Philosophy 20: Ethics

Pierce College

Department of History, Philosophy, & Sociology

Lecture Notes for Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality"

Singer's Thesis

"I shall argue that the way people in relatively affluent countries react to a situation like that in Bengal cannot be justified; indeed, the whole way we look at moral issues–our moral conceptual scheme–needs to be altered, and with it, the way of life that has come to be taken for granted in our society."

Prevention Principle

Singer's next "point:" "if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it."

Comparable Importance

"By 'without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance' I mean without causing anything else comparably bad to happen, or doing something that is wrong in itself, or failing to promote some moral good, comparable in significance to the bad thing that we can prevent."

In Other Words

The prevention principle "requires us only to prevent what is bad, and to promote what is good, and it requires this of us only when we can do it without sacrificing anything that is, from the moral point of view, comparably important."

The Famous Kid/Shoes Example

"[I]f I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out."

"This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing."

No Distance Condition

Notice that the principle does not have qualification about proximity.

"It makes no moral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbor's child ten yards from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away."

What Physical Distance Means

"The fact that a person is physically near to us, so that we have personal contact with him, may make it more likely that we shall assist him, but this does not show that we ought to help him rather than another who happens to be further away."

"we cannot discriminate against someone merely because he is far away from us" if we want to "accept any principle of impartiality, universalizability, [or] equality ... ."

No Moral Agent Individuation Condition

"Secondly, the principle makes no distinction between cases in which I am the only person who could possibly do anything and cases in which I am just one among millions in the same position."