to critique and defect from the culture someone is born into).
So if you agree with universalism in that sense, which is my understanding of it, then we are on the same page on that one. But this is precisely what identity politics, as currently understood, denies, as in the insistence that aboriginal children be forced back into communities where serious harm is highly likely, if not inevitable, on account of the need to ‘maintain contact with traditional culture’.
On the thought experiment where we are asked to try and imagine what it would be like to take on all the sufferings of the world, the fact Singer posits it cuts little ice with me. Singer says a number of things I think are crazy.
I do not think it is a useful thought experiment for the reasons I state in the above article. There is an obvious asymmetry in saying, one the one hand, ‘suppose we could imagine, in aggregate, all the sufferings of humanity’, which we as individuals are incapable of doing, without also specifying what it would be like to be able to do that (i.e. to be a super-human being, or a Deity). It strikes me as a crock of nonsense. The late Alan Olding, an outstanding philosopher (and Blackheath resident) termed this ‘Tim and Debbie philosophizing’ after the brilliant 1980s comedy duo (check out their discussion of time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzbxKMvwR48 )
As to the ‘child in the pond’ experiment, all that shows is that it is extremely difficult, probably psychologically impossible, to live as a thoroughgoing Utilitarian https://www.iep.utm.edu/util-a-r/ (or for that matter any other system of normative ethics, except maybe for one that has as its sole principle ‘maximize my own personal welfare’). That, in itself, in no way demonstrates the that the ethical theory is wrong. A sensible response would be to try and live at least partially in accordance with it, and advocate it in spheres where it is most likely to be widely accepted (e.g. public policy).
Ditto on the point about animals harming each other, though even here there are situations where minimizing predatory violence, for example, is a relevant consideration. Predatory violence can be very nasty indeed, a reality that the typical BBC animal documentary hides, an exception being a horrific video I came across once showing a pride of lions systematically tearing a live elephant apart (it is on YouTube, I think).
The debate about sharks is a case in point. We see these demos with people waving signs and shark-shaped balloons of nice cuddly sharks. I read somewhere that sharks get about a third of their food mass from devouring the calves of migratory whales. Imagine the baby whales that would be spared for each shark culled, Williams asserting ‘there is something crazy about the idea’ is no argument unless you bring in some other consideration, such as evidence the sharks in question are more endangered as a species than their prey.