This essay is a defence of a version of a position of Effective Altruism (perhaps the ‘Altruism’ part). It is formulated in a manner I take to be weak enough to be accepted by most people but strong enough to be significant (and accurate).
I have posted this essay to my blog, which can be found here.
Introduction
In his enduringly provocative Famine, Affluence, and Morality (FAM), Peter Singer encourages us to reflect upon our behaviour towards those in need, and ask ourselves whether we can really do so little to help whilst maintaining a clear conscience. The extent to which we keep things for ourselves, Singer argues, is unjustifiable, and we ought to be doing much more than we are to help those suffering and dying from a lack of food, shelter, and medical care. I take this to be the thesis of FAM.
But is this right? Can’t we keep things for ourselves, even though others are suffering? After all, we might think, we are not responsible for the plight of others; although we might be praiseworthy for helping them, surely we cannot be blameworthy for failing to! Such, it might be said, is the ‘common-sense morality’: so long as I am not responsible for the relevant undesirable circumstances of another, I am under no obligation to help them.[1]
But this ‘common-sense morality’ (insofar as it exists) is flawed, and its falsity can be demonstrated with the following thought experiment (Drowning Child):
On your way to work, you pass a small pond. On hot days, children sometimes play in the pond, which is only about knee-deep. The weather’s cool today, though, and the hour is early, so you are surprised to see a child splashing about in the pond. You look for the parents or babysitter, but there is no one else around. The child is unable to keep his head above the water for more than a few seconds at a time. If you don’t wade in and pull him out, he seems likely to drown. Wading in is easy and safe, but you will ruin the new shoes you bought only a few days ago, and get your suit wet and muddy. By the time you hand the child over to someone responsible for him, and change your clothes, you’ll be late for work. (Singer, 2010: 3; based on Singer, 1972: 231; cited in Timmerman, 2015: 206)
In Drowning Child, you ought to help the child, despite the fact that it is not your fault that they find themselves in need of it. So it is not the case that you are under an obligation to help someone only when you are responsible for their relevant undesirable circumstances, and ‘common-sense morality’ is incorrect.
What are the implications of this? According to Singer, the implications of this finding are stark: we ought to be doing much more than we are to help those suffering and dying from a lack of food, shelter, and medical care. This, again, I take to be the thesis of FAM. As in Drowning Child, we are in a position to help at relatively minimal cost to ourselves. So, as in Drowning Child, we ought to take on this cost so that those in need can be provided with this help.
In response to Singer’s argument, people often have one of two types of strong objection. What I call ‘objections from disanalogy’ claim that Drowning Child is disanalogous to the situation in which we find ourselves as people in a position to help. There are morally-relevant differences between the former and the latter which make for a likely difference in obligation between them, and we cannot conclude that we ought to be doing more than we are, because the analogy on which this claim relies fails. ‘Objections from ignorance,’ on the other hand, deny that there is clearly anything more that we can be doing to help those in need at all. On this picture, for all we know, what we are doing is just as good for those in need as what we might do.
I will begin (in section 1) by outlining in more detail and justifying my interpretation of Singer’s argument in FAM, before going on (in the remaining sections) to defend it against some of the strongest objections. In (2), I outline and respond to the strongest and most common objections from disanalogy. Specifically, I respond to Timmerman’s disanalogy from anomaly and Murphy’s disanalogy from compliance.[2] Whereas the first of these disanalogies is significant, I argue, the other is not, and in any case neither succeed in undermining Singer’s argument at least whilst allowing for modification. Finally, in (3), I discuss the objections from ignorance in the form they often come, and in particular I respond to what I call Brennan’s ‘ignorance from economic uncertainty objection.’
By the end of this essay, I hope to have shown that neither of these sets of objections succeed in undermining the thesis that we ought to be doing more than we are, as argued for by Singer.
As it turns out, it might be that every philosopher mentioned in this essay in fact agrees with the claim that we ought to be doing more than we are. Nevertheless, the arguments of theirs which can serve as objections to Singer have and will continue to be used to try to absolve us of responsibility to do so.
1. Singer’s Argument
I begin by presenting my interpretation of Singer’s argument in FAM alongside the reasons for adopting it. This will set up the groundwork for defending it against the objections I would like to address in this essay.
1.1. Singer’s Thesis
What is Singer trying to argue in FAM? Well, he begins by stating that he will argue that ‘the way of life that has come to be taken for granted in our society’ ‘needs to be altered’ (Singer, 1972: 230), and he clarifies what he is referring to with this ‘way of life’ later in the paper: ‘we… have to give away enough to ensure that the consumer society, dependent as it is on people spending on trivia rather than giving to famine relief, would slow down and perhaps disappear entirely.’ (241) As a result, we might take the thesis of FAM to be that we ought to donate (more) to aid agencies. Indeed, the first chapter of Singer’s The Life You Can Save – which is essentially an expansion on the ideas presented in FAM – presents an argument with this as its conclusion (Singer, 2010: 15-16; used by Timmerman, 2015: 204).
However, these passages are consistent with another interpretation of Singer’s thesis, and, in light of what is written elsewhere in the paper, I believe that the latter is more accurate: that we ‘[spend] on trivia rather than [give] to famine relief’ is demonstrative of our ‘way of life’ that ‘needs to be altered,’ but the main point is not that we should be giving (more) to famine relief; doing so will not necessarily always be the best/required use of our time/money. The point to be taken is that we ought to be doing more than we are. That is, we ought to be taking on far greater sacrifices in order to help those suffering and dying from a lack of food, shelter, and medical care. This, I believe, is a more accurate interpretation of the thesis of FAM (hereafter ‘Singer’s thesis’), as it is compatible both with the passages just cited as well as others throughout the paper, such as the following:
[L]ooking at the matter purely from the point of view of overseas aid, there must be a limit to the extent to which we should deliberately slow down our economy; for it might be the case that if we gave away, say, forty percent of the Gross National Product, we would slow down the economy so much that in absolute terms we would be giving less than if we gave twenty-five percent of the much larger GNP that we would have if we limited our contribution to this smaller percentage. (Singer, 1972: 241-242)
In this passage, Singer suggests that there might be cases where donating to aid agencies isn’t the best/required thing to do with our time/money. Even in such scenarios, however, we will likely be able to effectively ‘[demonstrate] in the streets, [hold] symbolic fasts, or [do] anything else directed toward providing the [needy] with the means to satisfy their essential needs’ – which is something Singer clearly thinks we ought to do (229). In light of this, then, I argue we should take Singer’s thesis to be, as aforementioned, that we ought to be doing more than we are.
