Peter Singer - ordinary people are evil

it's a very radical conclusion and the problem is it's very hard to see what's wrong with the argument the argument seems like a good one and it has seemed that way to everyone who read this paper since 1972 today we're talking about an absolutely revolutionary paper published by a philosopher named peter singer in 1972 the name of the paper is famine affluence and morality and the basic idea is that the moral stance that you have your attitude towards your moral obligations and the things that you may or may not do in your life and the attitude that all of your friends and all of your relatives have the general moral outlook that everyone around you has is deeply and profoundly wrong and the crazy thing about this paper is that on the surface at least it's very persuasive he seems singer seems to be right it seems to be once you go through the argument that he lays out it seems to be that we need to completely rework our entire society and more specifically forget about society for a minute you need to completely rework your life if your life is going to be a moral one and sort of what makes the paper so radical is that i can say all of these things that the thesis of the paper is that you need to completely rework your life without knowing anything about you i know virtually nothing about your life and your moral outlook and your values and the kinds of things that you do on a day-to-day basis i can basically make some assumptions about my audience you know general assumptions you live in a broadly capitalistic society let's assume you know there are government regulations and that sort of thing and you live sometime in the beginning ish of the 21st century that's basically enough if that's true of you then singer thinks that your whole life needs to be reworked if you're going to live in a morally acceptable way okay if we're going to understand this argument then we need one distinction to start out this is a technical distinction but there's really only one technical term here you go we're talking about the distinction between the super irrogatory and the obligatory imagine this you're getting together with a group of friends or co-workers or something like that and you decide you know what this is a pretty early gathering it's a pretty early meeting and so wouldn't it be nice if i went and got everyone some coffee and danishes because some people are going to be rushing out of their house and they're not going to have time to eat breakfast and so when everyone shows up surprise surprise there is some coffee and donuts and and treats or whatever that you brought for everyone and you paid for and you're just giving it to them and you say hey guys i brought these for you i want you to have them that act that action is super irrogatory it's extra it's super you didn't have to do it but it was a really nice thing to do it was an extra thing that you did and it was a good thing to do it was not obligatory something is obligatory if you have to do it right so if someone is assigned in the group to bring coffee and breakfast to every early morning meeting and you signed up you promised you committed to bringing coffee and breakfast on that day well then bringing coffee and breakfast is obligatory and of course it would be nice if everyone thanked you for bringing those things even if you agreed or promised to do it it wasn't extra it was something you had to do you had committed to it you were obliged to do it one more example just to bring out this distinction and this example may date this video it may give you a sense of when when i'm making this video but anyway at the time of the recording of this video there's something going on in supermarkets where when you check out in the supermarket and you're paying for your groceries or whatever well there's some of the payment is obligatory right you have to pay for the things that you are buying but then there's this extra payment they say when you're checking out they're like would you like to donate one dollar to and then they name some charity would you like to add one dollar to your bill here at the supermarket that additional payment that's extra you don't have to do it it's up to you it's super derogatory if you do do it it's good that's a nice thing that you did right but you didn't have to super derogatory that's what that word means okay here's the claim of this paper the claim is that there are these organizations that exist in the world now now in 1972 says singer right and these organizations like oxfam right and unicef these are organizations that take money from people who live in relatively wealthy places on the planet and they they take that money and they use it to do amazing things for people who are suffering under things like famines right if there's a famine in some place in the world there's not enough food and people are literally starving to death they are dying because they don't have enough food so someone donates a little bit of money and these organizations take that money and a very high percentage of that money with a great deal of efficiency gets transported to this other place on the planet where there's a famine and literal people's lives are saved normally we you and i and all of your relatives and all of your friends everyone in our society in our broader society we think of these sorts of acts giving charity in this way giving money to oxfam or unicef or whatever we think of these things as super derogatory giving to charity is super derogatory it's nice it's good but you don't have to do it if on any given occasion you don't do it you're not a bad person it's not like you failed to live up to some obligation that you had singer says no here's an argument that proves singer thinks that giving to charity giving extra money to famine relief if you're affluent if you have extra money is something that you must