Week 5: Global Poverty and Charitable Donations Felix Pinkert, - PDF document

Week 5: Global Poverty and Charitable Donations Felix Pinkert, F.Pinkert@warwick.ac.uk PH212: Applied Ethics University of Warwick 1 Introduction 1.1 Global poverty • In 2012, 896 million people lived on less than USD 1.90 a day, and 2.1 billion people on less than USD 3.10 a day in 2012. (World Bank) • Millennium development report: – 795 million people are undernourished. – 2.4 billion people lack access to improved sanitation facilities – 946 million people still practise open defecation. 2 Duties of beneficence 2.1 Peter Singer and The Drowning Child 2.1.1 The Drowning Child The Drowning Child 1 2.1.2 What we ought to do in The Drowning Child • Intuitively, in The Drowning Child, we ought to rescue the child even at substantial financial cost to ourselves, and not doing so would be seriously wrong. – Ruining one’s new smartphone, computer, fancy shoes, juwellery, etc. is in- tuitively not a morally significant loss that justifies not rescuing the drowning child. • The moral truth behind this intuition is the Principle of Assistance. – In other words, the Principle of Assistance identifies those facts about The Drowning Child that explain why we there have a duty to help. – When those same reasons are present in another case, likewise a duty should follow. The Principle makes this generalisation explicit. 1 Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Singer, The Life You Can Save , Singer, “Reconsidering the Famine Relief Argument”. 1

2.1.3 Peter Singer’s (weak) Principle of Assistance • Peter Singer’s principle of assistance If – something bad is about to happen, and – you can prevent it from happening, and – you can do so without thereby sacrificing anything of ∗ any moral importance (weak version), ∗ comparable moral importance (strong version) then – you morally ought to prevent that bad event. • what singer advocates – To be more convincing, Singer advocates the weak principle, though he believes in the strong one. 2.1.4 Singer’s principle of assistance and global poverty • We spend a lot of money on things that we can be required to sacrifice in The Drowning Child. • These things thus have no moral significance (and a forteriori no comparable moral significance). • The cost of buying these things in the first place is enough to enable a charity to improve and save lives elsewhere. • The same reasoning and the principle of assistance applies: You ought to not buy these things in the first place, and instead donate the money to charity. • Conclusion: Giving substantial amounts of money to charity is thus not “charity” (i.e. morally good, nice, optional behaviour), but a stringent moral duty, and we act wrongly by not giving. 2.2 Common-sense morality and the demands of beneficence 2.2.1 The Charity Appeal • You consider spending GBP 300 on a new phone. • You receive an email informing you that for GBP 300, an effective charity can save a life. • You donate the GBP 300 and do not buy a new phone. • You consider spending GBP 300 on a holiday trip. • You receive an email. . . • . . . 2

2.2.2 How much ought we to give then? • Contrary to the Drowning Child case, you continually have the opportunity to give to charity instead of spending money on your own projects. • Singer’s principle of assistance implies that you ought to donate up to the point where you cannot give more without sacrificing – something of moral significance (weak). – something of comparable moral significance (strong): the point of equal marginal utility of money, i.e. where the amount of good you can do per unit of money donated equals the amount of good you can do by spending it on yourself. • On the weak principle, conveniences and amenities must go, on the strong principle, even more. 2.2.3 Demandingness • Demandingness Intuition: We are not required to forgo all inessential amenities and give the money to life-saving charities. – Giving something is required, but giving even more after giving e.g. 10% of your income is supererogatory (i.e. even better, but not morally required: beyond the call of duty). – cf. The Demandingness Objection to Consequentialism: Consequentialism im- plies that we ought to make these sacrifices, but living ethically is not that demanding. • The Demandingness Intuition inconsistent with the conjunction of: – Singer’s Principle of Assistance. – The claim that suffering and death due to poverty are bad. – The claim that you can prevent some of these bad things by giving money to charity. – The claim that many things on which we spend money are of no moral signifi- cance. 2.2.4 Resolving the inconsistency • Singer’s aim: give up the Demandingness Intuition. • Badness of suffering and death: very hard to deny. • Ability to prevent some of that badness by giving to charity: hard to deny (see Effective Altruism below). • Moral insignificance of many of our purchases? • What about the Principle of Assistance? 3

2.2.5 Moral significance and insignificance • We spend money on – essentials: food, clothing, housing, energy, leisure and vacation. – participating in the broader culture you live in, more abstractly: Books, music, film, theatre, news. – engaging in personal relationships as they are lived in your society: Going out for coffee or drinks, having a computer and mobile phone, traveling to see friends, doing sports. – providing for our dependents. • If you have to sacrifice any of these things altogether , that will be a morally significant sacrifice in your life, though often not comparable to the badness you can thereby prevent. • So does the weak principle require any sacrifice at all? Does the fact that we care and purchase something not show that it is significant to us? • Response: Often there is a lot of leeway in how we get these goods, and going for the less prefered way is not a morally significant sacrifice. – e.g. getting a used rather than a new car, computer, phone; taking cheaper holidays; living in a smaller house. • Are these differences in what quality of the goods we get morally significant? – Richard Miller thinks so. – Maybe Singer can’t get his conclusion with the weak Principle of Assistance, and needs a stronger principle: ∗ “serious moral significance” ∗ “not sacrificing living a worthwhile life” 2.2.6 Changing the Principle of Assistance • Which are the reasons why we ought to assist The Drowning Child? • Necessary factors: – Something bad is about to happen. – You can prevent it. – Preventing it doesn’t sacrifice anything of moral significance. • These factors might not be sufficient, and might not provide the full explanation for our duties in The Drowning Child. – Identify other factors that are relevant in The Drowning Child but missing in The Charity Appeal case. – Including these factors into the Principle of Assistance allows us to say that you ought to rescue The Drowning Child, but need not give all that much to charity. 4

2.2.7 Candidates for relevant differences • What might explain why you have a duty to help in the Drowning Child, but only at most a very limited duty to help in The Charity Appeal? – Proximity. – Absence of other potential contributors, hence absence of fairness considera- tions. – Absence of people who are responsible for the impeding bad event. – Exceptional occurrence of the rescue situation. • How to test whether the identified factor really makes a difference: – Change the drowning child to exclude this factor. – What ought we intuitively to do then? – If we still ought to help, then this factor doesn’t help to drive a wedge between our judgment in The Drowning Child and The Charity Appeal. 2.2.8 An example candidate difference • Hypothesis: In the drowning child, proximity plays an important role in explaining our obligations. – Motivation: Since most poor people are distant, proximity is not given with regard to charity donations, and our duties of assistance do not extend that far. • Test: Change the drowning child example by removing proximity – Your hobby is to operate a remote controlled planes far away. – From your plane’s camera, you see a child about to drown. – You can save the child by calling the local police, but this will distract you from your flying and will make the plane crash. • Intuition: You still ought to save the child, even though it is far away. • So proximity is not morally relevant. • “Rinse and repeat”: Check new hypothesis. 2.2.9 Note: Consequentialism and demandingness • Singer’s argument explicitly does not rely on consequentialism. – Act consequentialism: You ought to perform the act with the best consequences. • Contrast Singer’s principle: – The duty is not about producing best consequences, but only about preventing bads. – The duty only holds when preventing the bad does not incur a morally significant sacrifice. • We would expect act consequentialism to be much more demanding still then Singer’s principle. But Singer’s principle gets him the conclusion he wants, and does so with a much simpler and more broadly accepted premise than having to assume consequentialism. 5