AFFLUENCE AND MORALITY

Human actions: a typology

From the perspective of ethics, actions may be divided into 3 categories:

1) Permissible2) Non-permissible (forbidden)3) Obligatory

‘Supererogatory’ actions

Supererogatory actions are a subset of permissible actions; they are those actions which are ‘beyond the call of duty’; it is laudable to do such actions but not reprehensible if not done.

(Singer, 1972, p. 235)

Some uncomfortable facts

2010: approx. 21000 children under 5 died daily of hunger.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 1 child in 8 dies before the age of 5.

(UNICEF)

A sign of hope

To feed a schoolchild in the developing world, it costs $0.25 per day ($50 per year).

Enough food is grown each year to nourish the world’s population; it is the unequal distribution of food which causes starvation.

(World Food Programme)

Peter Singer

Death by starvation is bad.If we can prevent something bad

“without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”

(Singer, 1972, p. 231)

Who decides what is of “comparable moral importance”?

Singer (cont.)

Can we prevent death by starvation?

(‘Ought implies can”).

Singer and supererogatory actions

For Singer, preventing people from starving (by giving money to charity) is not supererogatory; it is obligatory, and not preventing starvation is wrong (unless we thereby sacrifice something of at least equal moral importance).

Moral excuses I

‘My duty to help is limited by the duty of others to help’.

Shouldn’t everybody be giving an equal (and relatively modest) amount?

Moral excuses II

‘Helping the world’s poor is the job of my government’.

Overseas Development Aid statistics

Moral excuses III

‘How do I know that charities will use the money effectively?’

http://www.givewell.net

Singer and Pogge

What is the main difference between Pogge’s Global Resource Dividend and Singer’s proposals?

Does Peter Singer practice what he preaches?