By ‘we ought to be doing more than we are,’ I mean to say that (i) we should be doing more than we are, (ii) we would be ‘doing something wrong’ not to be doing more than we currently are (Singer, 2010: 16; 1972: 235), and (iii) we are morally required to do more than we currently are (that is, it is morally impermissible for us not to do more than we currently are) (233).[3] Likewise, this essay can be seen as a defence of the argument that we ought to be doing more than we are in this sense expounded.
1.2. Singer’s Argument
I formulate the argument of FAM (hereafter ‘Singer’s argument’) as follows:
(I) In Drowning Child, you ought to save the child because you are in a position to help someone in need at a relatively small cost to yourself.
(II) Each of us are in a position to help people in need at a relatively small cost to ourselves.
(III) Therefore, each of us ought to be taking on a relatively small cost in order to help those in need; (III+) we ought to be doing more than we are.[4]
A ‘relatively small cost’ is a cost that is low in moral significance compared to that of what is morally at stake in one’s action/inaction. I understand that the reader will likely find the notion of a ‘relatively’ or ‘comparatively small’ cost vague/imprecise. On this I can only say that it is up to the agent to calculate which costs constitute ‘small’ ones, relatively speaking. Nevertheless, over the course of this essay, the reader will find numerous plausible examples of the ‘relatively small’ sacrifices we are in a position to take on to help those in need.
Some may suspect that the truth of (I) relies on what Singer calls the ‘principle of preventing bad occurrences’ (PPBO): ‘If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so.’ (Timmerman, 2015: 204; taken from Singer, 1972: 231) Indeed, it would seem that Singer himself believes this, pretty explicitly including PPBO as a premise in his argument. However, PPBO need not hold in order for Singer’s argument to go through, and part of my task in this essay will be to try to show that this is so. More on this in the next section.
Now that we have a clearer sense of what Singer’s argument is, we can move on to engage with some of the main and strongest objections levied against it.
2. Objections from Disanalogy
Perhaps our intuitions in Drowning Child suffice to undermine ‘common-sense morality,’ but is the case sufficiently similar to the situation in which we find ourselves for us to draw conclusions about our obligations in the latter on the basis of those in the former? In this section, I consider and respond to three potential ‘objections from disanalogy’ to Singer’s argument.
2.1. Disanalogy from Anomaly
In Drowning Child, it is plausibly assumed that the circumstances generating the obligation to help are anomalous and rarely occur. In the situations in which we find ourselves, however, these circumstances are (indeed exceptionally) common. In Drowning Child, it is at least left open whether you found yourself in a similar situation yesterday or even ever before, whereas we are almost always in a position to effectively help at little cost to ourselves those in need across the world in contemporary society (premise 2 of Singer’s argument).
Perhaps, therefore, we cannot draw from our intuitions in Drowning Child the conclusion that we ought to be doing more than we are. Unlike in the former, our ability to help is constant, and so, in the latter, we might well be permitted to keep things of comparatively minimal importance for ourselves rather than give these up in order to help others. To test for this, Timmerman (2015) reconstructs Singer’s Drowning Child with a view to more accurately mirroring our situation, particularly in terms of anomaly (Drowning Children):
Unlucky Lisa gets a call from her 24-hr bank telling her that hackers have accessed her account and are taking $200 out of it every 5 min until Lisa shows up in person to put a hold on her account. Due to some legal loophole, the bank is not required to reimburse Lisa for any of the money she may lose nor will they. In fact, if her account is overdrawn, the bank will seize as much of her assets as is needed to pay the debt created by the hackers. Fortunately, for Lisa, the bank is just across the street from her work and she can get there in fewer than 5 min. She was even about to walk to the bank as part of her daily routine. On her way, Lisa notices a vast space of land covered with hundreds of newly formed shallow ponds, each of which contains a small child who will drown unless someone pulls them to safety. Lisa knows that for each child she rescues, an extra child will live who would have otherwise died. Now, it would take Lisa approximately 5 min to pull each child to safety and, in what can only be the most horrifically surreal day of her life, Lisa has to decide how many children to rescue before entering the bank. Once she enters the bank, all the children who have not yet been rescued drown. Things only get worse for poor Lisa. For the remainder of her life, the hackers repeat their actions on a daily basis and, every day, the ponds adjacent to Lisa’s bank are filled with drowning children. (208-209)
In Drowning Children, if ‘Lisa want[ed] to experience theatre one last time before she spends the remainder of her days pulling children from shallow ponds and stopping hackers,’ (210) it would seem to be permissible for her to do so. In Drowning Child, on the contrary, you would not be permitted to let a child drown in order to go to the theatre. So it would seem that we cannot extrapolate the obligation we have in Drowning Child to the situation in which we find ourselves; anomaly would seem to be a potentially morally-relevant difference between the former and the latter.
We will likely want to grant Timmerman’s objection from disanalogy against Singer’s argument, but it does not undermine Singer’s thesis that we ought to be doing more than we are.
2.1.1. Timmerman’s Objection Granted
We might be tempted to simply deny that Lisa would be permitted to go to the theatre. We might say that, although according to our pre-theoretical intuitions regarding Drowning Children, Lisa would be permitted to go to the theatre, upon reflection, she would not be.
The problem with taking this line is that it is far from clear what conclusions we would reach ‘upon reflection’ with regard to the permissibility of Lisa’s going to the theatre. If this ‘reflection’ is supposed to be informed by a consideration of the Drowning Child case, for example, then, since we should trust our intuitions in Drowning Child, then we should do so in Drowning Children too – these are both cases intended to generate pre-theoretical intuitions. Perhaps there are reasons to suppose that anomaly never morally matters and/or we can explain away the intuitions we have in Drowning Children whilst maintaining the inductiveness of those in Drowning Child. As it stands, however, neither of these routes have been shown to have promise. We cannot simply deny that Lisa would be permitted to go to the theatre in Drowning Children, and so Timmerman’s objection from disanalogy against Singer’s argument remains a real one.
Another option: account for the permissibility of Lisa’s going to the theatre by reference to psychological constraints on action. Perhaps it is the case that, were Lisa not to go to the theatre, she would save far fewer children in the long-run – say, she is likely to have a mental breakdown preventing her from pulling the children from the shallow ponds, and the theatre-trip would provide her with the morale-boost necessary for preventing this. If this were so, then we could account for the divergence in obligation between Drowning Child and Drowning Children by reference to a feature of the latter that is nevertheless not a feature of the situation in which we find ourselves. This is because it is very unlikely that, e.g., our giving up a few lattes each month or buying slightly smaller TVs – that is, our doing more than we are – would cause serious psychological decline. With the success of this response, then, Drowning Child would no longer be disanalogous to our situation.
