Dear Students,

This is a much belated blog post on Singer. I’ll state the key examinable content on week 4 to aid your preparation of the quizzes and final exam. After which, I’ll elaborate on a lens in which we can view Singer’s arguments. I’ll write this blog as review for tutorials 2 and 3 since the Singer topic spanned about two weeks.

The key examinable content for week 4 are:

(1) Consequentialism (what is it? what does it say and not say?)
(2) What are the different kinds of consequentialism? (what do they say, and not say?)
(3) In relation to (2), are you able to define classical utilitarianism and identify what a classical utilitarian is committed to (as well as what he’s not committed to?)
(4) What are the important features of classical utilitarianism?
(5) How do philosophers understand terms in moral philosophy? (e.g., morally right, wrong, required, supererogatory, neutral) [a potential test of understanding: does classical utilitarianism allow for there to be morally neutral actions?]
(6) Singer’s (1972) argument for why we should donate a significant amount of our money to international aid agencies
(7) Differences between the drowning child and children in developing countries that Singer discusses (e.g., physical distance, etc)
(8) Slide #42 on a clarification of Singer’s view; how much does Singer think we ought to donate?

Before I’ll elaborate on a lens from which we could view Singer’s argument, I shall share the class’ views on Singer by directly copying my notes of what you have said over onto the blog (i’ve omitted the names):

–issue with the appropriateness of the analogy (group 1) more direct, intuitive? More real? Why should peter singer dictate what morality is about and why should we even agree with him on that? Shouldnt it also account for “psychology” and “behaviour”

–partially agree but NOT CONVINCED to act to the extent hes describing… (group 2) – if everyone is giving so much to the extent of diminishing marginal returns, then we will be in that same poor situation. Wherein lies the motivation to work?

—disagree with strong version but agree with moderate version. Is-ought problem (david hume) – (group 3) to donate to singer’s extent, we need to define what’s morally good… peter singer’s definition is based of his own view… too altruistic? Moral defect?

—-similar to group 3 (group 4). Subjective to some extent in applying the principles…

— group 5: personal, agree with group 3. Interpreting moral obligations differ from person to person (so similar to group 4 too)… link to group 1—really? Are we comparing drowning child to african children?

–group 1: to some extent yes—convinced by what? Convinced to donate some $$ to save the african child. “To what extent” is disagreed upon—Singer seems too radical.

–group 2: disagree with Singer. Too demanding like utilitarianism. Sacrificing to Singer’s extent is not morally required. ((fair))

–group 3: agree with group 1—to a certain extent, its good … but i earned my $$—i should pamper myself right? (compatible moderate principle)

–group 4: AGREE WITH PETER SINGER

These are very good reflections on Singer’s paper. I’ll leave the class to continue the discussion on Singer as I blog on what I suspect to be underlying a lot of your thoughts on Singer. Singer has written his piece with the intention of encouraging people like us to give to charity. But many of you are uncomfortable with donating so much… If so, what does this tell us about Singer’s stronger principle and moderate principle? What does this tell us about the drowning child argument?

In my assessment, Singer relies on the drowning child analogy to support the stronger and moderate principle. What are these principles? I’ll state them again here:

Stronger: we ought to be preventing as much suffering as we can without sacrificing something else of comparable moral importance.
Moderate: we should prevent bad occurrences unless, to do so, we had to sacrifice something morally significant.

But the main question concerns whether the drowning child analogy supports the Stronger/Moderate principle. What do I mean by this? In order to convince us to give to charity substantially, Singer (1972) must show us why the stronger or moderate principles should be accepted as true. He gave the drowning child analogy to motivate these principles. But the salient question is whether our decision to save the drowning child lends support to the Stronger/Moderate principle. In other words, do we have reasons to think that our reactions towards the drowning child scenario hold even when we reject the Stronger/Moderate principle? This is a question worth pondering because it lies at the heart of Singer’s argument.

Take for instance, a scenario where we are given a choice between saving a drowning child at UTown by sacrificing our $100 shoes or donating $100 to save 50 lives in a developing country. What would we be inclined to do in this instance? It’s likely we would go for the drowning child…. But is this what Singer’s principles recommend? If not, what does it say? Lastly, do we have reasons to think that our decision to save the drowning child at UTown is based on a reason that is different from the reasons we would rely on to save the same child were the option of saving the 50 lives not made known to us? If not, what does this tell us about the plausibility of Singer’s argument? I’ll leave you to think about it—and to generate more problems for his Stronger/Moderate principles using the strategy I have deployed!

In other news, if you remember the PLATO article we read…., you should have chanced upon this quote which I find to be characteristic of the way I’d like tutorials to be run:

“Acting as a facilitator rather than a content deliverer can be beneficial in a few ways. First, it validates the experiences and knowledge of the students. Second, it engages the students and allows them to feel a sense of ownership over the discussion. One of the difficulties I faced with this approach was extracting ethical and moral reasons rather than psychological or religious reasons from students. The students I worked with had little to no experience with ethics or philosophy. At first, students provided mostly psychological or religious reasons for choosing actions. After some guidance and discussion, they could separate moral reasons from other reasons. In this sense, content-delivery-focused education was necessary until students had the same foundation to work from. After this, facilitation reigned supreme. ”

(https://www.plato-philosophy.org/moral-reasons-and-time-constraints-reflections-on-ethics-education-in-summer-camp-settings/)

Perhaps, you will find this quote an insightful way of evaluating some of the student comments I’ve reposted above concerning Singer’s arguments.

Finally, a comic to make you happy: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/494

Cheers,
YT.