Sibin Thomas, The position of Peter Singer on Preference Utilitarianism.

MORAL PHILOSOPHY,          One page answers

The position of Peter Singer on Preference Utilitarianism.

Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. He specializes in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, preference utilitarian perspective. He is not concerned with so much of pain and pleasure. His emphasis is on satisfying as many of the preferences as possible. Preference utilitarianism holds that the good is preference satisfaction.

The individuals are happy to the extent they achieve and maintain an integrated satisfaction of their preference s.  In this context preference includes desire; plans etc. morally right actions maximize aggregate preference satisfaction and minimize aggregate preference frustration or denial.

Preference =Reasoned desires

Preference utilitarianism attempts to maximize the satisfaction of preferences. This view avoids making judgments about what is intrinsically good, finding its content instead in the desires that people, or sentient beings generally, do have. Most of the utilitarianism holds moral judgment, not on desires that people actually have but rather on those they would have if they were fully informed and thinking clearly. To avoid the prejudices, he propose the idea of an impartial stand point from which to compare interest s. this is an elaboration of the familiar idea of putting oneself  in the others shoes. Singer has wavered about whether the precise aim is the total amount of satisfied interests or instead the most satisfied interests among those beings already exist prior to the decision one is making. 

 Preference: a journey model

Suppose you have planned to go for a journey, but your vehicle had a problem and if you have not gone long you could come back; its consequence would be less. Suppose you went a long distance and your vehicle had a problem but in fact you are near to destination and if you called off the journey then the consequence will be more or high. In short peter singer tells about the good is preference satisfaction.