Peter Singer is a man whose moral worldview extends beyond the scope of human beings to the protection of animals and our planet, in an ever-expanding circle of concern. He is the godfather of the Animal Liberation movement and perhaps the most vocal proponent of utilitarianism, which seeks to maximize the most well-being for human beings as possible. Singer is now spearheading a new movement called effective altruism (hereafter, EA), whereby Singer and other effective altruists seek to do the most good they can do for other people.
What does it mean to do the most good we can? According to Singer in his new book The Most Good You Can Do (2015), it means creating a world with less suffering and more happiness in it. For those who live in capitalist democracies, the likes of which we see in the developed world and which lead the way for the rest of the world, most of the time this will mean donating large sums of money to charities that have proven track records of improving the lives of the less fortunate, those who are living in extreme poverty. People in extreme poverty should receive the most support, Singer argues, because they are the greatest in number: nearly half the world's population subsists on less than $2 a day, and 20 percent of those people live on less than $1 a day. Because we in the developed world have so much money at our disposal, we ought to give a portion of our expendable income to those in extreme poverty, provided this charitable donation does not create considerable discomfort for us, so he argues. His program of EA, taking up the mantle of the traditional Christian practice, recommends we donate 10 percent of our income.
EA also proposes that we do meaningful work that will allow us to make larger incomes so that we can donate more money to those in need, and that we form communities with other people who will also be willing to donate their 10 percent and do meaningful work on behalf of the less fortunate. Nothing should be off limits, Singer thinks, in our contribution to EA, not even our plasma, bone marrow, or kidneys; if we would be willing to donate our bodies, our money, our time, and our work to helping others, and we would be happy doing it, then we ought to. "If doing the most good you can for others means that you are also flourishing, then that is the best possible outcome for everyone," Singer writes.
In the broadest sense, we might all aspire to be effective altruists. Singer tells us that EA is a "a philosophy and social movement which applies evidence and reason to working out the most effective ways to improve the world." Yet he occasionally hems in the very conditions by which we might want to work on behalf of EA. Take, for example, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the charity that organizes events for very ill children by which they can fulfill their dreams. Singer recounts a story in his book of a boy suffering from leukemia whose dream of being Batman was fulfilled as part of a San Francisco parade, the cost of which ran to approximately $7,500. Singer rightly adjudges that, dollar for dollar, this was not the most effective means by which this money could have been used. (Nor was the $10,000 that the Dream Factory, a similar organization, spent to help realize the dream of my brother, who suffered from a brain tumor, to go to Disney World.) Singer writes, "Effective altruists would, like anyone else, feel emotionally drawn toward making the wishes of sick children come true, but they would also know that $7,5000 could, by protecting families from malaria [for example], save lives of at least three children and maybe many more." Singer assumes that the special rights and responsibilities we feel toward our own family members, friends, and fellow citizens are irrelevant in view of what ought to be our desire to provide for the least well off.
Effective altruists will feel the pull of helping an identifiable child from their own nation, region, or ethnic group but will then ask themselves if that is the best thing to do. They know that saving a life is better than making a wish come true and that saving three lives is better than saving one. So they don’t give to whatever cause tugs most strongly at their heartstrings. They give to the cause that will do the most good, given the abilities, time, and money they have available.
This view of Singer's, that for moral issues all that matters is less suffering and more happiness for people, regardless of where they are, is a position he has publicly espoused since at least 1971. In an essay he wrote that year, titled "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," he argued for a morality without familial or other social or national boundaries. In one part of the essay, he asks that you imagine a scene in which you have the opportunity to save a drowning child from a shallow pond. You can wade into the pond at no harm to yourself other than ruining your clothing and accessories. Singer thinks you and most other people would be willing to go into the pond to save the child, no matter the damage to your clothing. He asks us to consider what would be the moral difference between this scenario and a scenario in which you can save a life right now by donating to one of several effective charities, sacrificing the money you otherwise might have spent on a new item of clothing or other creature comfort.
