A response to an attempted rebuttal of maximising ethics
Please also find this on my blog here
I am using the word ‘maximising’ here as an adjective, rather than as a verb. By ‘maximising ethics’, I mean a system of ethics according to which one ought to do as much good as they can do, however ‘the good’ is understood or defined.
Myself and others have become compelled to adopt a ‘maximising ethics’ by which to live. For some of us, this was prompted by exposure to some of the works of Peter Singer. In Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Singer asserts that ‘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.’ (Singer, 1972: 231) He takes this conclusion from the intuitions that most of us share in response to a very simple but powerful thought experiment he created: ‘if I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing.’ (Ibid.)
Nevertheless, by many, Singer’s principle is considered too demanding. Indeed, it would appear impossible to live by a principle according to which you are doing something wrong whenever you buy a coffee, given that the money spent on this coffee could be donated to an effective charity which works towards preventing suffering, injustice, premature death, or moral catastrophe. The moral value corresponding to the pleasure you derive from the coffee is very low, whereas these causes are of great moral importance. Donation to effective charities is likely to contribute towards tackling problems and bringing about tangible change for the better.
It is important to note that the demandingness of Singer’s theory bears nothing on its truth or falsity. Notwithstanding, the demandingness of this principle, combined with the validity of Singer’s argumentation, has motivated his contemporaries to find and to provide a valid *counter-*argument, so that they can rest assured that they are not, in fact, falling short of what is morally required of them in their day-to-day lives.
One such counter-argument is forthcoming from philosopher Travis Timmerman (2015). Timmerman argues that Singer’s maximising principle does not follow from the intuitions that we have in response to his thought experiment, because these are found on the assumption that, in it, we have ‘not frequently sacrificed [our] new clothes to save children in the past and will not need to do so frequently in the future.’ (Timmerman, 2015: 207) Timmerman then goes on to propose a thought experiment which he believes would be more appropriate as a grounding for Singer’s maximising principle: if, every day, you come across a vast space of land covered with hundreds of newly formed shallow ponds, each containing a drowning child, on the way to the bank to stop $200 from being taken out of your bank every 5 minutes, you would be morally permitted to stop saving children at a point at which the amount of money you have left is more than you need to buy things only of moral importance comparable to the life of a child. (Timmerman, 2015: 208-210)
However, these intuitions (that from Singer’s and from Timmerman’s thought experiments) might be in tension with one another. After all, it would seem that to alter what we see as following from Singer’s ‘drowning child’ such that it is a less demanding principle would be to do so ad hoc (for this, without a more stable basis for the proposition), in response to this problem of demandingness. If our intuitions from ‘drowning child’ and those from ‘drowning children’ are inconsistent, therefore, then one must be less trustworthy; we must prioritise one over the other. Doing this, it would be most appropriate to abandon the intuition which justifies our complacency arbitrarily, rather than the one which prompts us to increase our output by appeals to moral consistency. In fact, it being permissible to act in the way Timmerman suggests in his ‘drowning children’ is not necessarily contradictory to Singer’s maximising principle.
Instead, therefore, I suggest that the way in which we reconcile ourselves with the demandingness of maximising ethics is not by kidding ourselves that it is not the case that we ought to be doing the most good that we can, but, instead, by taking into consideration the influence the demandingness of a principle to live by has upon our ability to live by it. This way, to give up our coffees is not merely to give up the pleasure we periodically derive from it, but is also to risk giving up a lifestyle according to which we live according to a maximising principle such as Singer’s, due to that the demandingness this entails might be more than we can bear—and this risk is in fact of very high moral significance!
Sources
Singer, P. (1972). Famine, affluence and morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1 (3). 229-243.
Timmerman, T. (2015). Sometimes there is nothing wrong with letting a child drown. Analysis, 75 (2). 204-212.
I’m not sure I follow Timmerman’s thought experiment, but his conclusion seems to be that everyone is indeed morally obliged to live up to Singer’s maximisation principle as best they can, while recognising that they fall short of perfection. They may allow themselves such things as coffee and sleep, but only to the extent that they would otherwise be less productive of good. These things are a cost paid in order to maximise one’s effectiveness, not any sort of turning away from that obligation. Food, sleep, R&R: these are permitted only as a preparation for more good works. The less of these things one needs the better a person one is, and there is continually the obligation to ask oneself, could I be doing even more for others with even less for myself?
