Right, so. Let me talk about the disciplinary implications of Singer's statement here:

@Helenreflects has a good meditation on this at the Philosopher's Cocoon, linked below. I largely agree with Helen's observations, but I thing we should take a broader view: rather than treat Singer's position as being "his" position, we should treat it as the field's position.

To be clear, while Singer's individual ignorance is unfortunate (but unsurprising), it stands to reason that his position is reproduced and institutionalized fieldwide. Singer actually gives us good reason to think this is the case.

Singer attributes his ignorance to "the manner in which (he) was trained." Now, the manner in which Singer was trained is still treated as the de-facto manner in which all "good" philosophers should be trained. Folks who are "good" without this training are anomalies.

However, there is something more pressing here: by Singer's admission, how he was trained was to focus almost exclusively on work within the anglophone philosophy sphere. Insofar as this is the de-facto mode of training it stands to reason that he'd come to this conclusion.

Now, the problems with this approach to Philosophy have been well documented: I point to @BryanVanNorden's "Taking Back Phillosophy" and Kristie Dotson's "How is this Paper Philosophy" as pointing directly to this situation within philosophy.

Put simply, how we are trained as philosophers structures how we view other philosophers and traditions as "participating in the same discussions" as the dominant anglophone philosophical community. Singer is saying what the field has been saying for decades.

Specifically, both Singer and the field have said in a variety of institutional and cultural ways that less commonly taught (LCT) philosophies are not participating in the same discussions as the rest of the field. Because they're not participating, they're not valuable.

Part of this has to do with the ways the field polices the boundaries of sub-fields, but part of it has to do with good old-fashioned structures of power. To wit, LCT philosophies are valuable not because they contribute to the conversation, but for their diversity.

That is, they break up the anglo-centric perception of departments, conferences, collections, journals, without actually being invited to participate in the conversations being had in these spaces. Their inclusion is thus in response to a threat to the "image" of the field.

As an example, let me trot out a hobby horse of mine: job ads for "metaphysics." Whenever one of these ads is posted, the my immediate thought is that they're not looking for my expertise in non-western metaphysics: they want something in the anglo-phone sphere.

A similar thing can be said of ethics, a field in which Singer is a fairly large figure: because LCT philosophies and philosophers aren't seen as having the same discussion as say Rawls or Greene, expertise in these areas aren't taken seriously as candidates for these positions.

And so the cycle continues: the domains of the "big conversations" in philosophy are restricted to the anglo-phone sphere, while the rest of the world is treated as "not participating in the same discussion." Again, there are several philosophers who've laid all of this out.

Ironically, those philosophers who have laid all this out, despite their incredible skill and prestige, are not counted among those who are participating in the conversation, except in a limited sense. Van Norden and Garfield point this out very well. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/opinion/if-philosophy-wont-diversify-lets-call-it-what-it-really-is.html

All of this is to say that Singer and his ilk are symptoms of a rot at the core of philosophy, and not isolated incidents. Treating Singer as an individual elides this very point and hides the ways that the field is in the business of producing more Singers.