But this route too runs into problems. Firstly, we have little evidence that Unlucky Lisa would have a mental breakdown if she did not go to the theatre (or, indeed, that this would be avoided if she went to the theatre). What is more; even if this were true, it does not seem that this would be the reason Lisa would be permitted to go to the theatre – and this seems especially so given that we could amend Drowning Child to rule out this possibility, and yet it would still seem that Lisa is permitted to go to the theatre. Much more would have to be said in defence of the view that it is psychological constraints which allow for the permissibility of Lisa’s going to the theatre, and it is as yet unclear how such a defence could be provided.
So it would seem we will want to grant Timmerman’s objection from disanalogy against Singer’s argument. Nevertheless, I believe that this objection fails to undermine the truth of Singer’s thesis.
2.1.2. Singer’s Thesis Maintained
There are two ways Timmerman’s case can be taken. We could take Drowning Children simply as providing an objection to Singer’s argument, or we could take it as a basis on which it can be modified.
With Drowning Children, Timmerman tries to construct a thought experiment (more) analogous to our situation as individuals in a position to help those in need across the world. This is so even despite the fact that this is done with the aim of undermining Singer and FAM. Insofar as Timmerman does well, then, he provides us with an analogy on the basis of which we can evaluate our behaviour towards those in need.
But it is still the case that few of us act as though we were in Unlucky Lisa’s position. It is implausible that Lisa would justifiably spend more money on a car than she needs to for it to function satisfactorily, or go on expensive holidays several times per year, and yet these are things that we do in contemporary affluent society. That Drowning Children is similar to the situation in which we find ourselves in terms of its morally-relevant features is still reason to give us pause, and so thought experimentation can still be used to motivate a claim that we ought to be doing much more than we are to help those in need.
In light of this, let us modify Singer’s argument:
(I*) In Drowning Children, you ought to save (at least) some children because you are in a position to help people in need at a relatively small cost to yourself.
(II) Each of us are in a position to help people in need at a relatively small cost to ourselves.
(III) Therefore, each of us ought to be taking on a relatively small cost in order to help those in need; (III+) we ought to be doing more than we are.
Despite the success of Timmerman’s objection, Singer’s thesis can still be maintained, and ‘Singer’s argument’ (albeit modified) can still succeed.
What should be noted, however, is that Singer’s argument cannot succeed in the way Singer presents it. As aforementioned; Singer includes the ‘principle of preventing bad occurrences’ (PPBO) as a premise in his argument: ‘If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so.’ Because going to the theatre isn’t nearly as important as saving the life of a drowning child and yet Unlucky Lisa would be permitted to do so at least once, PPBO is false. As I have shown, however, Singer’s argument (albeit modified) can still succeed; and so it does not require PPBO. At first glance, it may appear that (I*) implicitly relies on PPBO, but this is not so. Even given that it is not the case that, if you can prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, then it would be wrong not to do so, at least part of the explanation for why you ought to save the child in Drowning Children is still that you are in a position to help someone in need at a relatively small cost to yourself. Now, why exactly the latter helps to explain the former is a question open to multiple different potential answers – one of which is PPBO which Singer takes. For example, the answer might be that if it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing anything nearly as important or anything sufficiently important, then you ought to do it. Finding that PPBO is implausible, Singer’s argument (albeit modified) can still succeed, so long as Drowning Children is sufficiently analogous to the situation in which we find ourselves. This is because there are potential answers other than PPBO to the question of why it is that one’s being in a position to help someone at a relatively small cost is at least a partial explanation as to why one is obligated to save the child in Drowning Child.
In the move from Drowning Child to Drowning Children, our obligations, in a certain sense, become more modest. In the former, we are not permitted to go to the theatre instead of saving a child, whereas we are in the latter. It might be argued then that, in the gap between Drowning Children and the situation in which we find ourselves, there is more space over which our obligations are made more modest. This might be true, but it is on the person who asserts this to provide evidence that it is so. Whereas we can account for the difference in obligation between Drowning Child and Drowning Children by pointing to the prima facie morally relevant detail of anomaly, it is unclear what the morally relevant difference between the latter and our situation would be. We now move on to consider a candidate for this difference: a difference in compliance.
2.2. Disanalogy from Compliance
In Drowning Children, everyone else in a position to help is doing so, whereas, in our situation as individuals in a position to help, only a minority of us are doing so. Perhaps this difference can account for a difference in obligation between Drowning Children and our situation, then – a difference in the extent of compliance with the ‘demands of beneficence’ (crudely, the requirements stemming from our duty to help others).
Why might the extent of compliance with the demands of beneficence have any effect upon the extent of our obligations to help needy strangers? Murphy (1993) tries to illustrate why this might be by describing what it would be like for someone to try to act in accordance with the demands of beneficence whilst the extent of compliance makes no difference to them:
[S]he will know that one main reason why her compliance with the Simple Principle will result in such great sacrifice from her is that she is one of very few people who are complying with the principle. She knows that she has to do so much, just because most others are not doing what they ought to do. If everyone acted according to the Simple Principle, much less would be required of her. In the face of this she may well ask: “Why should I do just because others will do less? Surely I should only have to do my own fair share.” (277-278)
It would seem unfair for agents trying to fulfill their obligations to have to do more – to sacrifice more – just because others in a similar position are doing little or nothing at all to help those in need. As a result, Murphy argues, a plausible account of the demands of beneficence must accord with the ‘compliance condition,’ according to which such demands do not increase as expected compliance decreases (278).
There are several interesting questions brought up by Murphy’s argument here – almost all of which I do not have the space to engage with here. (Might we be able to treat the behaviour of other agents in the same way that we treat natural events such as natural disasters? Even if fairness is a relevant concern, does Singer’s thesis and/or argument really have unfair implications? etc.)[5] For the purposes of this essay, it will suffice to show that the compliance condition runs up against an intuition we have in the following case (Two Drowning Children):
Everything is the same as in Drowning Child except there are two children at serious risk of drowning in the pond, and there is another adult person in the same position as you to save them but who is choosing not to.[6]
In Two Drowning Children, you are obligated to save both children, regardless of the fact that this would be (at least partly) because not everyone in a position to help is doing so. What is more, it might well not even seem that you are any less obligated to save the second child simply in virtue of the presence of the second adult. At the very least, even if you are less obligated to save the second child, the reduction in this obligation would not be so great that trivial pleasures such as bigger TVs and more glamourous cars could suffice to out-weigh it – and this would be so regardless of the number of apathetic bystanders. These intuitions, running up against the compliance condition, is stronger than the intuition in favour of the compliance condition shed light upon by Murphy in his passage above. As a result, it does not really seem that a difference in the extent of compliance with the demands of beneficence can really account for a difference in obligation between Drowning Children and the situation in which we find ourselves.