This hypothetical account of the drowning child appears again in his book The Life You Can Save (2012). In addition to recounting the scenario, he restates his argument that since suffering and death are so bad, if we have the power to prevent suffering and death without sacrificing something of equal moral importance, we ought to do it. The cost of saving the life of someone living in extreme poverty is rather small, he argues—anywhere from $200 to $2,000—and if each Westerner donated $200 this year to a verified, effective charity, the United Nations would satisfy its Millennium Development Goal to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030. In that book, Singer suggests a system by which people in various income brackets donate on a sliding scale; there's even a donation calculator on his Life You Can Save website that you can use to see your recommended donation level based on your income bracket.
Singer goes further in his newer The Most Good You Can Do, in which he calls for 10 percent of our income and carries his argument to its logical conclusion, asking us to put aside the so-called artificial boundaries that he believes have so needlessly hemmed in our ability to give effectively. Singer thinks, to be sure, we will slip, and provide too much for those around us. He writes that "effective altruists are real people, not saints, and they don't seek to maximize the good in every single thing they do, 24/7." But since people in extreme poverty are suffering so much, we would not be good effective altruists if we spent too much on our countrymen or friends, or doted too much on our family or our children.
Effective altruists do not think their children need all the latest toys or lavish birthday parties, and they reject the widespread assumption that parents should, on their death, leave virtually everything they own to their children rather than give a substantial part of their wealth to those who benefit much more from it.
Singer hopes that readers will be persuaded by his arguments to live a life of effective altruism, acknowledging that "[e]veryone has boundaries," and telling us that "[i]f you find yourself doing something that makes you bitter [with respect to EA], it is time to reconsider." He goes on to ask, "Is it possible for you to become more positive about it? If not, is it really for the best, all things considered?"
What Singer's EA boils down to is whether all that matters in doing the most good we can do is to decrease the net suffering and increase the overall well-being of other people. In other words, the question is whether this moral obligation to make the greatest number of people flourish ought to receive precedent over other obligations we may feel to family, friends, and our countries. Consider obligations to country, for instance. As states of affairs are now, my home country (the United States) is functionally an oligarchy, whose government spends comparatively little to help its poor, and whose poorest citizens are increasing in extreme poverty. As a US citizen, am I under any special obligation to help these people? Would it actually be wrong to lend support through charitable donations to them before I give to charities that support people in even more dire circumstance elsewhere in the world? There are no easy answers to these questions, but rights and responsibilities to family, friends, and country do seem to me to constitute special obligations. This is my conviction; perhaps you share it. If not, I doubt there's much we could do to convince each other, either way.
(Singer's paper "Famine, Affluence and Morality" was discussed in Podcast 9 on utilitarian ethics. The Boston Review recently hosted an online forum on effective altruism in which Singer engages with several of his critics.)
Billie Pritchett is a writer and English lecturer with interests in moral and political philosophy, philosophy of social science, and phenomenology. He maintains his own blog called si hoc legere scis… and is on Twitter via @b_pritchett.
I agree with you that the responsibilities one has towards one’s family, friends and the society around one constitute special obligations.
First of all, the problem I see isn’t that people give too much of themselves towards the society around them and too little to those who suffer on the other side of the world. In contemporary ultra-capitalist societies people tend to be relatively unconcerned about everyone outside of their immediate family circle (and by family circle, I mean their immediate nuclear family, not their extended family). So helping almost forgotten, distant cousins, friends (nobody loves you when you’re down and out) and neighbors seems like a positive step towards bridging the isolation most of us live in neoliberal capitalism.
What’s more, showing solidarity (which is a bit different than charity) may be a tentative, but progressive gesture towards creating new non-neoliberal forms of sociability among people near you. A neighborhood which helps one another seems to be a great defense among the worst aspects of capitalism: unemployment, medical bills which are too expensive to pay, housing foreclosures, etc.
The difference between solidarity and charity is that solidarity implies equality: I show solidarity with you because I could be in your place, we live the same situation and face the same risks/social conditions. For example, you’re unemployed and I know that I could lose my job just as well.
Singer seems to implicitly endorse a neoliberal world order in which the ultra-rich help the poor, without any structural changes in that world order. Of course, it’s better that the rich help the poor than not help them, but I think that we can do better than that.
