The Life You Can Save

1. The Life You Can Save

2. QW What do you think the ethical thing to do in Singer’s drowning child example is? What are the important considerations that should inform your action? Explain your answer

3. How this unit is graded Reading Questions: in hand on time Discussion questions and Socratic Seminars (one grade) In class essay (important to take notes) SLD

4. IA’s turn in hard copy and submit to turnitin if you don’t want a zero. Makeup ethics final

5. How does Singer relate this example to giving to those in need? Poverty line: equivalent of $1.25 a day 1.4 billion live in extreme poverty 1 billion living in extreme affluence

6. How do you spend your money? Calculate what you buy in a week (write it down). How much does each item cost? Turn to a partner and share. Add up your two totals Let’s see what this money could have done… https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/Where-to-Donate

7. Connection “Most of us are absolutely certain that we wouldn't hesitate to save the drowning child….Yet while thousands of children die each day, we spend money on things we take for granted and would hardly notice if they were not there. Is that wrong? If so, how far does our obligation to the poor go?”

8. The Car or the Child? Bob has invested most of his savings into a car. The trolley example is given: a child and Bob’s car Who should Bob save? Bob cannot be certain that the child will die if he does nothing; something could happen at the last minute to save the child. In the same way, most of us can summon doubts about whether the money we give to charity is really helping the people we intend. What is wrong with this reasoning?

9. Singer’s Analogy It would be wrong to value his retirement savings (his car) over the life of the child. It logically follows that saving our money for retirement is ethically impermissible if we could use that money to save children.

10. Singer’s basic argument: our intuitions are not always reliable. We need an argument based on reason • Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad. • If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so. 3. By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important. Conclusion: Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong.

11. What does it mean to be ethical? 1st Premise “Putting yourself in the place of others is what thinking ethically is all about.” Singer points out that the Golden Rule is surprisingly universal, being found in many world religions. The Golden Rule requires us to accept that the desires of others ought to count as if they were our own. “If the desires of the parents of the suffering child were our own we would have no doubt that their suffering and the death of their child are as bad as anything can be. So if we think ethically, than those desires must count as if they were our own, and we cannot deny that suffering and death are bad.”

12. 2nd Premise 2. If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so. This means that you ought to give up until the point that you are sacrificing something of equal or greater value. Because of this, Singer argues, spending money on things like going to the movies, buying coffee or new clothes is ethically problematic. “When we spend our surplus on concerts or fashionable shoes, on fine dining and good wines, or on holidays in faraway lands, we are doing something wrong.”

13. Traditional perspectives on helping the poor Christianity: a requirement for salvation. “Sharing our surplus is not a matter of charity, but of our duty and their rights.” Judaism: The Hebrew word for “charity” simply means “justice”. This is not optional, but an essential part of living a just life. Islam: Muslims above a minimum wealth level must give 2.5 percent every year

14. Discussion

15. QW/Discussion “There are people dying from famine on the roads, and you do not issue the stores of your granaries for them. When people die, you say, ‘It is not owing to me; it is owing to the year.’ In what way does this differ from stabbing a man and killing him, and then saying “It was not I, it was the weapon.” Mencius

16. HW Read Chapter 3 “Common Objections to Giving” Answer, print out, and bring the reading questions Write three discussion questions Discussion leader

17. The Life You Can Save

18. QW/Discussion “There are people dying from famine on the roads, and you do not issue the stores of your granaries for them. When people die, you say, ‘It is not owing to me; it is owing to the year.’ In what way does this differ from stabbing a man and killing him, and then saying “It was not I, it was the weapon.” Mencius

19. QW “According to statistics from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, U.S. private philanthropy for foreign aid amounts to only 0.07 percent of the nation’s gross national income (7 cents for every 100 dollars) 24. What does this say about what we value? Do you see a problem with this? Why/why not?

20. Common Objections to Giving • There is no black and white universal code for everyone. All people are entitled to follow their beliefs. Page 25 What is Singer’s response? If we reject moral relativism in some cases, we ought to reject it everywhere. 2. People who work for their money have a right to spend it on themselves. What is Singer’s response? Discussion: Even if you have a “right” to do something, should you? What is the difference between the two?