do you must do it in the same way that you must not murder or you must catch someone if they're if they're falling and you can just reach out your arms and catch them and save them you must do it that's the thesis okay so singer has an argument for this thesis an argument for this conclusion but we're going to get to the argument in one minute first let's just skip to the end of the paper and see his statement of that conclusion here's what he says here's what singer says because giving money is regarded as an act of charity it is not thought that there is anything wrong with not giving the charitable man or if we what we want because this was written in 1972 we can say the charitable person the charitable person may be praised but the person who is not charitable is not condemned people do not feel in any way ashamed or guilty about spending money on new clothes or a new car instead of giving it to famine relief indeed the alternative does not occur to them what's the alternative the alternative is not getting those new clothes and not getting that new car and instead taking that money that you would have spent on new clothes and just well wearing your old clothes and taking that money and giving it to an organization that will help people that will save people who are dying of famine right that possibility the possibility of not spending money on luxuries does not occur to most people or to virtually anyone this way of looking at the matter cannot be justified this way of looking at the matter is the way that we all look at the matter that is we think that giving money to famine relief is super derogatory it's nice it's an extra thing that cannot be justified the only thing according to singer that can be justified and we're going to get to the argument for this conclusion the only thing that can be justified is the way of thinking where you think that giving to famine relief instead of buying new clothes or a new car or whatever giving to famine relief is obligatory that's the only way of thinking that can be justified the upshot or the punch line is this if you don't give to famine relief singer thinks you've done something wrong you've done something evil bad every time you buy new clothes that you don't absolutely need or you buy a new car when you could just drive your old car or you buy a cup of coffee that someone else made for you because it's more convenient for them to make it for you and it tastes a little better than if you were to make it at home every time you do any of those things you're doing something wrong you're doing something bad we don't think this way no one in our society not in 1972 and even though this is a super famous paper you've maybe never heard of it and so it didn't seep into the whole society even now right people don't think that buying new clothes or buying a cup of coffee from a coffee shop is a bad thing to do an evil thing to do a wrong thing to do but singer thinks that it is and here's his argument for that conclusion okay here's the argument singer doesn't lay out the argument like this with four premises and one conclusion or anything uh i'm pulling these out of the paper but this is indeed the argument here's how it goes let's take it one step at a time one if it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of moral significance then we must morally do it that is prevent that very bad thing from happening okay that's premise one i'll just give you a hint this is going to be the most controversial claim right it's a very general claim it's talking about you know very bad things it's got this big category of very bad things and then it's got this other category of things with you know things that you might sacrifice that are not of moral significance that's another big category it's a big grand claim about what you must do morally and it's a very general claim so one is going to be the most controversial claim in this argument so we'll come back to this if you're looking for this claim by the way in the reading then go to page 235 there's one big paragraph in the middle of page 235 and this claim happens not phrased exactly like this but basically like this at the sort of end of that paragraph anyway let's keep going step two hunger disease and other sources of suffering disability and death are very bad okay those are some examples of very bad things we see how this is going to connect up with the first premise right we've got a bunch of very bad things and it's said in the first premise that if it's in your power or if it's in our power to prevent something very bad well then we've got to do that thing we've got to prevent those things so these are going to be the things that we're going to need to prevent this argument's going to claim it's just specifying some very bad things and premise 2 by the way seems totally plausible hunger disease and other sources of suffering disability and death are very bad yes that's plausible hunger is very bad real hunger where someone doesn't have enough food to eat and disease and other things that cause people to suffer or become disabled or die all of that is bad yup okay good job premise two very plausible premise three the luxuries on which we spend money are not of moral significance so the kinds of luxuries he's talking about are these luxuries right buying new clothes when your old clothes although out of fashion or a little tattered or whatever are perfectly good or buying a new car when your old car although not as good as a new car is still a good enough car right or the example that i gave earlier buying a cup of coffee when you could make the coffee at home really going to any restaurant ever right counts as a luxury in this sense i mean you can always just for less money make food at home this connects with the idea of moral significance or of some things not being of moral significance right sacrificing sacrificing anything