124.231 Ethics – Handout 20 Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” General Question: How much does morality demand of us? And how far short of living up to those demands do most of us fall? Singer argues that it is pretty clear that most of us are in a position to dramatically increase total well-being by sacrificing some of our own well-being. Singer is an act-utilitarian. But his argument is of considerably wider interest. Because, although he is a utilitarian, the principles he appeals to are in several important respects weaker, and less controversial, than the act-utilitarian principle. AU: You ought to perform the action that, out of all the available alternatives, produces the most net welfare. AU doesn’t recognize any difference between doing harm and allowing harm, or any difference in stringency between requirements to provide benefits to people or prevent harms to them, or any special obligations to our intimates, or any constraints on what we may permissibly do in the service of the greater good. Singer’s argument rests on a considerably weaker thesis, which arguably leaves room for all of these intuitions: The Strong Singer Principle: “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.” He also offers a weaker alternative: The Weak Singer Principle: “If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it.” The Weak Singer Principle is weaker in two respects: it concerns only the very bad outcomes we could prevent, and let’s us off the hook whenever preventing harm would require us to sacrifice anything of moral significance, even if it wasn’t “comparably” significant. Singer’s principles are weaker than AU in a number of respects: • They would not require us to prevent a harm when doing so would necessitate doing something arguably wrong in itself, like lying, stealing, killing, or directly harming someone. • They require us only to prevent significant harms, not to positively help people who are not being harmed, even when helping would increase the total welfare. • They remain neutral about whether we have special obligations to our intimates that may sometimes outweigh or trump the requirement to help. 2Singer’s argument: (1) The Weak Singer Principle: If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it. (2) It is very often in our power to prevent something very bad from happening without sacrificing anything morally significant. For example, we could give much, much more of our income to famine-relief than we do, thereby preventing many deaths by starvation, simply by not buying new clothes and shoes when our old ones are still perfectly functional, and buying expensive meals out when we could eat much more cheaply. (3) We ought, morally, to give up such luxuries and give much, much more of our income to famine-relief. Of course, if we substitute the Strong Singer Principle in for premise (1), we’ll get a comparably stronger conclusion – the occasions on which we’ll be required to sacrifice our own good to prevent harms will be significantly more numerous. That (3) follows from (1) and (2) is clear. (2) is an empirical claim, and we’ll come to some worries we might have about it in a moment. Here’s how Singer argues for (1): The Pond Example: If you come across a small child drowning in a pond, and saving it would require you to damage some of your clothes, it is very clear that you’d be required to save the child. Singer claims there is no significant difference between the Pond Example and the case of Famine Relief. He considers two possible differences: (i) The child drowning in the pond is nearby, whereas the people starving in India are very far away. (Also, helping the child will prevent a death now, whereas giving to famine relief will prevent only future deaths. Singer argues that there is no plausibility at all to the supposition that physical (or temporal) proximity could make any difference to our responsibilities. In general, that seems to be born out by our intuitions – we don’t think our obligations to our “nearest and dearest” diminish if they happen to be on the far side of the world when they need us, or that we have reduced obligations to provide for our children’s future needs. Question: can some other kind of “nearness” that isn’t physical do the work? … (ii) As we’ve imagined the pond case, you’re the only one in a position to save the child. But millions of people are in a position to help those starving as a result of the famine. 3But the suggestion that we can be held responsible only for preventing those harms which we alone could have prevented is not plausible. I’m not relieved of the obligation to save the child if I see lots of other people standing by, doing nothing. So Singer concludes that the Pond Example is not relevantly different from the case of Famine Relief. In the former case, the Singer Principle explains why we have a duty to help despite the (comparatively significant) harm to ourselves. And it explains this in the latter case, too. Question: Is Singer’s Principle the best explanation of our obligations in the Pond Example? His argument depends heavily on the claim that it is… (iii)Singer considers the following argument for the conclusion that it does matter to our obligations if other people were also in a position to help: a. If everyone in my circumstances gave £5 to famine relief, that would be enough to provide those threatened with what they need. b. I’m under no obligation to give more to famine relief than anyone else in my circumstances. c. So I’m under no obligation to give more than £5 to famine relief. Singer responds that while premise (a) of this argument is a conditional, the conclusion (c) is not. If the conclusion were stated as a conditional, he says, the argument would hold: it’s true that if everyone in my circumstances gave £5 to famine relief, that’s all I would be obligated to give. (I’d be obligated to give this much, not because that’s what everyone else is obligated to give, but because that’s what would be required of me to prevent the relevant