Duties to the Less Fortunate
The Moral Problem
Some people have much more than they need to live; others don't
have enough. Very frequently, the “haves” possess no special
virtues; they are simply lucky to have been born in relatively
affluent societies. Very frequently, the “have-nots” are desperate
through no fault of their own — for example, victims of natural
disasters such as famine. Peter Singer, in his essay “Famine,
Affluence, and Morality” (1971) asks: what are the obligations of
the “haves” toward the “have-nots” in these cases?
Peter Singer “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”
Singer asks us to consider this simple argument:
P1: Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical
care are bad.
P2: “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.” John Arthur calls
this Singer's Greater Moral Evil Principle.
P3: It is in our power to prevent suffering and death by giving
money to causes such as famine relief.
C: Therefore, we have a moral obligation to give money to causes
such as famine relief. We should give and it is wrong not to give.
The next question is: how much are we obligated to give? The
next argument outlines Singer's arresting and controversial
answer:
P1: Singer's Greater Moral Evil 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.”
P2: Our interests and those of our dependents matter only to the
degree that they are of comparable moral importance.
P3: “Interests” such as cars, clothes, cool shoes, stereos, CDs,
fancy food, excessive rent, eating out, going to movies, concerts,
or sports events, partying, goofing off, earning unnecessary
money, etc. are clearly not of comparable moral importance
compared to the plight of desperately suffering people.
C: People in affluent countries are morally obligated to do
everything in their power to relieve the suffering of the famine
victims, even if this means drastically changing our lives. If we
spend extra money solely for our own pleasure, we are in effect
killing innocent poor people. Furthermore, our obligation to the
poor lasts as long as we are not also suffering and dying from lack
of food, shelter, and medical care. We are obligated to give to the
point of “marginal utility”; that is, until, our situation is as bad as
that of the victims.
Singer responds to each of the following objections to his views.
He argues that none are morally-acceptable excuses for inaction.
1.
The suffering people live far away from me.
2. Other people are not helping.
3. Singer's proposals are “too different”; they demand a drastic
revision of many traditional moral views.
4. If we adopt Singer's views, we'd all have to be working fulltime to relieve the great suffering of the innocent from
famines, wars, and other disasters.
5.
It's okay not to give, because giving my time and money to
poor and suffering people is not demanded by morality.
Certainly I would be a better person if I did help, but there is
nothing wrong with not helping. Not everybody is expected to
be Mother Teresa.
6.
Singer is right that we should help, but his proposal that we
give money is not the best way to help.
Singer quickly disposes of objections (1) and (2); both are simply
irrelevant. If I am aware that desperate famine victims exist, and
I agree with Singer's Greater Moral Evil Principle, I am obligated
to help no matter where the victims live and no matter who else is
helping. (If I know that other people are helping, and how much
they are giving, I can perhaps adjust my contribution downward;
but my obligation is in no way removed.)
Objection (3) is also irrelevant; the question is not whether
Singer's views are new and different, but whether they are wellreasoned.
Singer's response to objection (4) is simply ``Yes''.
Singer devotes most of his attention to objections (5) and (6).
Objection (5) invokes the traditional moral distinction between
what is required to satisfy minimal moral requirements; and what
is extra “supererogatory” virtue. Judith Thomson, for example,
talks about the Good Samaritan and the Splendid Samaritan. We
can do extraordinary virtuous acts if we are so moved, but it's not
necessarily wrong not to do them. Not everyone is called to be a
saint. So, the objector concludes, Singer is blurring the distinction
between what is required and what is “above-and-beyond the call
of duty.” In effect, Singer is saying that we are all required to be
moral saints.
The distinction between what’s required and what’s extra is
reflected in our legal system. For example, when you pay taxes,
you can get a deduction for gifts to charity, but you don’t have to
give anything to charity if you don’t want to.
The distinction between what’s required by morality and what’s
“over and above” is sometimes called the distinction between
general and specific duties; or between duties and obligations.
A general duty is (1) owed to all members of the moral
community alike; (2) unavoidable for any member of the moral
community; and (3) negative, i.e., a duty to refrain, or not do,
some action. Commands such as “Don’t murder,” “Don’t steal,”
and “Don’t lie” are general duties.
