Peter Singer

Spira always started with the assumption that the people he was trying to reach would, like most human beings, do the right thing if they could be shown a better way to achieve their goals. He ended up persuading corporations like Revlon, Avon, Bristol-Myers, and other major cosmetics companies to fund the development of alternatives; eventually that enabled them to stop testing on animals.

Like Spira, I believe that willingness to engage in dialogue should always be the opening move. Sometimes that cooperative gesture will be spurned. On other occasions dialogue will commence, but it will become evident that it is going nowhere. Then we must change tactics. Even then, the initial willingness to engage in dialogue gives one firmer ethical ground than one would have by starting out with the assumption that there is nothing to discuss.
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Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University and laureate professor at the University of Melbourne. His most recent book is “Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter.”