ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author argues that false philosophy can be dangerous and to suggest that, if circumstances prevent its being refuted in print, it is probably all right, in extreme cases, to try to silence it in other ways. In August 1991 Peter Geach Singer published an article in The New York Review of Books called ‘On Being Silenced in Germany’; eight months later another paper from his word processor, ‘A German Attack on Applied Ethics’, appeared in The Journal of Applied Philosophy. When Singer explained his views on euthanasia in The Journal of Applied Philosophy and The New York Review of Books he was surpringly economical with the truth. He misrepresented the contents of his book Practical Ethics to a very serious degree. Bio-ethics is at the ‘pop’ end of philosophy and, like pop newspapers; it keeps itself afloat by constructing bad-news stories.
