We must save the children!
True, but we can take our own to Six Flags?
The other day I outlined Peter Singer’s famous argument that we, as individuals and a society, must give an enormous percentage of our income to the global needy.
Here are some responses and concerns that Singer doesn’t account for:
1. Most people, due to their human nature, are incapable of giving, say, 75% of their income to the needy. What is the point of a moral prescription that is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to apply? Is moral theory worth anything if it demands impossible action; is it not just useless drivel along the lines of “everyone must be extraordinarily happy!”? Singer might reply that his demands are not impossible, but rather very hard. Though, Singer in his personal life doesn’t fully comply.
2. Singer’s “strong-principle” argument has more theoretical weaknesses. The main issue is that if we spend all our time earning money to save the lives of African children, we don’t have time for other value-laden things and activities, i.e. caring for and loving our own children and communities; producing and enjoying art; studying the universe, etc. Now, in a given time-slice, the comparison between one of these goods and saving a life will seem straight-forward. For instance, you have $50 dollars in your hand: Will you use it to save the life of an African child or to take your daughter to an amusement park? The answer seems obvious: save the life! But, if we repeat this game over the course of our lives, the principle is less clear. For, if we spend our lives working tirelessly to earn and send money to Africa, always ignoring our daughter, then the loving parent-child relationship will be destroyed, in addition to many other valuable activities and ends.
Let’s assume we believe everyone ought to live by the general principles we endorse. If we endorse Singer’s strong principle—thereby believing everyone should live by it—then the world would be a strange, cold, and worse place. Parent-child relationships, art, education, cuisine, etc.—all would go by the wayside, to say nothing of personal fulfillment. The conclusion to all this is that what may seem grotesque in a given time-slice (i.e. taking your daughter to an amusement park and letting the African child die), is justifiable and arguably required sometimes, out of a concern for the value inherent, say, in the institution of a loving parent-child relationship. The value of this insitution can certainly go toe-to-toe with the value of children’s lives in Africa.
This is an attempt to criticize Singer from his own universalist perspective, which views the moral world from above, mostly ignoring or disagreeing with the notion that we have special obligations to certain people (i.e. our daughters). If we endorse those special obligations, then it is even easier to conclude that Singer goes too far.
All of that said, there still is a moral requirement to care for the global needy, and at levels much higher than we, as individuals and a government, do now. The deeper question is where do we draw the line? What is reasonable, as Marc asks? My point here is that Singer has not circumvented this question.
3. As a practical matter, it would be more useful to develop the institutions of the poorest countries, rather than just sending money to their corrupt governments. Singer would have no problem with this.
-Jake
Related posts:
- We must save the children
- Would health care save lives?
- Do you have to give your kid your kidney?
- Who decides what’s best for children?
- How we feel versus what we do
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