PHL A11 Introduction to Ethics Lecture by Peter Singer PDF

PHL A11 Introduction to Ethics October 4 Peter Singer Peter Singer An Australian philosopher who asks us to devote our lives to doing as much good as we can, for other humans and for all sentient animals. 2 ● Meet Singer Lecture plan ● Idea 1: the life you can save ● Idea 2: the duty to give...

PHL A11 Introduction to Ethics October 4 Peter Singer Peter Singer An Australian philosopher who asks us to devote our lives to doing as much good as we can, for other humans and for all sentient animals. 2 ● Meet Singer Lecture plan ● Idea 1: the life you can save ● Idea 2: the duty to give 3 On Thursday… ● Recap of ideas 1 and 2 ● Idea 3: speciesism 4 ● Singer was born in 1946 to a family of Austrian Jews, who fled to Australia to escape the Nazi occupation. ● He studied philosophy in Australia and then at Oxford. He now teaches in Australia and at Princeton. ● He calls his philosophy practical ethics: ethics aimed at addressing practical questions of how to live in the modern world. ● He’s an intellectual leader of two modern-day ethical movements: effective altruism and animal liberation. 5 Singer’s big idea 1: The life you can save 6 Imagine that, on your way to work, you see a child drowning in a pond. You can easily rescue the child, but you’ll be late to work and you’ll ruin your new shoes and pants. What should you do? 7 Now imagine that you are watching videos on YouTube and you see an appeal from UNICEF, asking you help people whose lives are endangered by a famine, war, or natural disaster on the other side of the world. Unicef says that your donation would provide food, shelter and medical care to children in need. What should you do? 8 Lives you can save Most people think it would be morally wrong not to save the drowning child, even if it costs you a new pair of shoes. But thousands of children die preventable deaths every day—from hunger, unclean drinking water, or preventable diseases. Most of those children are far away from Canada: we don’t see their poverty. But, because of the work of charities like UNICEF and Oxfam, we can help some of these children by giving up some of our money. If it’s morally wrong to let a child drown because you’d rather not ruin your shoes, isn’t it also morally wrong to led a child die in another country because you’d rather not donate to charity? 9 This argument might seem most persuasive when applied to the superrich. How could people be justified in buying luxury yachts or watches when so many people are living in absolute poverty? 10 But the problem, Singer thinks, isn’t just with the superrich. We all spend money on things we don’t really “need”: brand clothing, restaurant dinners, coffees and bubble teas, etc. “Is it possible that by choosing to spend your money on such things rather than contributing to an aid agency, you are leaving a child to die, a child you could have saved?” (Singer 2010, 5) 11 First premise: Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad. Second premise: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong to do so. Third premise: By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important. Conclusion: Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong. The “drowning child” example is just to get us thinking. Singer also offers this argument for his view (15-16). This is what philosophers call a “valid” argument: if we accept the premises, we logically must accept the conclusion. In other words, if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. So, to reject the conclusion, we have to find a good reason to reject one of the premises. 12 First premise: Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad. Second premise: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong to do so. Third premise: By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important. The first premise is a value claim: it says that something—unnecessary suffering and death—is morally bad. As value claims go, this one seems hard to deny. Would you deny it? Conclusion: Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong. 13 First premise: Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad. Second premise: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong to do so. Third premise: By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important. Conclusion: Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong. The second premise sets out a moral principle: it says it is wrong to act in a certain way. Singer doesn’t tell us what counts as “sacrificing anything nearly as important,” leaving us to decide that for ourselves. As he puts it: “Nearly as important” is a vague term. That’s deliberate, because I’m confident that you can do without plenty of things that are clearly and inarguably not as valuable as saving a child’s life” (17). 14 First premise: Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad. Second premise: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong to do so. Third premise: By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important. Conclusion: Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong. The third premise is a factual claim. It says that it is in fact possible to prevent suffering and death, by donating to charity. This seems true. It might not have been true in a less globalized world, but it is true now. If you think that some charities waste a lot of the donations they receive, that’s just a reason to give to better charities. 15 The numbers… According to calculations by GiveWell, the most effective way to save lives is by giving to charities that provide medicine and bednets to treat and prevent malaria. By giving to the best malaria charities, we will save, on average, one child with every $5000 donated. (One bednet costs about $5.) So, saving lives by giving to charity is more costly than rescuing a drowning child from a pond. Still, $5000 isn’t out of reach reach for many people. Over your lifetime, you will likely be able to donate this amount of money, probably several times over. We can also reduce suffering, e.g. due to hunger, by donating smaller amounts of money. 16 First premise: Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad. Second premise: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong to do so. Third premise: By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important. Conclusion: Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong. Unless we can find a reason to reject one of Singer’s premises, his conclusion must be true. But the conclusion has radical implications for we should be living. Since there are so many people in need in the world, “you must keep cutting back on unnecessary spending, and donating what you save, until you have reduced yourself to the point where if you give any more, you will be sacrificing something nearly as important as a child’s life” (18). 17 The life you can save: study questions Interpretative questions (about what the author means): What moral lesson does Singer draw from his “drowning child” example? What is Singer’s argument for donating to aid agencies? What are the implications of this argument for how we ought to be living? Critical questions (about whether the author makes a good argument): Do you accept all the premises of Singer’s argument? If you had to raise an objection to the argument, which premise would you target? How might Singer reply to your objection? 18 Singer’s big idea 2: The duty to give 19 There are different ways to try to resist Singer’s argument. In the reading, Singer considers some common objections. There’s no universal moral code for everyone. We each get to make up our own mind about how much we owe to others. People work for their money and have a right to spend it as they choose. We have a moral duty not to harm others, but we don’t have a duty to help people whom we haven’t harmed in any way. In answering these objections, Singer seeks to show that we have a moral duty to give far more money to good charities. If we don’t, we’re like the person who ignores the drowning child. 20 This first objection appeals to moral relativism. Singer replies to it (at p. 25) in much the same way as I did in our first week of lectures. There’s no universal moral code for everyone. We each get to make up our own mind about how much we owe to others. ➔ We do seem to think there are some objective moral values. For example, most people think it’s objectively wrong to torture kittens: this isn’t “just a matter of opinion.” ➔ Even if ethics is relative, you still need to decide what you believe. You might still find it hard to disagree with Singer’s premises, whether or not ethics is truly “objective.” 21 People work for their money and have a right to spend it as they choose. This second objection appeals to the idea of rights, specifically the right to do what you want with your own money. See pp. 26-28 of the readings for Singer’s reply. ➔ “Having a right” to spend your money as you choose just means that other people can’t force you to give to charity. It doesn’t answer the question of whether you ought to give to charity. 22 This third objection appeals to a distinction between not causing harm and helping people we haven’t harmed. See pp. 28-33 of the readings for Singer’s reply. We have a moral duty not to harm others, but we don’t have a duty to help people whom we haven’t harmed in any way. ➔ He doesn’t think the distinction holds up. You didn’t push the drowning child into the pond, but shouldn’t you still pull him out? ➔ In any case, people in rich countries are harming the global poor. Most obviously, our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to climate change that will disproportionately harm the poorest communities. 23 The duty to give: study questions Interpretative questions (about what the author means): How does Singer respond to the objection that morality is relative or subjective? How does Singer respond to the objection that people have a right to do what they want with their own money? How does Singer respond to the objection that we only have a duty not to harm others, not a duty to help people whom we haven’t harmed? Critical questions (about whether the author makes a good argument): Are you persuaded by Singer’s replies to these objections? Can you think ways to respond to Singer’s replies? 24