By Peter Singer. 256 pp. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1994. $22.95. ISBN 0-312-118-805.
Philosophers, notoriously, are an ivory-towered lot. One philosopherwho has never fit that mold is the Australian Peter Singer.Indeed, he has probably had a larger popular readership thanany professional philosopher since Bertrand Russell, and moresuccess in effecting changes in acceptable behavior. Interestingly,Singer is an adherent of a moral theory similar to Russell's,the very modern, Western, democratic (and some would say veryBritish) theory of Utilitarianism. Utilitarian moral theoryis the philosophical equivalent of outcomes research in medicine;it posits that it is the consequences that count, and that success(or failure) is the major determinant . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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