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World Hunger& Poverty

World Hunger& Poverty

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Arthur’s Central ArgumentJohn Arthur: “World Hunger and Moral Obligation”

1) Ignores an important moral factor: entitlement. 2) Demands an overhauling of our moral code, which is not

required.

Singer’s argument:

The General PrincipleSinger’s General Principle (Arthur calls it the “greater moral evil rule”) requires substantial redistribution of wealth.

• “If it is in out power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”

• Recall pond example: “The greater moral evil rule thus seems a natural way of capturing why we think it would be wrong not to help.” (459)

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The General Principle• Moral Equality: We are attracted to the idea that like amounts

of suffering (or the opposite) are of equal significance, regardless of who is experiencing them: “[E]quality demands equal consideration of interests as well as respect for certain rights.” (459)

• If we fail to give to famine relief, instead spending our money on a new car or fancy clothes, we are giving special consideration to ourselves or to our group, like a racist does. Equal consideration leads naturally to the greater moral evil rule.

• There is, however, a flip-side to equality that Singer ignores: entitlement, which falls into two broad categories.

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Forms of Entitlement: (1) RightsThought Experiment 1: Where you have two eyes and two kidneys, some other person is blind or has a disease that is destroying her kidneys. You can donate one of your eyes or one of your kidneys, to restore her sight, or extend her life. Of course, you will, in doing so, lose something: either depth perception, or, possibly, some life expectancy.

Thought Experiment 2: There is some person who, we can imagine, will be psychologically harmed by your not granting sexual favors to them. Of course, you do not want to grant such sexual favors, and you will be, in some less strong way, harmed by granting them.

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Forms of Entitlement: (1) Rights (cont’d)• According to the General Principle, to be justified in refusing,

you must show that the unpleasantness you would experience is of equal importance to the harm you are preventing. Otherwise, you must consent.

• “If anything is clear, however, it is that our code does not require such heroism; you are entitled to keep your second eye and kidney and not bestow sexual favors on anyone who may be harmed without them.” (460)

• That it’s your body, and you have a right to it, outweighs any duty you have to help.

• (Recall discussion on a woman’s right to her body versus her duty to the fetus.)

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Forms of Entitlement: (1) Rights (cont’d)

1) Negative Rights: rights of noninterference.Moral rights are divided into two categories:

The right to life, property rights, the right to privacy, etc. Negative rights are natural, depending on what you are.

2) Positive Rights: rights of recipience. Your legal wards have a right to be fed, clothed, and

housed. Contractual rights, say, in business dealings, include the

right not to be left holding the bag. Positive rights are not natural; they arise because others

have promised, agreed, or contracted to give you something.

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Forms of Entitlement: (1) Rights (cont’d)

• Such a right would be positive, but you have made no promises nor entered into any contract with this person, so no such right exists.

• Where the wards of a lifeguard, for instance, have a right to the lifeguard’s help, they do not have the same right to help from bystanders.

• Bystanders may act cruelly in not helping a drowning child, but they do not thereby violate anyone’s rights.

• We are entitled to invoke our own rights as justification for not giving to distant strangers or when the cost to us is substantial (an eye or a kidney, for example).

A duty to help a stranger in need is not the result of a right he has.

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Forms of Entitlement: (2) Deserts

• A farmer’s deserts may be outweighed by the needs of his neighbors, but this is not to say that his deserts have no moral weight.

• Negative Deserts: A Nazi war criminal deserves punishment, and that will be a reason to send him to jail. But if nobody will be deterred by his suffering, or if he is old and harmless, this may weigh against his punishment. But this doesn’t mean that he doesn’t still deserve punishment.

The farmer who grows his good deserves it because he earned it through his hard work.

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Our Moral Code

• Whether we have rights to our money, property, eyes, etc., depends on how we came to acquire them.

• Our common moral code requires that we ignore neither consequences nor entitlements.

• Rights and deserts should not be discounted when considering the morality of our actions.

Where our moral code tends to look to the future (toward consequences), entitlements look to the past:

• There seems no easy way to compare these factors.

Are such values as rights and entitlements outweighed by more fundamental values, such as fairness, justice, or respect for others?

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Our Moral Code (cont’d)

1) As such, it must gain the support of (almost) everyone.2) An ideal code cannot assume people are more unselfish

than we are: “Rules that would work only for angels are not the ones it is rational to support for humans.” (461)

3) An ideal code cannot assume we are more objective than we are.

4) An ideal code cannot assume that we have perfect knowledge.

Above all else, the moral code that it is rational for us to support must be practical—i.e., it must work.

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Our Moral Code (cont’d)

• Getting one’s pants muddy would likely not result in significant reduction in one’s happiness.

• Giving up one’s savings, one’s eye, or one’s kidney would likely result in significant reduction in one’s happiness.

• An ideal moral code would probably not look too much different from our current working code.

A reasonable moral code, then, would require people to help when there is no substantial cost to themselves—where helping would not mean significant reduction in a person’s current level of happiness.