21. Why an appeal to “fairness” does not work Response to 2: “Merit” is a tricky concept. If you are earning a good amount of money, chances are you are not completely responsible for this. Family, country, and socio-economic status play a huge role in the money that you earn. Economist Herbert Simon estimated that social capital is responsible for 90% of what people earn in wealthy societies. Most of the poor work at least as hard as you.

22. 3. We are responsible for the harm we inflict on others, but we have no duty to those to whom we have done nothing wrong. If we take this to its logical conclusion then we ought to get rid of all state-supported welfare schemes. “If we have, in fact, been at least in part a cause of the poverty of the world’s poorest people, then we have to compensate them” 29. How have the rich harmed the poor?

23. Global warming causing instability in other regions. 32 Use of raw materials that are obtained through dealings with corrupt dictators Depletion of food sources (fishing)

24. 4. America is a generous nation. We are already giving more than our share of foreign aid through taxes. The average nation’s effort is 46 cents of every $100 The U.S. averages 18 cents for every $100 5. Philanthropic responses undermine political change: It makes sense to put your money into revolutionary change if you find a ciable cause. If this revolutionary change seems unlikely, you ought to help in the ways that you can. 6. Giving people food and money breeds dependency: We should not give food directly except for in emergencies, as this can affect local markets and reduce incentive for local farmers. In emergencies, however, food is needed to keep people from starving in the short term.

26. 7 .Giving away money will stunt future economic growth. Just as capital grows when invested, so the cost of fixing social problems are likely to grow. 8. If you give everything away the economy will suffer, and we will be unable to help anybody. Because so few people give, the need to give more is great. If everyone were giving, we would have to give much less.

27. 9. We have a special relationship to our families, friends, and country “The fact that we tend to favor our families, communities, and country may explain our failure to save the poor beyond those boundaries, but it does not justify that failure from an ethical perspective” (41). What is Singer saying here? Do you agree? 10. If everyone gave then the world would be a better place, but this just doesn’t happen.

28. HW Read through chapter 7 Answer, print out and bring the reading questions Write three discussion questions Discussion leader

29. The Life You Can Save

30. QW/Discussion On page 103, Singer demonstrates the difference in cost between saving an American life and the lives being saved elsewhere by aid organizations. The U.S. EPA values one human life at 7.22 million dollars, while the life of someone in extreme poverty ranges from $200-$1200 dollars depending on the aid in question. Does this discrepancy mirror a more general ideological view of the worth of American lives in relation to the lives of people in other places? Does the fact that we have a “higher price tag” increase our idea of self worth? Explain your answer. Is putting a “price tag” on human life problematic? Why/why not?

31. Why Don’t People Give More? The Identifiable Victim: Groups who can identify one person to help, are more likely to do so then if they are given general information or stats. Group 1. Given general information about the need for donations such as “food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than three million children.” Group 2: Give a photograph of a seven year old Malawi girl and told that she was desperately poor and that “her life would be changed for the better” by their gift. Group 3: given general information, and the information about the girl: gave more than group one, but less than group two.

32. The Identifiable Victim Effect This leads to the “rule of rescue”: we will spend more to save an identifiable life than a statistical life. We are also more likely to give to someone who has already been selected to receive our gift. Paul Slovic: we use two distinct processes The Affective System is grounded in emotional responses and works with images and stories. We process these and generate and intuitive feeling of right and wrong which leads to immediate action. The Deliberative System draws on reasoning abilities and works with words, numbers, and abstractions. The are conscious processes and require logic, and therefore the response takes longer

33. Singer’s Response The yacht example: We have no reason to privilege one life over another. 59

34. Parochialism We are inclined to give far less to foreigners in need than to those in our own country even if the need is greater. Singer explains this through evolution: We are social animals who rely on those closest to us for survival. Are you convinced by this argument, or does it too readily discount ideological and social factors? People in developed nations have a greater capacity to help the extremely poor who are far away.

35. Singer’s Response This is a self imposed restriction on our capacity to help

36. Futility The higher the number of people in need, the less likely we are to give. Slovic: the proportion of lives saved often carries more weight than number of lives saved (even if the total is the same): people were more willing to send aid to save 1,500 out of 3,000 at risk, than they were to send aid that saved 1,500 out of 10,000. This seems to overlook the value of particular lives. Response: The drop in the ocean argument overlooks that my aid will help specific individuals. The good that I do for them is not lessened by the the fact that there are people that I cannot help.