Two of the strongest and most common ‘objections from disanalogy’ against Singer’s argument each fail to undermine the claim that Drowning Child is sufficiently similar to the situation in which we find ourselves to ground Singer’s thesis that we ought to be doing more than we are. Let us now move on to consider the ‘objections from ignorance.’
3. Objections from Ignorance
So our obligations to help those in need is similar to that in Drowning Child (or at least that in Drowning Children). Nevertheless, some will want to deny that we can be sure our current behaviour towards those in need is doing any less to help them than any alternative would. Although we do incur costs in some sense as things stand, we do not do so (often enough) for the sake of others, but for our own sakes, and so these are not costs in a real sense or at least in the sense they are being spoken of here. Therefore, objections from ignorance very simply deny the second premise of Singer’s argument, stating that there are no costs we can incur for the effective betterment of others in great need.
Ignorance objections are a common response to Singer’s argument and particularly to his thesis. The considerations often brought up against these are those of what would happen to, for example, theatre and the arts if everyone were to act in accordance with Singer’s (III) and make sacrifices (including financial) with a view to helping those in need. If everyone were to start taking on (more) costs for the sake of the needy, so the argument goes, then the organisations and institutions which are relatively unimportant compared to the suffering of the needy, but nevertheless still important, will lose funding and maybe cease to exist. Now, although those deprived of theatre might not plausibly be added to the class of ‘those in need,’ and so this might not seem to be an ignorance objection, the main point of this argument is to say that acting in accordance with Singer’s thesis will be worse for people, rather than better. For this reason, I still consider this line to be an ‘objection from ignorance.’
In philosophy, we find the objection from ignorance most powerfully put by Jason Brennan (2021) in what I call his ‘ignorance from economic uncertainty objection.’ ‘In 1950,’ Brennan informs us, ‘Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan were very poor,’ and as a result their citizens suffered to such an extent that Singer would have deemed them worthy recipients of help. ‘In 2020,’ however, ‘[these countries] are very rich,’ and Singer would judge their citizens to be the appropriate givers of help (that is, the targets of his argument). According to Brennan, the improvements in the lives of these citizens came about ‘precisely because people ignored Singer’s advice.’ This is because these changes are the result of ‘people in already rich countries [buying] toys, transistor radios, stereos, video game consoles, VCRs, DVD players, Blu-ray players, smartphones, automobiles, electronics, and a wide range of other morally insignificant luxury goods they didn’t need from these countries.’ (153-154) People in need were helped as a result of other people’s engagement with – and not departure from – the contemporary affluent ‘consumer society,’ and so it would seem that making sacrifices for the sake of the needy (acting in accordance with Singer’s thesis) will not always be the best way to help those in need, and will in fact sometimes be to their detriment.
Where both of these arguments go wrong is in failing to recognise that – even and especially according to Singer – what everyone else is doing with their time and money is a morally-relevant consideration bearing on the assessment of what we ourselves ought to do to help those in need: recall that, in Two Drowning Children, the second adult’s inaction generates an obligation to save the second child that wouldn’t otherwise be there, and that it is this feature of Singer’s view that Murphy finds so unfair. Both Brennan’s argument and the concern expressed by many rely on the idea that for each of us to be ‘listening to Singer’ or ‘taking Singer’s advice,’ we would cease funding personal projects and ineffective charities, and donate to effective aid organisations, regardless of what most other people in our position are doing. As outlined in (1.1), this is not quite this simple. In light of an significant increase in the number of people motivated and likely to act in accordance with Singer’s argument in FAM, what exactly it would entail regarding the course of action each of us should take would be less clear. Nevertheless, it is implausible that Singer’s thesis, even in such a scenario, would prescribe each of us to indulge in the consumer society and nothing else, as it is still unlikely that this would be the best means of helping those in need across the world. The arguments from ignorance, although appearing to strongly undermine Singer’s argument for that we ought to be doing more than we are, in fact fails to upon inspection.
Conclusion
Peter Singer has argued that we ought to be doing much more than we are to help those suffering and dying from a lack of food, shelter, and medical care. I have defended this claim against so-called ‘objections from disanalogy’ and ‘objections from ignorance’ against Singer’s argument. At most, as it stands, Singer’s argument requires modification (see 2.1). Nevertheless, his thesis remains plausible in the face of arguments both that his Drowning Child is too dissimilar to our situation to support his conclusion, and that, for all we know, what we are doing is just as good for those in need as what we might do.
One might wonder whether this finding is significant. Indeed, Timmerman has claimed that ‘[f]ew moral truths… seem more obvious than that one is obligated to sacrifice $200 to save a child’s life at least once.’ (2015: 211) In light of the arguments against Singer’s thesis that are often given, and which I have attempted to give philosophical credibility in this piece, this thesis is indeed significant and informative.
The next time you are asked for some money by a homeless person, I encourage you to seriously consider how that money of yours would otherwise be spent, and ask yourself the following question: is it really plausible that this money will go towards something worthwhile enough for me to keep it for myself?
Word count: 5747
References
Brennan, J. (2021). Why It’s OK to Want to Be Rich. Routledge.
Harman, E. (2016). Morally Permissible Moral Mistakes. Ethics 126 (2). 366-393
Murphy, L. (1993). The Demands of Beneficence. Philosophy & Public Affairs 22 (4). 267-292
Singer, P. (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (3). 229-243
Singer, P. (2010). The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty. Random House.
Timmerman, T. (2015). Sometimes there is nothing wrong with letting a child drown. Analysis 75 (2). 204-212
Footnotes
[1] To be clear, this is not, in fact, a likely feature of common-sense morality – indeed, that we have an intuition against it in Drowning Child below proves this. I simply use ‘common-sense morality’ here to refer to a principle people often (implicitly) accept before reflecting upon cases such as Drowning Child.
[2] Other strong objections from disanalogy exist (e.g., from whether the cause of need is structural injustice, and specifically whether helping would entail lifestyle change), but these are to feature in another piece.
[3] To see why these might come apart – particularly (i) and (iii) – see Harman (2016).
[4] The move from (III) to (III+) requires that we accept a suppressed premise along the lines of that we are not taking on (enough of) the relatively small cost we are in a position to to help those in need. I am happy for the soundness of Singer’s argument to be conditional on the truth of this premise.
[5] These interesting questions I have taken from my supervisor – Claire Benn – ‘s undergraduate dissertation ‘The Demands of Beneficence: Can Murphy’s Collective Principle of Beneficence Give a Plausible Account of Beneficence?’ (2009).
[6] A similar modification of Drowning Child can be found in Murphy (1993: 291).
