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The Most Good You Can Do develops the challenges Singer has made to those who donate to the arts, and to charities focused on helping our fellow citizens, rather than those for whom we can do the most good. Effective altruists are extending our knowledge of the possibilities of living less selfishly, and of allowing reason, rather than emotion, to determine how we live. The Most Good You Can Do offers new hope for our ability to tackle the world's most pressing problems.

Cover -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- ONE: EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM -- 1 What Is Effective Altruism? -- 2 A Movement Emerges -- TWO: HOW TO DO THE MOST GOOD -- 3 Living Modestly to Give More -- 4 Earning to Give -- 5 Other Ethical Careers -- 6 Giving a Part of Yourself -- THREE: MOTIVATION AND JUSTIFICATION -- 7 Is Love All We Need? -- 8 One Among Many -- 9 Altruism and Happiness -- FOUR: CHOOSING CAUSES AND ORGANIZATIONS -- 10 Domestic or Global? -- 11 Are Some Causes Objectively Better than Others? -- 12 Difficult Comparisons -- 13 Reducing Animal Suffering and Protecting Nature -- 14 Choosing the Best Organization -- 15 Preventing Human Extinction -- Afterword -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.

Cover -- Contents -- Foreword -- Introduction -- The need for a new foundation -- What is essential to the left? -- 1 Politics and Darwinism -- The right-wing takeover -- Facts and values -- How the left got Darwin wrong -- The dream of perfectibility -- Old tunes keep coming back -- 2 Can the Left Accept a Darwinian View of Human Nature? -- Unpopular ideas -- What is fixed and what is variable in human nature? -- How can reformers leam from Darwin? -- 3 Competition or Cooperation? -- Building a more cooperative society -- The prisoner's dilemma -- Learning from Tit for Tat -- 4 From Cooperation to Altruism? -- The puzzle of the evolution of altruism -- Status for what? -- 5 A Darwinian Left for Today and Beyond -- Notes and References.

COVER -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE TO THE 2011 EDITION -- PREFACE -- 1: THE ORIGINS OF ALTRUISM -- 2: THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF ETHICS -- 3: FROM EVOLUTION TO ETHICS? -- 4: REASON -- 5: REASON AND GENES -- 6: A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF ETHICS -- NOTES ON SOURCES -- AFTERWORD TO THE 2011 EDITION -- INDEX

What is ethics? Where do moral standards come from? Are they based on emotions, reason, or some innate sense of right and wrong? For many scientists, the key lies entirely in biology--especially in Darwinian theories of evolution and self-preservation. But if evolution is a struggle for survival, why are we still capable of altruism? In his classic study The Expanding Circle, Peter Singer argues that altruism began as a genetically based drive to protect one's kin and community members but has developed into a consciously chosen ethic with an expanding circle of moral concern. Drawing on philo