37. The Diffusion of Responsibility/Fairness We are less likely to help someone if the the responsibility does not rest on us entirely. How does this manifest if your life? Response: Even if a billion people could help a child in need, what good is that if you know that they won’t? The Sense of Fairness: Singer argues that this develops because it enhances the reproductive fitness of people who have an intuition of fairness. If you are willing to cooperate, you are more likely to survive. Do you think this is an adequate explanation for our sense of fairness?

38. What About Evolution and Human Nature? “Even if some evolved intuition or way of acting were still conducive to our survival and reproduction, that would not make it right. Evolution has no moral direction?” Can you think of examples? Human nature can explain our feelings, but does not justify those feelings.

39. Money We are less likely to respond to the needs of others if the only means to do so is through money. “Marx describes money as ‘the universal agent of separation’ because it transforms human characteristics and powers into something else.” In one study, participants who were primed to think about money showed more antisocial behavior 57. Perhaps money makes us more self reliant while at the same time diminishing our communal character as we rely on each other less and less.

40. HW Read Chapters 5 and 6 Answer, print out and bring the reading questions Write three discussion questions Discussion leader

41. The Life You Can Save

42. QW/Discussion On page 103, Singer demonstrates the difference in cost between saving an American life and the lives being saved elsewhere by aid organizations. The U.S. EPA values one human life at 7.22 million dollars, while the life of someone in extreme poverty ranges from $200-$1200 dollars depending on the aid in question. Does this discrepancy mirror a more general ideological view of the worth of American lives in relation to the lives of people in other places? Does the fact that we have a “higher price tag” increase our idea of self worth? Explain your answer.

43. How do we create a culture of giving? We are influenced by what those around us do, and by what our peers think of us. Getting it in the Open: People should talk about what they give We are more likely to do the right thing if we think that others are already doing it. We tend to do what those we identify with are doing. By talking about how much others are giving, we are likely to incite others to give. Singer asks if the motive for giving really matters. What do you think? How does his answer represent a utilitarian view? On Page 67, Singer states that we should be more concerned with what people give them why they give (results driven view). Is there a difference between a good result and an ethical action?

44. Putting a Face on the Needy While this seems to be most effective, Singer does not find it effective enough. He argues that giving to individual children is not the most effective form of giving, as it does not solve systemic problems. Do you think we should take this into consideration? Does it matter?

45. Nudging Opt out systems increase giving We should focus on “reframing” choices so that people choose more wisely. Example of requiring employees to donate a portion of their income. What do you think of these policies? Are they enough? Is a “nudge” for a good result ethical?

46. The Norm of Self-Interest Why do we assume that self-interest is a part of human nature? Who does this narrative serve? Singer points out that in some circles it is unacceptable or suspicious to be altruistic. Why is this? “Many of us believe that not only that people are motivated by self-interest, but that they ought to be.” Why is this? Singer argues that everyday experience provides evidence against self interest. Example of more men supporting a proposal that affects women than women suspected.

47. Is it cultural? People who took an economics course were less likely to return an envelope of money than those who took an astronomy course. Altruism or self-interest? Singer notes that many people who act altruistically explain their actions through self interest. He asserts that caring has somehow become deviant in our society. How is the norm of self-interest self reinforcing? 77

48. How Much Does it Cost to Save a Life? 1.What are some reasons that figures on charities don't “always tell the whole story”? 2.What impressive results did the WHO accomplish? 3.Why is it difficult to truly calculate what it costs to save a life 4.On page 87 Singer points out that in the case of immunization programs, less children are actually “saved” then aid organizations claim since not all children will come down with, or die of the disease. In your view, should this fact matter when we are considering whether to give to such programs? Why/why not? 5.Explain microfinance. How do they help to reduce poverty? Can you think of objections? 6.What are some reasons that it is difficult to prove effectiveness? 7.How does the section “More Good Things That Can Be Done Cheaply” counter the objection that aid breeds dependence?

49. Next class: Read chapter 8 and micro finance articles, and prepare for Socratic seminar on chapters 4-8 with at least two discussion questions per chapter

50. HW Read Chapters 7 and 8 Answer, print out and bring the reading questions Write three discussion questions Discussion leader