But some moral obligations are not general. Consider the
obligation to keep a promise. Promise-keeping is owed only to the
person to whom a promise is made. Therefore, my obligation to
keep promises is not general because it’s not owed to everyone in
the world. Another way in which my obligation to keep a promise
is not general is that I can avoid the obligation to keep a promise
simply by not making any promises; I have the obligation only if I
voluntarily promise. General duties, by contrast, can’t be avoided
at all; other things being equal, I must always refrain from
murder, stealing, lying, etc. Furthermore, my duty to keep a
promise is positive; I must actively do something, namely keep
the promise, for the sake of the other. General duties, on the
other hand, require only that I refrain from doing certain things.
Obligations to do things for specific people, then, count as specific
duties — for example, duties to family members or friends. Giving
to the poor falls under specific duty, or obligation, also, since
giving to the poor requires positive action, and singles out some
members of the moral community (the poor) as recipients while
ignoring others (the rich). Singer’s opponent would then say that
insofar as giving is a specific duty, it is voluntary, and not strictly
required. The same goes for duties to family members; such
duties must be specifically volunteered for. If you don’t want to
have the specific duties of a parent, for example, then don’t
volunteer for those duties, i.e., don’t have kids.
Our legal system supports Singer’s opponent. It enforces
violations of general duties, but only sometimes enforces
violations of specific duties. You can be arrested for murder, but
you can’t be arrested for not giving to charity. You can be arrested
for breaking a promise only in very specific cases (e.g., legal
contracts), and usually not for purely family matters. Adult
children are not legally bound to care for their aged parents. No
one is legally bound to intervene or take special action on behalf
of another unless a specific contract has been made. I’m not even
legally obligated to call the police if I witness a crime.
Singer’s critic is right that Singer’s view is opposed to the
traditional duty-obligation distinction. In fact, Singer argues
against the distinction; Singer thinks the distinction falls apart in
some cases, e.g., his case of a drowning child. On the traditional
view, you have an unavoidable duty to refrain from killing
anybody, and thus a duty not to jump into the pond and hold the
child’s head under water until it’s dead. But seeing that the child is
drowning, you have no obligation to do anything for the child that
you haven’t specifically promised to do. So if you haven’t
promised to try to save the drowning child’s life – as, say, a
parent or a lifeguard would have – you don’t, morally, have to do
anything; you can just sit back and watch the child drown. Singer
thinks this case shows how ridiculous the general/specific duty
distinction is. Singer thinks it’s obvious that you are guilty of a
grave moral offense if you just stand by and do nothing. You can’t
say “I’m not guilty because I didn’t do anything bad.” There are
sins of omission as well as sins of commission.
Singer in effect gives an interesting argument against the
distinction between general and specific duties. If Singer's
Principle is correct — that is, other interests matter only if they
are of comparable moral significance — then giving money to the
helpless and innocent poor is an unavoidable duty for the affluent.
You literally can't find a better use for your money. It is morally
inexcusable, if Singer's Principle is correct, to spend your money
on anything else. As Singer puts it, “we ought to give the money
away, and it is wrong not to do so.”
The final objection, (6) above, asks whether giving money is really
the best way to help. For example, you often hear the argument
that it might be more charitable in the long run to let starving
people starve, since if you save them, they'll just make more
babies, and the cycle of overpopulation and starvation will begin
all over again. (This is Garrett Hardin’s “lifeboat” argument.) But,
says Singer, if you think overpopulation is the real problem, you
cannot just ignore it. You must do something about it, namely,
work with all your strength for population control.
Singer is willing to be flexible about what action you take; it
doesn't matter for his argument. If you don't think giving money
is the best solution, you are nevertheless obligated to do, with all
your strength, whatever you think is best. His point is simply that
you are not allowed to sit back and do nothing.
John Arthur, “World Hunger and Moral Obligation: The Case
Against Singer”
Arthur says Singer’s Greater Moral Evil principle results from two
arguments:
1. 1. Analogical argument of child drowning in shallow pond. I
ignore the child because I’m still doing my negative duty not
to kill (yet our intuition is that I should help)
2. 2. Moral equality: the poor are just as important as we are,
so it would be unjust if I prefer my trivial interests to
preservation of their lives.
But Singer ignores entitlements.
