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Rationalized Selfishness Or Reasonable Skepticism?: Objections to Singer and Unger on the Obligations of the Affluent

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Rationalized Selfishness Or Reasonable Skepticism?: Objections to Singer and Unger on the Obligations of the Affluent University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies Legacy Theses 2001 Rationalized selfishness or reasonable skepticism?: objections to singer and unger on the obligations of the affluent Nathoo, Al-Noor Nenshi Nathoo, A. N. (2001). Rationalized selfishness or reasonable skepticism?: objections to singer and unger on the obligations of the affluent (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/19200 http://hdl.handle.net/1880/41113 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Rationalized Selfishness or Reasonable Skepticism? Objections to Singer and Unger on the Obligations of the Affluent Al-Noor Nenshi Nathoo A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTV OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY CALGARY, ALBERTA AUGUST, 2001 O Al-Noor Nenshi Nathoo 2001 National Library Biiiothhque nationale I*I du Canada uisitions and Acquisitions el 9-Bib lographic Services services bibliographiques The author has granted a non- L7auteura accorde une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive pennettant a la Natiod Library of Canada to BibliothQue nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, preter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette these sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format electronique. The author retains owndpof the L'auteur conserve la propriete du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protege cette these. thesis nor substantial extracts from it Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otheMlise de celle-ci ne doivent etre imprids reproduced without the author7s ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Abstract Peter Singer and Peter Unger suggest that the majority of the world's affluent act immorally in failing to contribute substantial portions of their earnings to the lessening of poverty-related suffering and premature death in distant nations. In this paper, I attempt to shed doubt on the plausibility of using, as defenses against such a claim, the assertions that: 1) development aid is ineffective or selfdefeating; 2) morality does not require us to weigh the needs of all equally from an impartial standpoint; and 3) the affluent have limited obligations to assist those physically and socially distant. I provide an argument for shifting the focus of such inquiries from providing aid to addressing injustice, and outline several additional areas of analysis that will be crucial in properly assessing the nature and magnitude of the obligations of the world's materially wealthy to its poor. iii Dedication To Shaheen, for her love Table of Contents &oroval Paae ii ... Abstract 111 Dedication iv Table of Contents v Introduction Limitations & Assumptions Singer: The Drowning Child Unger: The Envelope and The Vintage Sedan Distance and Experience Multitudes and Numbers Time and Sorts of Situation Morally Relevant Distinctions Cha~terI: Promising Objections 23 The Lifeboat 23 Carrying Capacity and the Lifeboat Analogy 25 The Malthusian Paradigm 28 The Problem with Food Aid 34 From Food to Development Aid 39 Impartial Morality From Subjective to Objective Impartiality in Principle Context-sensitive Subjectivity Obligations to the ~istant- Reciprocity Affiliation Loyalty Provincialism as Anachronism Cha~terII: From Svm~tornsto Causes Poverty in Context: Global Structures International Financial Institutions Whatever Happened to Keynes? Capital without Borders When Elephants Stomp the Ground Moral Implications of Systemic Failures In Defense of Justice Chanter Ill: The Cost of Livina Morallv 110 Looking Back 110 Sketching the Landscape Ahead 112 Ethics is too Demanding 118 Philosophers should not only interpret our beliefs; when they are false, they should change them Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons The cost of dinner for two in a moderately expensive New York restaurant, Thomas Nagel has remarked, is roughly equivalent to the per capita annual income of Bangladesh. Information from reputed international aid sources indicate that three dollars is likely a reasonable estimate of the average cost of purchasing, transporting and administering several packets of oral rehydration therapy, designed to stem dehydration caused by diarrhea, to a child in the developing world who, were it not for her appropriately consuming them, would otherwise likely become one of the approximately 30,000 children on the planet who die each day from easily preventable causes1. These statistics evidence a set of circumstances which raises a compelling moral question for the world's materially fortunate: what obligations does such a state of affairs impose, if any, on those who have access to the means by which to mitigate the suffering thereby caused - a category into which most peoples of the developed world fall? Two important works in the philosophical literature appear to have become benchmarks against which philosophical attempts at engaging the issue are often juxtaposed. Peter Singer left little scope for the leisure pursuits of the wealthy in the famed and controversial Famine, Amuence and Morality? Peter Unger's more comprehensive treatment of the question in Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence, more than two decades later, is dedicated in part to providing, via dissimilar means, argument for an identical conclusion. The central claim of both authors, and one which this work will take as its starting point, is that the citizens of the industrialized world have a moral obligation to contribute substantial portions of their earnings to lessening suffering and premature death from poverty-related causes? Thomas Nagel's remark is taken from Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 190. Oral rehydration therapy costs are gleaned from sources at UNICEF, The Rockefeller Foundation and Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, by and as cited in Peter Unger, Livina Hiah and Lettina Die: Our Illusion of Innocence, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 3-4. The number of child deaths worldwide due mainly to easily preventable causes are as cited in UNICEF, State of the World's Children 2000, (New York: UNICEF, 2000), p. 16. Peter Singer, 'Famine, Affluence and Morality", Philoso~hvand Public Affairs, Volume 1, Issue 3, Spring 1972. pp. 229-43. Reprinted with a postscript in W~lliarnAiken and Hugh La Follette, World Hunaer and Moral Obliqation, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977), pp. 22-36. Unger takes this conclusion one step further in positing a duty to resort, in defined circumstances, to acts of fraud, embezzlement and intentionally inflicted harm in the name of relief of greater suffering. That such a claim would meet with considerable and strenuous objection in the academic philosophy community, let alone the wider populace, is hardly surprising. Yet the sheer import of that conclusion, if it is indeed defensible, on our generally accepted understanding of what it means to lead a moral life in affluent societies, suggests that it is insufficient to dismiss such claims as tenuous or counterintuitive without more careful scrutiny. The following is an attempt to take up that challenge, albeit in modest proportion. My aim will be to selectively focus on several potentially powerful objections that have been leveled at Singer and Unger's central claim in an effort to determine whether these constitute reasonable responses or rationalizations of wrongful selfishness. As a portion of Singer's work implicitly, and Ungets work explicitly, is premised on the fallibility of these objections, an attempt to deconstruct them will assist in the partial evaluation of these authors' works, though this shall not by any means be the object of this enterprise. Nor will this project aim to provide, owing to limitations of space, any sort of overarching account of, or firm conclusion regarding, the obligations of the world's affluent to its poorest. It is nevertheless my hope that the exploration will shed more light of reason on the grave and daunting question of what it means for the materially well-endowed to live morally. I begin the investigation by issuing below important caveats to which to attend in a work of this nature and regarding a subject matter of such striking depth and complexity. A subsequent descriptive account of the arguments fomvarded by Singer in his seminal paper and several later works on the topic, as well as those of Unger in the pivotal first and second chapters of his relevant opus, lay the groundwork for the central normative analysis to follow. Chapter I provides a critical examination of three promising objections made at a general and theoretical level against such stringent accounts of our obligations as has been proposed by Singer and Unger. In particular, I examine: the common claim that famine relief and development aid are self-defeating; the metaethical concern that morality conceived as strict impartiality is untenable;
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