S. Wallerstein hits the nail on the when he brings up the structural changes that would need to happen for a more effective betterment of humankind. Singer’s notions, as related in this post, end up being naive, well-meaning, yet still too simplistic and arbitrary. Why 10%? How do you determine which charities are valid? Lastly, when it comes to “death,” is death necessarily “bad” in all circumstances? If not, which I believe it is not the case that “death” is “bad” per se, at that point who determines whether a death was a a good death or a bad death?
On that note, have a lovely day!
To touch on a point you both addressed (s. wallerstein and Fredbo) and something not addressed in the review explicitly is the fact that for Singer the burden to help the poor is on Western people to help non-Western people out of extreme poverty. This is fine, I suppose, but not to be neglected is the fact that Western governments, not ordinary people, are largely responsible for the social and economic inequalities that exist throughout the world. A more nuanced view, in my opinion, would hold governments more accountable than people. But it makes sense that Singer doesn’t sense he does not as a utilitarian see moral distinctions related to rights, responsibilities, and obligations as deriving from other forms of social organization–not only family, friends, and community, but governments are all neglected as making a moral difference in attempts to help the poor.
The causes of poverty in non-Western countries is complicated, but we, as individuals, do seem to have some responsibility for it insofar as we willingly buy products manufactured or farmed or which contain minerals mined by people paid non-living wages. I’m not saying that we cause poverty, but we seem to be complicit in it to a certain extent.
However, above I said that we had best devote our efforts to dealing with poverty and social injustice in our own communities. A few more reflections.
1. We have a lot more idea of what is going on it our own communities than we do what is going on in Africa. As a matter of fact, I’m not so sure that Singer and Oxfam are always clear on the causes of poverty in Africa. Given that we have more insight into what causes social injustice in our own societies, we are better equiped to deal with it.
2. In dealing with social injustice in our own communities, not only can we help to remedy it, but also we build bonds of community, which seem like social goods in themselves. We make new friends: that’s good. We get to know other people who live near us, but who were less lucky than us in choosing their parents: the Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that the one most important choice we make in life is choosing who are parents are. Getting to know the people on the other side of town and helping them to deal with their problems seems very positive and even virtuous to me, more virtuous than a life of sending donations off to far-off lands through our smart phones.
Poverty in non-Western countries (in Western countries) is scandalous and something should be done about it. I’m not sure what, so I’m not going to propose any remedies. I’m also not so sure that Singer has the solution.
I’ve become convinced that “obligation” is an idea that does more ill than good over the long term, in most circumstances. Whether within the context of immediate family or of being a global citizen, feeling obligated toward someone simply in virtue of one’s relationship with them (“father” or “coworker”) seems to me to a) disregard specific circumstances that might pertain to that relationship, b) foster insincerity and resentment, while sabotaging real empathy and c) encourage us not to see the person as a person, but rather as a type or role vis-à-vis ourselves. Maybe, as a way of circumventing questions about just what we’re obligated to do, we’d be better off exploring what gets in the way of empathy and the desire to come to someone else’s aid.
I’d agree with the guys above in that we should reexamine the societal structures that are creating drastic inequality rather than just counting on altruism to pick up their slack. That said, I admire Singer’s dedication and initiative. It at least reminds me that I’m still making choices, and am therefore to some degree complicit in that inequality. I have no doubt that this will help some people, even if it isn’t a viable way to actually solve the problem of poverty.
Hello, Daniel:
I think there’s a sense in which this is correct, but I think that certain roles by virtue of occupying those roles necessitate rights and responsibilities–obligations. For instance, it’s incumbent upon a parent to take care of a child, and the more helpless the child the more cumbersome the obligation. This does not rule out the possibility for extenuating circumstances but then the burden would lie with the parent who did not take care of his or her child. Same goes for governments. If we take seriously the view that governments derive their legitimacy from the people, then governments have to take care of their people and vice versa. And if a government over here interferes with a government over there and its people, without good reason, then the government over here is responsible for its actions over there and with what it can do rectify the bad things it brings about over there. I don’t doubt Singer is fundamentally a humane person–but his moral philosophy does not admit of these kinds of distinctions. And I think they are very real distinctions, and I imagine if you were to ask ordinary people about these elementary moral matters they too would take the distinctions as real.