Ought We to Be Doing More Than We Are?
This essay is a defence of a version of a position of Effective Altruism (perhaps the ‘Altruism’ part). It is formulated in a manner I take to be weak enough to be accepted by most people but strong enough to be significant (and accurate).
I have posted this essay to my blog, which can be found here.
Introduction
In his enduringly provocative Famine, Affluence, and Morality (FAM), Peter Singer encourages us to reflect upon our behaviour towards those in need, and ask ourselves whether we can really do so little to help whilst maintaining a clear conscience. The extent to which we keep things for ourselves, Singer argues, is unjustifiable, and we ought to be doing much more than we are to help those suffering and dying from a lack of food, shelter, and medical care. I take this to be the thesis of FAM.
But is this right? Can’t we keep things for ourselves, even though others are suffering? After all, we might think, we are not responsible for the plight of others; although we might be praiseworthy for helping them, surely we cannot be blameworthy for failing to! Such, it might be said, is the ‘common-sense morality’: so long as I am not responsible for the relevant undesirable circumstances of another, I am under no obligation to help them.[1]
But this ‘common-sense morality’ (insofar as it exists) is flawed, and its falsity can be demonstrated with the following thought experiment (Drowning Child):
On your way to work, you pass a small pond. On hot days, children sometimes play in the pond, which is only about knee-deep. The weather’s cool today, though, and the hour is early, so you are surprised to see a child splashing about in the pond. You look for the parents or babysitter, but there is no one else around. The child is unable to keep his head above the water for more than a few seconds at a time. If you don’t wade in and pull him out, he seems likely to drown. Wading in is easy and safe, but you will ruin the new shoes you bought only a few days ago, and get your suit wet and muddy. By the time you hand the child over to someone responsible for him, and change your clothes, you’ll be late for work. (Singer, 2010: 3; based on Singer, 1972: 231; cited in Timmerman, 2015: 206)
In Drowning Child, you ought to help the child, despite the fact that it is not your fault that they find themselves in need of it. So it is not the case that you are under an obligation to help someone only when you are responsible for their relevant undesirable circumstances, and ‘common-sense morality’ is incorrect.
What are the implications of this? According to Singer, the implications of this finding are stark: we ought to be doing much more than we are to help those suffering and dying from a lack of food, shelter, and medical care. This, again, I take to be the thesis of FAM. As in Drowning Child, we are in a position to help at relatively minimal cost to ourselves. So, as in Drowning Child, we ought to take on this cost so that those in need can be provided with this help.
In response to Singer’s argument, people often have one of two types of strong objection. What I call ‘objections from disanalogy’ claim that Drowning Child is disanalogous to the situation in which we find ourselves as people in a position to help. There are morally-relevant differences between the former and the latter which make for a likely difference in obligation between them, and we cannot conclude that we ought to be doing more than we are, because the analogy on which this claim relies fails. ‘Objections from ignorance,’ on the other hand, deny that there is clearly anything more that we can be doing to help those in need at all. On this picture, for all we know, what we are doing is just as good for those in need as what we might do.
I will begin (in section 1) by outlining in more detail and justifying my interpretation of Singer’s argument in FAM, before going on (in the remaining sections) to defend it against some of the strongest objections. In (2), I outline and respond to the strongest and most common objections from disanalogy. Specifically, I respond to Timmerman’s disanalogy from anomaly and Murphy’s disanalogy from compliance.[2] Whereas the first of these disanalogies is significant, I argue, the other is not, and in any case neither succeed in undermining Singer’s argument at least whilst allowing for modification. Finally, in (3), I discuss the objections from ignorance in the form they often come, and in particular I respond to what I call Brennan’s ‘ignorance from economic uncertainty objection.’
By the end of this essay, I hope to have shown that neither of these sets of objections succeed in undermining the thesis that we ought to be doing more than we are, as argued for by Singer.
As it turns out, it might be that every philosopher mentioned in this essay in fact agrees with the claim that we ought to be doing more than we are. Nevertheless, the arguments of theirs which can serve as objections to Singer have and will continue to be used to try to absolve us of responsibility to do so.
1. Singer’s Argument
I begin by presenting my interpretation of Singer’s argument in FAM alongside the reasons for adopting it. This will set up the groundwork for defending it against the objections I would like to address in this essay.
1.1. Singer’s Thesis
What is Singer trying to argue in FAM? Well, he begins by stating that he will argue that ‘the way of life that has come to be taken for granted in our society’ ‘needs to be altered’ (Singer, 1972: 230), and he clarifies what he is referring to with this ‘way of life’ later in the paper: ‘we… have to give away enough to ensure that the consumer society, dependent as it is on people spending on trivia rather than giving to famine relief, would slow down and perhaps disappear entirely.’ (241) As a result, we might take the thesis of FAM to be that we ought to donate (more) to aid agencies. Indeed, the first chapter of Singer’s The Life You Can Save – which is essentially an expansion on the ideas presented in FAM – presents an argument with this as its conclusion (Singer, 2010: 15-16; used by Timmerman, 2015: 204).
However, these passages are consistent with another interpretation of Singer’s thesis, and, in light of what is written elsewhere in the paper, I believe that the latter is more accurate: that we ‘[spend] on trivia rather than [give] to famine relief’ is demonstrative of our ‘way of life’ that ‘needs to be altered,’ but the main point is not that we should be giving (more) to famine relief; doing so will not necessarily always be the best/required use of our time/money. The point to be taken is that we ought to be doing more than we are. That is, we ought to be taking on far greater sacrifices in order to help those suffering and dying from a lack of food, shelter, and medical care. This, I believe, is a more accurate interpretation of the thesis of FAM (hereafter ‘Singer’s thesis’), as it is compatible both with the passages just cited as well as others throughout the paper, such as the following:
[L]ooking at the matter purely from the point of view of overseas aid, there must be a limit to the extent to which we should deliberately slow down our economy; for it might be the case that if we gave away, say, forty percent of the Gross National Product, we would slow down the economy so much that in absolute terms we would be giving less than if we gave twenty-five percent of the much larger GNP that we would have if we limited our contribution to this smaller percentage. (Singer, 1972: 241-242)
In this passage, Singer suggests that there might be cases where donating to aid agencies isn’t the best/required thing to do with our time/money. Even in such scenarios, however, we will likely be able to effectively ‘[demonstrate] in the streets, [hold] symbolic fasts, or [do] anything else directed toward providing the [needy] with the means to satisfy their essential needs’ – which is something Singer clearly thinks we ought to do (229). In light of this, then, I argue we should take Singer’s thesis to be, as aforementioned, that we ought to be doing more than we are.
