“Our ancestors lived in groups of no more than a few hundred people, and those on the other side of a river or mountain range might as well have been living in a separate world. We developed ethical principles to help us to deal with problems within our community, not to help those outside it. The harms that it was considered wrong to cause were generally clear and well defined. We developed inhibitions against, and emotional responses to, such actions, and these instinctive or emotional reactions still form the basis for much of our moral thinking.”

Australian moral philosopher

Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher, best known for his work in applied ethics and for shaping modern debates about animal welfare and global poverty. He is Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. His book Animal Liberation, published in 1975, criticized intensive animal farming and speciesism and helped shape the animal rights movement. He is also known for "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," which argues that people have a moral duty to help the global poor, and for later books including The Life You Can Save and The Most Good You Can Do, which influenced the effective altruism movement. He has worked from a secular, utilitarian perspective throughout much of his career.