Per Arthur, and in agreement with much philosophical and legal
precedent, there are two kinds of entitlements: rights and desert.
1. 1. Entitlements of Rights: we are not obligated to heroism
(e.g., to give up e.g., our kidneys or eyes or grant sexual
favors to save someone else’s life or sanity (848-849).
Strangers have only negative rights (rights of noninterference), unless we have volunteered more.
2. 2. Entitlements of Desert: we have a right to what we
deserve based on the past. Story of the industrious and lazy
farmers.
Our moral system already gives weight to both future and past,
consequences and entitlements. Of course we ought to help the
drowning child if nothing of greater importance is at stake; but
our moral code must be practicable by most people, and Singer’s
isn’t. Singer just completely ignores backward-looking
considerations.
Garrett Hardin, “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping
the Poor”
We should reject metaphor of earth as a spaceship, because
there’s no single “captain” of earth. Rather, the metaphor of a
collection of lifeboats is more appropriate. See 854-855. The rich
nations are the lifeboats; the poor nations are the people adrift in
the sea clamoring to get aboard.
Each lifeboat has limited capacity. Complete
generosity/justice/equality = complete catastrophe.
Poor nations are having children at a rate far surpassing the rich
ones. Their population doubles every 21 years; rich nations’
double every 87 years. 88% of world’s children are born poor. So
if we let the poor on board and they keep reproducing at the same
rate, our lifeboat will go down much faster.
The fundamental error of “spaceship ethics” is the “tragedy of the
commons”. (856-857, 872). The world’s air and water are
commons. The pollution of the air and water, and depletion of fish
are the result. The resultant tragedy is that everybody eventually
dies: the responsible stewards as well as the irresponsible ones.
The World Food Bank is no answer. The program is a sweetheart
deal for special interests (farmers, railroads, manufacturers of
farm equipment and fertilizer, etc.), funded by taxpayers. It
contributes to the depletion of soil through the use of chemical
fertilizers. But more importantly, it creates a commons. There’s no
incentive for poor nations to plan ahead. Someone will always
come to their aid. Furthermore, a world food bank hurts
population control efforts; if the sympathetic do-gooders didn’t
interfere, population control would happen “naturally” — albeit
gruesomely — by crop failures and famine.
The Chinese fish approach (“Give a man a fish and he will eat for
a day; teach him to fish and he will eat for the rest of his days”)
won’t solve the real problem either. It’s a simple matter of
ecological limits: too many people are going to spoil the balance
of nature. It’s a zero-sum game: the more people use, the less
remains for others. The environment is going to become
overloaded. Alan Gregg: “Cancerous growths demand food, but …
they have never been cured by getting it.”
Similar arguments apply against immigration of people from poor
nations to rich ones. Capitalists should recognize that their policy
of exploiting lower-paid foreign workers is eventually going to
backfire ecologically.
Thus, (864) “we cannot safely divide the wealth equitably among
all peoples so long as people reproduce at different rates.”
Murdoch and Oaten, “Population and Food: Metaphors and
the Reality”
These authors, like Hardin, are biologists from UC Santa Barbara.
Many of Hardin’s arguments are based on metaphors: commons,
lifeboat, escalator. Murdoch and Oaten see these metaphors as
misleading analogies.
Lifeboat World
Real World
Lifeboats barely
interact with poor
Nations, peoples interact
constantly
People in lifeboats
are there purely by
luck or by
enlightened,
provident
leadership(!)
Rich nations' economic
and political policies -such as insistence on
interest payments on
Third World debt,
encouragement of cash
crops (thus wrecking
biodiversity and
depleting soil) -- are at
least partly responsible
for poverty poor nations.
Quantity and nature
of lifeboats' supplies
are fixed; rich can't
do anything about
their patterns of
consumption.
Rich nations have other
consumption and diet
options.
Lifeboats can sail
away.
Rich nations can't ignore
poor ones.
Poor nations will
always have many
more babies than
the rich; poor
people can't do
anything about
population control.
Poor nations can control
population if people
have hope, if women are
educated, if birth control
is legal and encouraged.
Tragedy of the
commons is
inevitable unless
private ownership is
re-instituted.
Tragedy of the commons
is avoidable by many
alternative social
arrangements.
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Last Updated: 01/17/2006 04:00:00