By ‘we ought to be doing more than we are,’ I mean to say that (i) we should be doing more than we are, (ii) we would be ‘doing something wrong’ not to be doing more than we currently are (Singer, 2010: 16; 1972: 235), and (iii) we are morally required to do more than we currently are (that is, it is morally impermissible for us not to do more than we currently are) (233).[3] Likewise, this essay can be seen as a defence of the argument that we ought to be doing more than we are in this sense expounded.
1.2. Singer’s Argument
I formulate the argument of FAM (hereafter ‘Singer’s argument’) as follows:
(I) In Drowning Child, you ought to save the child because you are in a position to help someone in need at a relatively small cost to yourself.
(II) Each of us are in a position to help people in need at a relatively small cost to ourselves.
(III) Therefore, each of us ought to be taking on a relatively small cost in order to help those in need; (III+) we ought to be doing more than we are.[4]
A ‘relatively small cost’ is a cost that is low in moral significance compared to that of what is morally at stake in one’s action/inaction. I understand that the reader will likely find the notion of a ‘relatively’ or ‘comparatively small’ cost vague/imprecise. On this I can only say that it is up to the agent to calculate which costs constitute ‘small’ ones, relatively speaking. Nevertheless, over the course of this essay, the reader will find numerous plausible examples of the ‘relatively small’ sacrifices we are in a position to take on to help those in need.
Some may suspect that the truth of (I) relies on what Singer calls the ‘principle of preventing bad occurrences’ (PPBO): ‘If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so.’ (Timmerman, 2015: 204; taken from Singer, 1972: 231) Indeed, it would seem that Singer himself believes this, pretty explicitly including PPBO as a premise in his argument. However, PPBO need not hold in order for Singer’s argument to go through, and part of my task in this essay will be to try to show that this is so. More on this in the next section.
Now that we have a clearer sense of what Singer’s argument is, we can move on to engage with some of the main and strongest objections levied against it.
2. Objections from Disanalogy
Perhaps our intuitions in Drowning Child suffice to undermine ‘common-sense morality,’ but is the case sufficiently similar to the situation in which we find ourselves for us to draw conclusions about our obligations in the latter on the basis of those in the former? In this section, I consider and respond to three potential ‘objections from disanalogy’ to Singer’s argument.
2.1. Disanalogy from Anomaly
In Drowning Child, it is plausibly assumed that the circumstances generating the obligation to help are anomalous and rarely occur. In the situations in which we find ourselves, however, these circumstances are (indeed exceptionally) common. In Drowning Child, it is at least left open whether you found yourself in a similar situation yesterday or even ever before, whereas we are almost always in a position to effectively help at little cost to ourselves those in need across the world in contemporary society (premise 2 of Singer’s argument).
Perhaps, therefore, we cannot draw from our intuitions in Drowning Child the conclusion that we ought to be doing more than we are. Unlike in the former, our ability to help is constant, and so, in the latter, we might well be permitted to keep things of comparatively minimal importance for ourselves rather than give these up in order to help others. To test for this, Timmerman (2015) reconstructs Singer’s Drowning Child with a view to more accurately mirroring our situation, particularly in terms of anomaly (Drowning Children):
Unlucky Lisa gets a call from her 24-hr bank telling her that hackers have accessed her account and are taking $200 out of it every 5 min until Lisa shows up in person to put a hold on her account. Due to some legal loophole, the bank is not required to reimburse Lisa for any of the money she may lose nor will they. In fact, if her account is overdrawn, the bank will seize as much of her assets as is needed to pay the debt created by the hackers. Fortunately, for Lisa, the bank is just across the street from her work and she can get there in fewer than 5 min. She was even about to walk to the bank as part of her daily routine. On her way, Lisa notices a vast space of land covered with hundreds of newly formed shallow ponds, each of which contains a small child who will drown unless someone pulls them to safety. Lisa knows that for each child she rescues, an extra child will live who would have otherwise died. Now, it would take Lisa approximately 5 min to pull each child to safety and, in what can only be the most horrifically surreal day of her life, Lisa has to decide how many children to rescue before entering the bank. Once she enters the bank, all the children who have not yet been rescued drown. Things only get worse for poor Lisa. For the remainder of her life, the hackers repeat their actions on a daily basis and, every day, the ponds adjacent to Lisa’s bank are filled with drowning children. (208-209)
In Drowning Children, if ‘Lisa want[ed] to experience theatre one last time before she spends the remainder of her days pulling children from shallow ponds and stopping hackers,’ (210) it would seem to be permissible for her to do so. In Drowning Child, on the contrary, you would not be permitted to let a child drown in order to go to the theatre. So it would seem that we cannot extrapolate the obligation we have in Drowning Child to the situation in which we find ourselves; anomaly would seem to be a potentially morally-relevant difference between the former and the latter.
We will likely want to grant Timmerman’s objection from disanalogy against Singer’s argument, but it does not undermine Singer’s thesis that we ought to be doing more than we are.
2.1.1. Timmerman’s Objection Granted
We might be tempted to simply deny that Lisa would be permitted to go to the theatre. We might say that, although according to our pre-theoretical intuitions regarding Drowning Children, Lisa would be permitted to go to the theatre, upon reflection, she would not be.
The problem with taking this line is that it is far from clear what conclusions we would reach ‘upon reflection’ with regard to the permissibility of Lisa’s going to the theatre. If this ‘reflection’ is supposed to be informed by a consideration of the Drowning Child case, for example, then, since we should trust our intuitions in Drowning Child, then we should do so in Drowning Children too – these are both cases intended to generate pre-theoretical intuitions. Perhaps there are reasons to suppose that anomaly never morally matters and/or we can explain away the intuitions we have in Drowning Children whilst maintaining the inductiveness of those in Drowning Child. As it stands, however, neither of these routes have been shown to have promise. We cannot simply deny that Lisa would be permitted to go to the theatre in Drowning Children, and so Timmerman’s objection from disanalogy against Singer’s argument remains a real one.
Another option: account for the permissibility of Lisa’s going to the theatre by reference to psychological constraints on action. Perhaps it is the case that, were Lisa not to go to the theatre, she would save far fewer children in the long-run – say, she is likely to have a mental breakdown preventing her from pulling the children from the shallow ponds, and the theatre-trip would provide her with the morale-boost necessary for preventing this. If this were so, then we could account for the divergence in obligation between Drowning Child and Drowning Children by reference to a feature of the latter that is nevertheless not a feature of the situation in which we find ourselves. This is because it is very unlikely that, e.g., our giving up a few lattes each month or buying slightly smaller TVs – that is, our doing more than we are – would cause serious psychological decline. With the success of this response, then, Drowning Child would no longer be disanalogous to our situation.