of moral significance that's part of the first premise also so premise three is specifying the kinds of things that aren't of moral significance and once we understand what singer means by luxuries he's right these things are not of moral significance they're not a big deal if you go without them you're not really worse off four by donating money to relief agencies like oxfam we could prevent hunger disease and other sources of suffering disability and death well that's just saying that there's a very specific way an easy way right to prevent these things which premise two established were very bad premise four is it true by donating money to relief agencies like oxfam we could prevent hunger disease and other sources of suffering disability and death yes premise 4 is true this is true these organizations do do this you can give them the money and then they will prevent these things this premise 4 is just an empirical claim it's just a claim about whether these organizations actually do the thing that they say they're going to do and the answer is yes they do do it okay and then here's the conclusion and we've already reached this conclusion we've already talked through this conclusion therefore we must must where is it where is it must we are obligated it's not super derogatory it's not extra this is something you have to do and so the conclusion gets us something you have to do we must morally donate the money that we spend on luxuries to relief agencies and we don't get to spend them on luxuries this is the argument okay so now is a good time to re-emphasize how radical this conclusion is we're about to assess the argument we're really going to focus almost entirely on premise one because premise one is the only controversial premise in the argument everything else steps two three and four i mean these just seem to be obviously correct obviously true statements and the argument is is valid so well one is the only option that we could argue against and we're going to try to argue against it and singer is going to say no and none of those arguments work okay but focusing again on the conclusion for a minute before we get back to premise one this is pretty radical no one thinks that we have a moral obligation no one none of your friends none of your family think that you must not buy a cup of coffee you must not buy a new car you must not buy new clothes instead you must take all of that money and donate it to some organization like oxfam one of these relief agencies no one lives their life like this or very few people peter singer by the way he's still alive i met him right we had dinner once he gave a talk and then i anyway i know him i you know i know celebrities um peter singer who's still alive kind of lives his life like this he donates a very significant non-trivial portion of his income which is not enormous it's not an enormous income to relief agencies he does this he does not live a luxurious life not a life that we would normally call luxurious okay so there's one and then maybe there's i don't know a few of his friends who he convinced but most people don't live their life like this the conclusion of this paper is that most people you included are doing something bad every day and you don't even realize it okay enough about how radical this conclusion is or whatever and how much it departs from your day-to-day life let's get to premise one this is the controversial premise what does singer say to support such a broad sweeping claim here's what he says this is a rather famous example that singer gives to support premise one here it is if 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 okay got the example right there's a shallow pond or a fountain when i teach this class on campus every college campus including the one where i work uh in north carolina every college campus has like a fountain somewhere right there's a fountain there a small child is drowning in the fountain and will die you are walking by you can easily step in and save the child the cost to you will be just a few moments and well your clothes are going to get wet or muddy right muddy if it's a pond or wet if it's a fountain or whatever this sacrifice by the way is not of moral significance right it is insignificant that your clothes are going to get a little wet oh and you're on your way to something where you didn't want your clothes to be wet okay that's not a very significant sacrifice but the death of the child the drowning death of the child in almost all circumstances would be a very bad thing well the thought is go from this example if you agree with what singer says about this example and i suggest of course that you do if someone just showed up at a meeting and said hey there's this kid drowning but i didn't want to have wet clothes for this gathering so i just let the kid drown and die you would be horrified you would think that this person was evil that they had done an evil thing you would not let your friends or family associate with this kind of person well if you agree with singer about this specific case then singer says we should be able to abstract from this case to a more general principle and you should hold this more general principle and the more general principle is premise one of the argument the idea is that well a child drowning in a pond that's a very bad thing but it's not bad because it has to do with water or children you know an adult drowning and dying is also a bad thing or even an adult dying by some other means is a bad thing right what's relevant here is not that it's a child or that it's a water involving death it's that this is a easily preventable death the death is a bad thing and the fact that your clothes would get muddy that's a morally insignificant thing but the fact that it's your clothes and it's mud that doesn't matter if it's something else that you have to sacrifice if for example instead of your