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The Severe Demand
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Beneficence
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The Simple Principle
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Limited Principles and Compliance
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Cooperation
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Cooperation and Distance
• For Next Time: Read Narveson “Is World Poverty A
Moral Problem for the Wealthy?”

• Peter Singer’s argument in “Famine, Affluence, and
Morality” concludes by requiring that we have a moral obligation to aid those who are suffering from lack of food, access to water, or medical care until we reduce ourselves to the point of marginal utility
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Singer believes that our own moral intuitions should already lead us to agree with this conclusion
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The Severe Demand does not suggest that we can help (charity) but that we are required to do so

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Cullity argued that the
Severe Demand was inconsistent
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The Severe Demand obligates everyone (except the absolute worst off) to live altruistically-focused lives
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It also requires us to support the LEGs of nonaltruistically focused lives

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Cullity and Singer agree that our moral obligations are not affected by distance
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They also both agree that our moral obligations should not be affected by what others are doing
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The problem with the Severe Demand, according to
Cullity, is not that the demand is severe but that it requires us to advance aims that it considers immoral
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Murphy will only agree with some of these claims

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The Severe Demand should be rejected
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The demands of beneficence must not change depending on what others do
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The Severe Demand should be replaced by a cooperative principle
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The Severe Demand fails to understand the demands of beneficence in the right way

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The Severe Demand is severe in part because of two different conditions:
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1. Worldwide suffering (from lack of food, water, or access to basic medical care) is enormous
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2. Very few individuals are even attempting to do anything about this problem (low compliance)
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When we add these two claims together and combine them with a moral theory that requires us to help others then we get the Severe Demand

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Beneficence is simply the moral requirement that we sometimes aid others for their own good
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Although Utilitarianism is often criticized for being too demanding (Rawls, Williams) almost every moral places moral obligations on us that stem from beneficence
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Murphy argues that nearly every moral theory that at least sometimes requires beneficence can place
Severe Demands on us

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Utilitarians (including Singer) are often criticized because their theories require too much of individual agents, they are too demanding
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The demandingness worry is a worry about the duties of specific agents
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The worry arises, in part, as a result of a particularly individualistic conception of moral action:
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What can I do, right now, to maximize consequences? I must do whatever produces the best consequences

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Murphy argues that the
Severe Demand is easily brought about by accepting the “Simple Principle:”
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We are obligated to perform that action, of those available to us, that we have good reason to believe will produce the most good
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The Simple Principle is essentially Consequentialist

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The Simple Principle implies that our beneficencebased duties will often place Severe Demands on us
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This is because, as we are by now familiar,
Consequentialists require us to sacrifice our own interests for the interests of others if doing so maximizes consequences for everyone involved
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Given the state of the world, we are nearly all situated such that we can probably maximize consequences by giving up most of our resources

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Murphy argues that the demandingness worry affects any theory that requires at least occasional beneficence
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The problem of global suffering is so bad, Murphy argues, that any theory that says we must sometimes aid others will require us to aid the large numbers of poor and starving people in the world who can be saved with relatively little sacrifice on our part
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Demandingness is not unique to Utilitarians

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Most of us will reject the
Severe Demand
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We will want to place limits on duties of beneficence: we should have limits on how much we must aid others
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The Limited Principle allows me to maximize utility but does not require me to; it allows me to favor my interests

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Murphy argues that we should reject the Limited
Principle for two reasons:
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1. The Limited Principle can require us to weigh our own interests in widely implausible ways
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2. The Limited Principle is wrong to place limits on our demands
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Murphy argues that our moral demands can and should depend on external conditions
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It is wrong to assume that duties of beneficence are independent from the amount of good to be done

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How great are our obligations to aid our neighbors given the world as it is now?
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Imagine your neighbor asks you to:
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1. Borrow some sugar
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2. Be his friend
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3. Share your clothes, food, bed, and blanket
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4. Help him find a job

• Now imagine that you are shipwrecked on an island without any hope of rescue
• You happened to bring many supplies with you on this trip
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Your shipmates will soon die
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Working together all of you could survive
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The Limited Principle gives us the wrong answer, it places arbitrary limits on our duties

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Murphy argues that the Limited Principle fails to be sensitive to the fact that our obligations can and should vary in accordance with context
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Murphy claims that the problem with the Simple Principle isn’t that it is too demanding (certain situations may call for great sacrifice) but that people like Singer misunderstand the nature of beneficence
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The problem with the Simple Principle is that it makes our own moral duties vary depending on whether or not others are acting morally

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Imagine that your final paper was made a group project
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Each member of your group is response for writing one part of the final paper
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As the due date nears every single member of the group, except you, drops out of the class
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You now have to write the entire paper yourself

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Murphy argues that the problem with the Severe Demand is not that it asks too much of us
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The island and group work examples show that our moral principles can (and should) place severe demands on us
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The problem with the Severe Demand is, instead, due to the fact that it is not sensitive to how our moral obligations are distributed
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The Compliance Condition requires that our moral obligations not increase as a result of the failure of others to do their duty

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Each agent is required to act optimally to perform the action that makes the outcome best, except in situations of partial compliance with this principle. In situations of partial compliance it is permissible to act optimally, but the sacrifice each agent is required to make is limited to the level of sacrifice that would be optimal if the situation were one of full compliance; of the actions that require no more than this level of sacrifice, agents are required to perform the action that makes the outcome best.
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We must also change how we think of beneficence

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Murphy also argues that we must change the way we think about Beneficence
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Singer (and others like him) view beneficence as an individual duty
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Murphy argues that we must view our duties stemming from beneficence as cooperative duties

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Although Murphy is satisfied that a principle of beneficence that satisfies his compliance condition works for global problems it does not give us the correct answer for local cases
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Distance appears to matter for Murphy’s understanding of the role compliance in our duties of beneficence