But this route too runs into problems. Firstly, we have little evidence that Unlucky Lisa would have a mental breakdown if she did not go to the theatre (or, indeed, that this would be avoided if she went to the theatre). What is more; even if this were true, it does not seem that this would be the reason Lisa would be permitted to go to the theatre – and this seems especially so given that we could amend Drowning Child to rule out this possibility, and yet it would still seem that Lisa is permitted to go to the theatre. Much more would have to be said in defence of the view that it is psychological constraints which allow for the permissibility of Lisa’s going to the theatre, and it is as yet unclear how such a defence could be provided.
So it would seem we will want to grant Timmerman’s objection from disanalogy against Singer’s argument. Nevertheless, I believe that this objection fails to undermine the truth of Singer’s thesis.
2.1.2. Singer’s Thesis Maintained
There are two ways Timmerman’s case can be taken. We could take Drowning Children simply as providing an objection to Singer’s argument, or we could take it as a basis on which it can be modified.
With Drowning Children, Timmerman tries to construct a thought experiment (more) analogous to our situation as individuals in a position to help those in need across the world. This is so even despite the fact that this is done with the aim of undermining Singer and FAM. Insofar as Timmerman does well, then, he provides us with an analogy on the basis of which we can evaluate our behaviour towards those in need.
But it is still the case that few of us act as though we were in Unlucky Lisa’s position. It is implausible that Lisa would justifiably spend more money on a car than she needs to for it to function satisfactorily, or go on expensive holidays several times per year, and yet these are things that we do in contemporary affluent society. That Drowning Children is similar to the situation in which we find ourselves in terms of its morally-relevant features is still reason to give us pause, and so thought experimentation can still be used to motivate a claim that we ought to be doing much more than we are to help those in need.
In light of this, let us modify Singer’s argument:
(I*) In Drowning Children, you ought to save (at least) some children because you are in a position to help people in need at a relatively small cost to yourself.
(II) Each of us are in a position to help people in need at a relatively small cost to ourselves.
(III) Therefore, each of us ought to be taking on a relatively small cost in order to help those in need; (III+) we ought to be doing more than we are.
Despite the success of Timmerman’s objection, Singer’s thesis can still be maintained, and ‘Singer’s argument’ (albeit modified) can still succeed.
What should be noted, however, is that Singer’s argument cannot succeed in the way Singer presents it. As aforementioned; Singer includes the ‘principle of preventing bad occurrences’ (PPBO) as a premise in his argument: ‘If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so.’ Because going to the theatre isn’t nearly as important as saving the life of a drowning child and yet Unlucky Lisa would be permitted to do so at least once, PPBO is false. As I have shown, however, Singer’s argument (albeit modified) can still succeed; and so it does not require PPBO. At first glance, it may appear that (I*) implicitly relies on PPBO, but this is not so. Even given that it is not the case that, if you can prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, then it would be wrong not to do so, at least part of the explanation for why you ought to save the child in Drowning Children is still that you are in a position to help someone in need at a relatively small cost to yourself. Now, why exactly the latter helps to explain the former is a question open to multiple different potential answers – one of which is PPBO which Singer takes. For example, the answer might be that if it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing anything nearly as important or anything sufficiently important, then you ought to do it. Finding that PPBO is implausible, Singer’s argument (albeit modified) can still succeed, so long as Drowning Children is sufficiently analogous to the situation in which we find ourselves. This is because there are potential answers other than PPBO to the question of why it is that one’s being in a position to help someone at a relatively small cost is at least a partial explanation as to why one is obligated to save the child in Drowning Child.
In the move from Drowning Child to Drowning Children, our obligations, in a certain sense, become more modest. In the former, we are not permitted to go to the theatre instead of saving a child, whereas we are in the latter. It might be argued then that, in the gap between Drowning Children and the situation in which we find ourselves, there is more space over which our obligations are made more modest. This might be true, but it is on the person who asserts this to provide evidence that it is so. Whereas we can account for the difference in obligation between Drowning Child and Drowning Children by pointing to the prima facie morally relevant detail of anomaly, it is unclear what the morally relevant difference between the latter and our situation would be. We now move on to consider a candidate for this difference: a difference in compliance.
2.2. Disanalogy from Compliance
In Drowning Children, everyone else in a position to help is doing so, whereas, in our situation as individuals in a position to help, only a minority of us are doing so. Perhaps this difference can account for a difference in obligation between Drowning Children and our situation, then – a difference in the extent of compliance with the ‘demands of beneficence’ (crudely, the requirements stemming from our duty to help others).
Why might the extent of compliance with the demands of beneficence have any effect upon the extent of our obligations to help needy strangers? Murphy (1993) tries to illustrate why this might be by describing what it would be like for someone to try to act in accordance with the demands of beneficence whilst the extent of compliance makes no difference to them:
[S]he will know that one main reason why her compliance with the Simple Principle will result in such great sacrifice from her is that she is one of very few people who are complying with the principle. She knows that she has to do so much, just because most others are not doing what they ought to do. If everyone acted according to the Simple Principle, much less would be required of her. In the face of this she may well ask: “Why should I do just because others will do less? Surely I should only have to do my own fair share.” (277-278)
It would seem unfair for agents trying to fulfill their obligations to have to do more – to sacrifice more – just because others in a similar position are doing little or nothing at all to help those in need. As a result, Murphy argues, a plausible account of the demands of beneficence must accord with the ‘compliance condition,’ according to which such demands do not increase as expected compliance decreases (278).
There are several interesting questions brought up by Murphy’s argument here – almost all of which I do not have the space to engage with here. (Might we be able to treat the behaviour of other agents in the same way that we treat natural events such as natural disasters? Even if fairness is a relevant concern, does Singer’s thesis and/or argument really have unfair implications? etc.)[5] For the purposes of this essay, it will suffice to show that the compliance condition runs up against an intuition we have in the following case (Two Drowning Children):
Everything is the same as in Drowning Child except there are two children at serious risk of drowning in the pond, and there is another adult person in the same position as you to save them but who is choosing not to.[6]
In Two Drowning Children, you are obligated to save both children, regardless of the fact that this would be (at least partly) because not everyone in a position to help is doing so. What is more, it might well not even seem that you are any less obligated to save the second child simply in virtue of the presence of the second adult. At the very least, even if you are less obligated to save the second child, the reduction in this obligation would not be so great that trivial pleasures such as bigger TVs and more glamourous cars could suffice to out-weigh it – and this would be so regardless of the number of apathetic bystanders. These intuitions, running up against the compliance condition, is stronger than the intuition in favour of the compliance condition shed light upon by Murphy in his passage above. As a result, it does not really seem that a difference in the extent of compliance with the demands of beneficence can really account for a difference in obligation between Drowning Children and the situation in which we find ourselves.