clothes getting wet or muddy your i don't know your car is going to get dirty or you're going to lose your shoelaces the shoelaces will be gone forever you'll have to sacrifice your shoelaces and you'll have to get whole new shoelaces and that'll be kind of a pain in the butt the point is this the difference between one way of dying and another way of dying or one morally insignificant sacrifice and another morally insignificant sacrifice the difference between these doesn't matter so you can go from a gen a specific case like this to a general claim like one and the thought is if you agree with singer about this specific case then you have to accept premise one of the argument okay so there are two ways in which you might think you can't go from this example to this premise or another way to put this point is you might think that there are two big differences between this shallow pond example and the example of giving up your luxuries the luxuries in your life a new car a cup of coffee that sort of thing a massage there's a difference between this example and giving up those things to save someone from a famine there's two ways in which there might be a relevant difference these are the two relevant differences that singer considers and responds to here they are okay here's the first potentially relevant difference proximity in the shallow pond example you're right next to the child you're very close to this child whereas in your day-to-day life you are not right next to you're not near the people who are dying of famine or of whatever other very terrible things that organizations like oxfam fight against well is that a morally relevant difference is that a way in which we block this example from generalizing to something like premise one singer thinks no it used to be that proximity made a significant moral difference because it used to be that a great distance prevented people from knowing about about very bad things it used to be that if there was some very bad thing happening on the other side of the world several hundred years ago you could never know about that very bad thing or you couldn't find out about it for months or years but now now proximity is irrelevant to your knowledge of very bad things because there's very efficient forms of communication you can know about a famine going on in another country while it's going on with enough time to do something about it proximity also used to be relevant before these organizations existed it used to be the case that you weren't able to sacrifice some luxury in order to save someone from a famine because well it was very hard to get things across the world and there weren't organizations set up that had built very efficient systems for taking a few dollars from you and literally saving a person's life on the other side of the planet so proximity used to matter it used to be a morally relevant difference between the pond example and the famine example but it's not anymore says singer so this difference of proximity does not prevent your intuition your thoughts your moral thoughts about an example like this from translating over to a very general claim like one here's the other potential difference if you're trying to block this example from getting the result ultimately that you have to give up all the luxuries in your life you might say look in this shallow pond example we're led to assume that there's no one else that could save the child there are no others who are capable of saving the child but in the case of famine relief anyone could give money to oxfam right there's all these other people present and the thought is well in the cases where there's all these other people present it doesn't fall on you you don't get the obligation to to be the one who you know saves someone's life when they're dying of famine here's what singer says in response to that he says look the presence of others who could help is sort of relevant because their presence typically leads to they're actually helping those other people actually helping prevent the very bad thing so if there were other people who saw the child drowning in the shallow pond well then very likely one of those other people would save the child and then you wouldn't have to save the child and if then you showed up and you s at the meeting and said hey there was this kid drowning in the pond and you know whoever was going to go in and save the kid was going to get their clothes wet and someone says your clothes aren't wet are you an evil monster and you say no no there were other people there and someone else saved the kid and they'd say okay wow that must have been something let's get on to our frat party or whatever we were about to do the point is the presence of others is only relevant if those other people are gonna do something if they're not gonna do anything then it seems like at least to singer the obligation is on you if there's other people who are able to see that this child is drowning but these other people care a great great deal about getting their clothes wet or muddy and they're not going to step in to save the child and you know this and they say this to you well does the fact that they're there and they could save the child excuse you from your duty to save the child no if you show up at the meeting and you say i was gonna save this kid but there were these other people there and they say who saved the child you say no one saved the child the child drowned the child is dead now everyone would say you're a monster you're an evil person you should have saved the child you say yeah but there were other people there doesn't matter the other people didn't do anything about it so that means you have to do something about it the fact that there are other people who could help in the case of famine in the case of a drowning child is itself irrelevant what matters is if someone else does help and then there's