Global Poverty Part 1
Peter Singer and the duty to help
•
Facts
• 1/3 of all human deaths each year (18
million) are due to poverty-related
causes and easily preventable
diseases.
• Poverty deaths since 1990: 324 million
• Death toll of wars, massacres and
atrocities of the 20th c
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-1900.htm
• Total: about 180 million
• 2) Extreme inequality:
• Poorest 44% of mankind take up a
meager 1.2% of annual global product
• High-income countries:
• 15% of global population, 80% of
aggregate global income in 2001
• Poverty as a moral problem
• Physical pain and sufferings
• Attendant social evils: illiteracy, social
exclusion, economic exploitation
• Stunting of human development (ref.
Aristotle)
• Vulnerable to all sorts of unexpected
happenings: an untimely rain, a mild
illness…
• One notorious example: female homicides in Ciudad
Juarez in N Mexico, across the US border of Texas.
• 2007 “North America City of the Future” award of FDI
Magazine
• Conglomeration of assembly plants
• Not only famous for its economic progress, but also
something more sinister…
• From 1993 to 2003, 370 women have
been murdered, with 130 subjected to
sexual assault before death.
• “Many of the women were abducted, held
captive for several days and subject to
humiliation, torture and the most horrific
sexual violence before dying… Their
bodies have been found several days or
weeks later, hidden among rubble or
abandoned in the deserted areas nearby.”
http://www.chicanafeliz.com/Juarez/AMR4102703.pdf
• What is our moral relationship with the
distant poor?
• Only a matter of charity or beneficence?
• “Warren Buffett, the world's second richest
man, has pledged $30.7bn of his $44bn
fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation. … According to the Chronicle
of Philanthropy, it is the largest charitable
donation ever made.” (www.theregister.co.uk June 26th
2006)
• In the World Food Summit organized by
UNFAO in 1996, the 186 governments
agreed that it is “intolerable” that more
than 800 million people do not have
enough to meet their basic needs.
• Yet, the US government insisted that
eradication of starvation is “a goal or
aspiration to be realized progressively that
does not give rise to any international
obligations.”
• Do we have a moral duty to help the poor?
• Peter Singer: YES!!
University Center for Human Values, Princeton University
(1946 - )
• Let’s start with our common intuitions with
regard to rescue cases…
• Peter walks past the lily pond on his way
from CYM to the Philo Dept for the midterm
test of PHIL1003. He notices that a boy is
about to drown in the pond and there is no
one nearby.
• Does Peter have a duty to help? YES, even
though doing so might cost him a good
grade.
• Underlying principle: If we can prevent
something morally bad from happening without
sacrificing anything of comparable moral
significance, we have a duty to do it.
• If we choose not to give anything away, aren’t
we, as affluent citizens, as morally bad as one
who just let the poor boy drown?
• Possible objections
1) Presence of other potential helpers
• Singer’s response: “Should I consider that
I am less obliged to pull the drowning child
out of the pond if on looking around I see
other people, no further away than I am,
who have also noticed the child but are
doing nothing? One has only to asked this
question to see the absurdity of the view
that numbers less obligation.”
• Case of Kitty Genovese
• “For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding
citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a
woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.” (New
York Times Mar 27th 1964
http://www2.selu.edu/Academics/Faculty/scraig/gansberg.html)
• Bystander effect: the greater is the number of bystanders,
the less inclined is one to attempt to help
• 2) Priority be given fellow citizens
• Singer’s response: why should distance be
morally relevant?
• Moral arbitrariness of nationality
Bomb dropped by Singer…
• Every time we indulge ourselves in
luxuries, we are in effect saying that:
“It’s terrible that you are suffering, and I
feel sorry for you. While it would be nice
for me to save you, you can’t blame me for
not doing anything, just like you can’t
blame Peter for not jumping it and hence
letting the poor kid drown.”
Radical implications of Singer’s principle
• Extremely self-vigilant in our use of time
• Not only luxuries are impermissible,
Singer’s principle requires us to keep
giving away our money till the point of
marginal utility
• This is because Singer’s principle is
incremental.
• Richard Miller (Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell
University) in “Beneficience, Duty and Distance” (Philosophy
and Public Affairs 32 no. 4 2004):
• We are entitled to the resources necessary for a
meaningful pursuit of the goals that define who we are.
• How can we strike a balance between living a
meaningful life and fulfilling our moral duties in the face
of massive sufferings?
• Principle of sympathy:
We ought to have a sufficiently strong
underlying concern towards others’
neediness so that any additional giving
which manifests a greater underlying
concern would impose a risk of making our
lives significantly worse off.
• How does Miller’s principle avoids the
incremental problem of Singer’s principle?
• Disposition is not sensitive to small
amount of donations at the margin.
• If one is sufficiently concerned about
others’ neediness, permissible not to give
away what is sufficient to save yet another
human.
• Seems plausible: student A studies 18
hours a day. B studies 18 hours and 5 min.
• Is B more hard-working than A?
• Hence, while morality requires us to give a
sufficient portion of our wealth away, it
does allow us to (occasionally) spend
some money on birthday presents/movie
tickets…. goals the pursuit of which are
essential for our living a worthwhile life.
• Is our underlying concern towards others’ neediness
indeed as coarse-grained as Miller suggests?
• Seems to be so only when we view people suffering from
poverty as a homogeneous mass.
• Suppose A and B have the same income and have both
given away 60% of their income.
A: “I have already away so much, and giving away an extra
$50 has nothing to do with whether I am a more caring
person. So it’s morally okay for me not to give away the
extra money.”
B: “I have already given away so much, and I don’t want to
any more. But since an extra $50 can save a few more
lives… ok, I will do it…”
• Why doesn’t this show that B has a greater concern for
the needy than A?
• Do you agree with Peter Singer that the
society can be better organised if we
recognize that each of us are 'primarily
responsible for running our own lives and
only secondarily responsible for others'?
Do you think that this is moral in a
capitalist society? Can we still be moral if
we take care of ourselves first and then
consider the well being of others?