Two of the strongest and most common ‘objections from disanalogy’ against Singer’s argument each fail to undermine the claim that Drowning Child is sufficiently similar to the situation in which we find ourselves to ground Singer’s thesis that we ought to be doing more than we are. Let us now move on to consider the ‘objections from ignorance.’
3. Objections from Ignorance
So our obligations to help those in need is similar to that in Drowning Child (or at least that in Drowning Children). Nevertheless, some will want to deny that we can be sure our current behaviour towards those in need is doing any less to help them than any alternative would. Although we do incur costs in some sense as things stand, we do not do so (often enough) for the sake of others, but for our own sakes, and so these are not costs in a real sense or at least in the sense they are being spoken of here. Therefore, objections from ignorance very simply deny the second premise of Singer’s argument, stating that there are no costs we can incur for the effective betterment of others in great need.
Ignorance objections are a common response to Singer’s argument and particularly to his thesis. The considerations often brought up against these are those of what would happen to, for example, theatre and the arts if everyone were to act in accordance with Singer’s (III) and make sacrifices (including financial) with a view to helping those in need. If everyone were to start taking on (more) costs for the sake of the needy, so the argument goes, then the organisations and institutions which are relatively unimportant compared to the suffering of the needy, but nevertheless still important, will lose funding and maybe cease to exist. Now, although those deprived of theatre might not plausibly be added to the class of ‘those in need,’ and so this might not seem to be an ignorance objection, the main point of this argument is to say that acting in accordance with Singer’s thesis will be worse for people, rather than better. For this reason, I still consider this line to be an ‘objection from ignorance.’
In philosophy, we find the objection from ignorance most powerfully put by Jason Brennan (2021) in what I call his ‘ignorance from economic uncertainty objection.’ ‘In 1950,’ Brennan informs us, ‘Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan were very poor,’ and as a result their citizens suffered to such an extent that Singer would have deemed them worthy recipients of help. ‘In 2020,’ however, ‘[these countries] are very rich,’ and Singer would judge their citizens to be the appropriate givers of help (that is, the targets of his argument). According to Brennan, the improvements in the lives of these citizens came about ‘precisely because people ignored Singer’s advice.’ This is because these changes are the result of ‘people in already rich countries [buying] toys, transistor radios, stereos, video game consoles, VCRs, DVD players, Blu-ray players, smartphones, automobiles, electronics, and a wide range of other morally insignificant luxury goods they didn’t need from these countries.’ (153-154) People in need were helped as a result of other people’s engagement with – and not departure from – the contemporary affluent ‘consumer society,’ and so it would seem that making sacrifices for the sake of the needy (acting in accordance with Singer’s thesis) will not always be the best way to help those in need, and will in fact sometimes be to their detriment.
Where both of these arguments go wrong is in failing to recognise that – even and especially according to Singer – what everyone else is doing with their time and money is a morally-relevant consideration bearing on the assessment of what we ourselves ought to do to help those in need: recall that, in Two Drowning Children, the second adult’s inaction generates an obligation to save the second child that wouldn’t otherwise be there, and that it is this feature of Singer’s view that Murphy finds so unfair. Both Brennan’s argument and the concern expressed by many rely on the idea that for each of us to be ‘listening to Singer’ or ‘taking Singer’s advice,’ we would cease funding personal projects and ineffective charities, and donate to effective aid organisations, regardless of what most other people in our position are doing. As outlined in (1.1), this is not quite this simple. In light of an significant increase in the number of people motivated and likely to act in accordance with Singer’s argument in FAM, what exactly it would entail regarding the course of action each of us should take would be less clear. Nevertheless, it is implausible that Singer’s thesis, even in such a scenario, would prescribe each of us to indulge in the consumer society and nothing else, as it is still unlikely that this would be the best means of helping those in need across the world. The arguments from ignorance, although appearing to strongly undermine Singer’s argument for that we ought to be doing more than we are, in fact fails to upon inspection.
Conclusion
Peter Singer has argued that we ought to be doing much more than we are to help those suffering and dying from a lack of food, shelter, and medical care. I have defended this claim against so-called ‘objections from disanalogy’ and ‘objections from ignorance’ against Singer’s argument. At most, as it stands, Singer’s argument requires modification (see 2.1). Nevertheless, his thesis remains plausible in the face of arguments both that his Drowning Child is too dissimilar to our situation to support his conclusion, and that, for all we know, what we are doing is just as good for those in need as what we might do.
One might wonder whether this finding is significant. Indeed, Timmerman has claimed that ‘[f]ew moral truths… seem more obvious than that one is obligated to sacrifice $200 to save a child’s life at least once.’ (2015: 211) In light of the arguments against Singer’s thesis that are often given, and which I have attempted to give philosophical credibility in this piece, this thesis is indeed significant and informative.
The next time you are asked for some money by a homeless person, I encourage you to seriously consider how that money of yours would otherwise be spent, and ask yourself the following question: is it really plausible that this money will go towards something worthwhile enough for me to keep it for myself?
Word count: 5747
References
Brennan, J. (2021). Why It’s OK to Want to Be Rich. Routledge.
Harman, E. (2016). Morally Permissible Moral Mistakes. Ethics 126 (2). 366-393
Murphy, L. (1993). The Demands of Beneficence. Philosophy & Public Affairs 22 (4). 267-292
Singer, P. (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (3). 229-243
Singer, P. (2010). The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty. Random House.
Timmerman, T. (2015). Sometimes there is nothing wrong with letting a child drown. Analysis 75 (2). 204-212
Footnotes
[1] To be clear, this is not, in fact, a likely feature of common-sense morality – indeed, that we have an intuition against it in Drowning Child below proves this. I simply use ‘common-sense morality’ here to refer to a principle people often (implicitly) accept before reflecting upon cases such as Drowning Child.
[2] Other strong objections from disanalogy exist (e.g., from whether the cause of need is structural injustice, and specifically whether helping would entail lifestyle change), but these are to feature in another piece.
[3] To see why these might come apart – particularly (i) and (iii) – see Harman (2016).
[4] The move from (III) to (III+) requires that we accept a suppressed premise along the lines of that we are not taking on (enough of) the relatively small cost we are in a position to to help those in need. I am happy for the soundness of Singer’s argument to be conditional on the truth of this premise.
[5] These interesting questions I have taken from my supervisor – Claire Benn – ‘s undergraduate dissertation ‘The Demands of Beneficence: Can Murphy’s Collective Principle of Beneficence Give a Plausible Account of Beneficence?’ (2009).
[6] A similar modification of Drowning Child can be found in Murphy (1993: 291).