no more need for you because all the children have been saved or all the people have been saved from famine a lot of people donate to organizations like oxfam some amount of money or other but there's still plenty of people left who need to be saved and so you have an obligation to them according to singer the fact that there are other people who aren't helping also that just seems totally irrelevant okay a few ending notes one how much do we have to give i mean it's one thing to give up you know one cup of coffee right made at a fancy coffee place right but do i have to give up all the coffee that i might ever buy do i have to never buy coffee and never get a new car and never get new clothes am i allowed no luxuries at all do i have to give away so much of my money that i'm reduced to the level of the person who's suffering from this famine or near to that level singer says ah maybe yes he considers two versions of premise one right and this is more specific and it's in the paper um i think it happens on where does it happen it happens on page 231 he considers two versions of premise one a stronger principle and a weaker principle and this is the weaker one right according to the weaker principle you just have to give up some luxuries you don't have to reduce yourself all the way down to the level that's near equivalent to the people that you're saving but according to the stronger principle you do and singer actually thinks this argument basically works for the stronger principle you have to give up a lot here's an objection an additional objection that singer considers he considers this on pages 236 237 238 if you're looking in the text this is just too demanding this is too much to ask for people to give up all these things to that singer says a couple things one thing he says is look that is a standard you know objection to utilitarianism and singer is himself a utilitarian or at least he's a consequentialist i can't remember anyway he's close to a utilitarian and he could be for the purposes of this paper so well it's a standard objection against utilitarianism that it's too demanding but singer just thinks that this is a very weak objection maybe morality is very demanding the argument seems to work the fact that you don't like the conclusion which is really what the too demanding objection comes to the fact that you don't like the conclusion is not an argument that the conclusion is false he considers another argument this is on page 239 another argument that goes like this if private individuals start donating money to famine relief then governments will stop and if governments stop donating money because the private individuals have got it taken care of well then very bad things will result there won't be enough money because the governments are the real source of the money or whatever sigma response to this part of his response is to just say don't worry about it not that many people are going to start giving it's not going to prevent governments from donating money governments don't give that much money to begin with and if you give every dollar that you have that's not enough to affect how much governments give you're not going to solve this problem on your own and if your only objection is hey if i give all my money i'll totally solve the problem that's just a weak objection yes you'll totally solve the problem good solve it the last objection that singer considers this happens on page 240 in the reading is the thought that well look if you donate all this money to famine relief it's just famine relief it's gonna help these people it's gonna save their lives sure but there'll be another famine in a few years from now maybe in that place maybe in a different place you're just postponing these famines singer says no you're not those famines are going to happen one way or another and if you donate the money to help people who are dying of this famine today and when he wrote this paper in 1972 there was a specific famine that he was talking about if you donate the money you will save these particular people's lives and the fact that there's going to be more famines in the future maybe that affect these people maybe that affect other people it just seems irrelevant think back to the shallow pond example this child is drowning in the pond you don't want to get your pants wet or muddy so you say well look if i save this child now then this child is probably just going to stumble into some other pond later and die anyway you would seem absurdly callous you would seem evil singer says you would be evil and if you don't donate all of this money that you spend on luxuries then you are evil that's what singer says okay so i think we can agree that the conclusion of this argument is radical it's wild it seems to show that everyone that you know is a terrible person is roughly as terrible as someone who would let a child drown and die because they didn't want to get their clothes muddy that's what the argument seems to show that's a new thing like you probably don't think that you and your family are evil but the argument seems to show that it's a very radical conclusion and the problem is it's very hard to see what's wrong with the argument the argument seems like a good one and it has seemed that way to everyone who read this paper since 1972 there are responses to it and there are philosophers who try very hard and have very clever careful things to say to try to show that this argument doesn't actually work but at least until we get to read some of those arguments you should try to see if there's anything wrong with this argument yourself peter singer by the way he's still alive i met him right we had dinner once he gave a talk and then i anyway i know him i you know i know celebrities

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Length: 33min 51sec (2031 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 23 2020