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SEP 30

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Fall 2015 Proseminar Browsing Exercise

Singer, Ch. 1, "A Changing World"

• Globalization: Terrorism, climate change, (added: human migration)
• US interests: political consensus (dems/repubs) on Bush remark.
• Should political leaders adopt an internationalist stance (beyond interests of their nation-state)?

• competing models of leadership

• Historical parable: reaction to 1914 assasination of Crown Prince Ferdinand (and wife) by Bosnian Serb nationalists, starting WW1. Objections to Autro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia. Compare to international reaction to US demands of Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden. principle p. 7, new today vs. WW1.
• Rawls "old school" scope for theory of justice
• Is the Nation-state on the decline?
• Should we be internationalists? Why is multilaterism no longer a political topic in the US?

Singer, Ch. 5, "One Community"

• Considers aid given after 9/11 to other international aid needs. again with partiality.
• Sidgwick and Himmler on partiality. Godwin on saving Fenelon vs. the chambermaid.
• Singer's famous example of saving the small child drowning in the university fountain. distance doesn't matter.
• Biblical reference to Paul and ethics of partiality.
• Examination of different forms of partiality: family and kin, gratitude 160ff.
• Compatriots 167ff. prefering our own might be justified by obligation of reciprocity.
• Choice between "imagined" community of nation-state and "imagined" global community.
• Justice between vs. within states: Wellman's arguments
• Rawls and The Law of Peoples: Rawls example of the two societies: no obligation to redistribute to improve the worst off between the two societies.
• 2nd criticism: Why allow difference between countries to circumvent redistribution and not allow differences within a country to do so? 178
• Millenium Development Goals (MDGs); US shortfalls; public perceptions of giving (15% rather than actual 1%)
• Comparative Value Exercise: Unger's thought experiment: Bob's bugatti. amputation scenarios. yuck.

Sachs, Jeffrey, "Can the Rich Afford to Help the Poor?" (2006)

• (One of the architects of the UN Millennium Development Goals. Opposed by some noted development economists.)
• Optimist about relief: .7 GNP level of giving adequate. Absolute poverty down from 1/3 to 1/5 (interesting to compare US discussion in 1960 at the start of the domestic "war on poverty" of the Johnson administration)

• Increase in wealth of the rich world is dramatic (note Rawlsian difference principle from yesterday)
• (Digression on actual giving: [1]
• Note analysis on pages 294 of amounts that developing countries can supply to meet their own poverty needs. Middle-income countries like Brazil, Chile, and Mexico have enough.

• Can the US afford to meet a .7 GNP target?

• Sachs considers this obvious. To dramatize his point, on pages 304-308, he points out that the wealthiest 400 US citizens earned more than the total populations of Botswana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda. More to the point, the tax cuts this group received during the Bush administration in 2001, 2002, and 2003 totaled about 50 billion a year, enough to meet the US giving goal of .7% of GNP.

Singer, "Rich and Poor"

• facts about absolute poverty
• difference between grain consumption accounted for in terms of meat consumption. problem of distribution rather than production.
• absolute affluence = affluent by any reasonable defintion of human needs. Go through paragraph on 221.

• figures on giving by country: OPEC countries most generous. U.S. and Japan least.

The Moral equivalent of murder? five purported differences:

• 1. allowing to die not eq. to killing. no intention to kill.
• 2. impossible to ask us to be obligated to keep everyone alive.
• 3. uncertainty of outcome in not aiding vs. pointing a gun. less direct responsibility, less like 1st deg. murder.
• 4. no direct and identifiable causal connection between consumerist action and death of individuals in other countries.
• 5. People would be starving with or without me. I am not a necessary condition for there to be starving people.

• Singer's point: these differences are extrinsic to the moral problem. there would be cases with these features in which we would still hold the person responsible.

• Showing the extrinsic character of the differences: Singer's argument strategies at this point is to show that the differences are smaller and more contingent that one might think. Point by point:

• 1. example of salesman selling tainted food. doesn't matter if no identifiable victim in advance.
• 2. lack of certainty about the value of donations does reduce the wrongness of not giving (concession), but doesn't mean that its ok not to give.
• 3. responsibility for acts but not omissions is incoherent way to think about responsibility. consequences of our actions are our responsibility. irrelevant that the person would have died if I had never existed.

Considers non-consequentialist justifications for not aiding (166)

• idea of independent individual in Locke and Nozick doesn't make sense. Note appeal to social conception of humans based on ancestry!

• absence of malice also doesn't excuse inaction. involuntary manslaughter (in the case say of a speedin motorist) is still blameworthy.
• grants that we may not be as blameworthy for not saving many lives if saving those live requires heroic action.

• The obligation to assist: Main Principle: If it is in our power to prevent something vey bad happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, we ought to do it.

• goes on to claim that it is within the power of dev. countries to aid the poor without sacrificing . . . etc.

considers major objections:

• taking care of your own
• property rights [at most weakens the argument for mandatory giving (but note that governmental means might be the most effective, esp. where problems have a political dimension)

• population and the ethics of triage:
• questions whether the world is really like a life boat