A marathon runner aiming to make the best time cannot simply run flat out, but must make careful use of their physical resources throughout the race, while never slacking off for even one second. Just so, everyone is obliged to do the most good for others that they can, which includes managing their own well-being in order to make their lives as effective to that end as possible. Rest is a preparation for work. Sleep is a preparation for work. Food is a preparation for work. Everything is either work, or a preparation for work. The work is not a sprint, nor a marathon, but is for the whole of your life. Doing good isn’t everything, it’s the only thing, and always remember that while you’re sleeping, people are suffering.
I decline to board that train of thought, because I know where it ends.
What compels you? You read some words in a book and suddenly they take over your head?
I guess you could interpret Timmerman as consistent with Singer, but I personally think that he is trying to provide justification for behaviour that it entirely self-regarding and to the extent that it is superfluous to what is required for maximal output.
Yes
Assuming that your “2: Yes” is in response to my question about a book taking over your head, are you satisfied with that result, and with the process by which it happened? A while back I recast my stark presentation of EA totalism as a collection of 1000 (and growing) Insanity Wolf memes. I wrote that page with the intention of being anti-persuasive of the thesis, but how do they come across to you?
Singer seems to take a small unquantified intuition and apply it generally, without regard to scaling or repeatability. The hidden assumption there is that ‘comparable moral importance’ is obvious or even meaningful. And what work is the word “moral” doing in that sentence? Why not just “comparable personal importance”? It seems like it’s a mechanism to prevent noticing that tradeoffs are the actual hard part, and saying “moral” tries to keep the decision out of the realm of logic and choice.
It does not seem to me that the reasons to save the drowning child could be ‘personal’ or self-regarding, and even if they could, they would be such that from them follow other imperatives that are at least seemingly other-regarding and on which the term ‘moral’ would be, I think, appropriate.
As for the scaling objection, it is a good one and one that has appeared in the comment section of my link-post on the EA forum. I will say here what I did there: that it seems very counter-intuitive to me to suppose there are no ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ and only things that are ‘better’ and ‘worse’, and that even if this is true, it would be useful to sometimes suppose the former exist, and distinguish between actions which come in the former category and those which come in the latter.
There are LOTS of ways that saving the drowning child could be self-regarding. It could be part of your self-image and feeling good. It could be to make you look good to others when talking about it later (or to avoid criticism for failing when someone notices you were near the dead kid earlier). It could be you’re hoping to set a precedent for someone saving you later. Singer’s example encourages you to ignore most of these considerations, but then doesn’t acknowledge that your intuitions about “correct action” are built from these considerations.
I think whether you say “right vs wrong” or “better vs worse”, you’re still comparing on only one dimension, and you still fall prey to the generalization/scaling problem: there are, in real actions, always variations in context, expected results, and resources available that a thought experiment can’t capture, and that will make a given intuition differ across instances. You can’t take an easy choice and then assert it’s universal.
Yes, these are the self-regarding reasons I imagined you had in mind. My point stands, however, that the behaviour is at least seemingly other-regarding, and it is still action to which the term ‘moral’ appropriately applies. The kinds of things you are surmising about here are for the realm of meta-ethics and moral psychology; not normative and applied ethics. It might well be that I am only motivated by self-interest to act seemingly morally in accordance with consistency (crudely, that ‘egoism’ is true), but this says nothing as to what this moral system or what consistency requires.
Maybe I’m confused, but I think there’s a crux in there. Sure, you CAN define “moral” as “other-regarding”, and it’s an operational-ish classification. But that doesn’t resolve the problem that actual decisions and behaviors do not make this distinction very sharply. Both practical/self-regarding and other-regarding aspects are part of decision criteria, but even worse, MOST considerations blend them in confusing-to-introspect ways.
You end up with EITHER “separate moral reasoning domain is unhelpful” or “morals may be fairly straightforward, but they don’t fully apply to most situations”.