When I read Daniel’comment, I was reminded that there are some moral philosophers around who are in favor of jettisoning the concept of obligation. In particular, I thought about Michael Slote, some of whose work I read decades ago. I googled his name, and imagine my surprise when I found this video of him debating Singer on these exact questions:
http://www.philostv.com/peter-singer-and-michael-slote/
Alan, thanks, I just watched this. When Slote made a point of the distinction between the upshot of the argument and its truth, I realized that I definitely had the upshot in mind when I posted earlier. I guess it’s not evident to me that utilitarian judgments are sufficiently rousing to get people to act morally. After listening to Slote’s argument, I wonder if Singer might be motivated more by his own developed empathetic range than he realizes, in which case, that contingent psychology he believes he’s reasoned beyond still holds sway.
Alan and Daniel:
Plan to watch the video in a moment but seems to me that Singer recognizes only one tier of obligation whereas other moral philosophers and most ordinary folk would be willing to recognize more.
Will watch the video and see if this looks to be more or less the view.
we talk about money and its benefits and how it can be FAIRLY put to use w/r earth’s bounry so that the means to a dignified life experience is afforded to ALL CREATURES (mammals, for sure).
the bounty is there. there is even way more than enough, even when including that humans not eat animals.
so is this a thing that a single person controls, or more obvious/y the world community as a whole. oligarchy is the term Billie uses for the USA, and we see it does not deliver the goods on the world scale.
but can anyone point out any community structure in the known world history that would deliver the highest possuble dignified life experience for every creature? equality is not what is required (remember there is excess bounty), but fairness.
isn’t maintenanance of fairness the perennial problem?
Hello, burl:
Just a quick note here… Regarding oligarchy, I was actually quoting the Washington Post, which cited that study I linked to by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page. In Gilens’ follow-up book “Affluence and Influence,” Gilens says the U.S. is more accurately a plutocracy, a country ruled by the rich and whose decision making is based on what the top 10% want for public policy.
More on the topic:
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/07/if-you-want-to-do-the-most-good-maybe-you-shouldnt-work-for-wall-street/
Alan:
Helpful link about the often immediately unmeasurable consequences of trying to more good than harm. This is particularly about people whom Singer admires who choose to work on Wall Street in order to make a lot of money to donate to the poor. But of course high-stakes Wall Street speculation can be devastating for economies, as this article you posted talks about.
It drives me crazy when so-called reformers exonerate themselves from doing anything practical by saying that nothing is worth doing except “structural changes” which are wildly unlikely to ever happen. Sorry folks, capitalism isn’t ending anytime soon.
It’s also pretty disgusting to see the following comment about extreme poverty: “when it comes to ‘death,’ is death necessarily ‘bad’ in all circumstances?” I mean, seriously, you’re basically saying the poor are better off dead.
Look, Singer’s point is pretty simple… A lot of people don’t place way more value on the life of a random American than on the life of a random Indian or Ethiopian. $100 does a lot more for someone living on $1 a day in Ethiopia or India than someone working on the minimum wage in the United States. (Can you name any major first world diseases that can be easily cured or prevented for $100 or so? Probably not. Can you name any major third world diseases that can be cured or prevented for $100? Yes, there are plenty.) Thus, if you’re even roughly egalitarian, and you’re so inclined to give money away, maybe you should give that money to the Ethiopian or Indian that’s living on a dollar a day.
billie, plutocracy sounds right.
the inequities of the world and humans’ personal actions in light thereof is a fundamental concern, i feel. i recall pirsig discussing the history of the word ‘fair.’ fairness sounds simplistic at 1st mention, but i think it worthy of student’s and researcher’s efforts in matters of social policies and treatment of othercreatures.
i think fairness is the kernel of the Golden Rule and the issue of ‘law vs spirit of law.’