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Journal of Global Ethics

ISSN: 1744-9626 (Print) 1744-9634 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjge20

The most good you can do: a response to the commentaries

Peter Singer

To cite this article: Peter Singer (2016) The most good you can do: a response to the commentaries, Journal of Global Ethics, 12:2, 161-169, DOI: 10.1080/17449626.2016.1191523

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2016.1191523

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The most good you can do: a response to the commentaries Peter Singer

Princeton University, University Center for Human Values, Princeton, NJ, USA

ABSTRACT Anthony Skelton, Violetta Igneski and Tracy Isaacs share my view that our obligations to help people in extreme poverty go beyond what is conventionally accepted. Nevertheless, the other contributors argue that my view is too demanding, while noting some tensions between my different writings on this issue. I explain my position, drawing on Sidgwick’s distinction between what someone ought to do, and what we should praise or blame someone for doing or not doing. I also respond to the position that Skelton considers preferable to mine, drawing this time on an argument that Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and I have made in our recent book, The Point of View of the Universe. I also address Igneski’s concerns about gender inequality, and indicate my broad agreement with Isaacs’ suggestion that effective altruism could benefit from a more co-ordinated approach.

Invited contribution received 4 May 2016

KEYWORDS Altruism; poverty; obligation; blame; demandingness

1. Introduction: on agreement and disagreement

Philosophy, as the discipline is practiced today, thrives on disagreement. If the participants in the symposium on The Most Good You Can Do (2015a) (henceforth TMG) had agreed with all the views I expressed in that book, the symposium that Anthony Skelton kindly organized at the University of Western Ontario would have been a very dull event, and The Journal of Global Ethics would have been unlikely to judge it worth publishing. So it is not surprising that Skelton, Violetta Igneski and Tracy Isaacs emphasize their disagree- ments with me, nor that our disagreements will be the main focus of this response. Before I make a start on that, however, it is worth noting that these disagreements are occurring within a context in which there is considerable agreement on some issues of great prac- tical significance.

Skelton concludes his discussion of TMG by suggesting a modification of the position he attributes to me that retains the view that we ought to do much more than most people do now to prevent suffering and loss of life. Igneski begins her paper by similarly accepting that a person who never aids needy people in any way, and does not make aiding the needy an important commitment on which she acts, is not living an ethical life. Isaacs tells how she and others in positions of privilege were influenced by Famine, Affluence and Morality to think about their relationship with people elsewhere in the world who do not share their advantages.

© The Author(s) 2016. All Rights Reserved

CONTACT Peter Singer [email protected]

JOURNAL OF GLOBAL ETHICS, 2016 VOL. 12, NO. 2, 161–169 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2016.1191523

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There is, therefore, a consensus among the four of us on two central claims, one about philosophy and one about the obligations of affluent people:

(1) The obligation of affluent people to those in extreme poverty is an important subject for philosophers to discuss.

(2) Affluent people have an obligation to help people in extreme poverty, and these obli- gations go significantly beyond what is conventionally accepted in affluent societies today.

Fifty years ago, when I was an undergraduate studying philosophy, many philosophers did not even accept (1). They agreed with A.J. Ayer that moral philosophy was limited to meta-ethics, and that it is ‘silly, as well as presumptuous’ for a philosopher to ‘pose as the champion of virtue’ (Ayer 1954, 244–246) – a pose that Ayer would, I presume, have attrib- uted to the author of Famine, Affluence and Morality (1972). For this reason, what philoso- phers of that period thought about (2) is difficult to tell, since they did not discuss it. If we can judge from the examples of morally questionable conduct that figure most often in their articles, they were more concerned about failures to return books borrowed from friends than they were about helping people in extreme poverty. If we had asked them whether people in their economic situation have obligations to aid people in extreme poverty, they probably would have replied that they have no professional expertise in that area.

When philosophers disagree with specifics of my argument I find this longer perspec- tive reassuring, for the two points above are perhaps the most fundamental points I was trying to establish in Famine, Affluence and Morality: that this topic is properly one for phi- losophers to address, and that our current moral attitudes and practices regarding our obligations to people in extreme poverty are indefensible. I am not saying that the remain- ing disagreements do not matter. It is, of course, important to discuss just how far beyond our current moral attitudes and practices our obligations to people in extreme poverty go. But accepting that something is wrong in this area, and beginning to discuss the extent of our obligations to people in extreme poverty, is half the battle.

2. Demandingness and the problem of addressing different audiences

One theme that is common to all three essays is the question of whether extreme altruism, as I present it, is too demanding. Skelton and Igneski contrast the highly demanding impli- cations of utilitarianism with the more moderate standards I propose in Practical Ethics and The Life You Can Save and with my praise, in TMG, for effective altruists who allow them- selves at least a moderate level of comfort and do not sacrifice their most important pro- jects. Skelton also raises the question whether the permissive attitude I have to effective altruists who are not doing the most good they can is compatible with the principle I take from Sidgwick that requires us to give no more importance to our own interests than we give to those of any other being. For Isaacs, the demandingness of extreme altruism is a reason for seeing global poverty as a collective challenge, rather than an individual one, because then each of us will have to do only his or her share.

I accept that there is some tension between what I have written in different places about the limits of our obligation to save lives and reduce suffering. That is perhaps

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most clearly visible in the difference between some of my later writings and the following passages in Famine, Affluence and Morality:

Since the situation appears to be that very few people are likely to give substantial amounts, it follows that I and everyone else in similar circumstances ought to give as much as possible, that is, at least up to the point at which by giving more one would begin to cause serious suf- fering for oneself and one’s dependents – perhaps even beyond this point to the point of mar- ginal utility, at which by giving more one would cause oneself and one’s dependents as much suffering as one would prevent in Bengal. (Singer 1972, 233–234) … Given the present conditions in many parts of the world … it does follow from my argument that we ought, morally, to be working full time to relieve great suffering of the sort that occurs as a result of famine or other disasters. (Singer 1972, 238) … It will be recalled that earlier I put forward both a strong and a moderate version of the prin- ciple of preventing bad occurrences. The strong version, which required us to prevent bad things from happening unless in doing so we would be sacrificing something of comparable moral significance, does seem to require reducing ourselves to the level of marginal utility. I should also say that the strong version seems to me to be the correct one. (Singer 1972, 241)

These passages all imply that our obligations to donate to help people in great need are highly demanding. Two of them point to the level of marginal utility – that is, the point at which further transfers will no longer increase the overall utility – as the only limit to how much we ought to give. Skelton and Igneski are right to say that this contrasts with the modest levels of giving I suggest in Practical Ethics (2011, 214–215) and the Life You Can Save (Singer 2009, 164).1 But I explain the discrepancy in those works – more fully in Prac- tical Ethics, because The Life You Can Save is aimed at a more popular audience.

In Practical Ethics, I consider three versions of the objection that the initial argument makes our obligations too demanding. I state the third version as follows:

Might not people say, ‘As I can’t do what is morally required anyway, I won’t bother to give at all’? If, however, we were to set a more realistic standard, people might make a genuine effort to reach it. Thus, setting a lower standard might actually result in more aid being given. (Singer 2011, 213).

I accept that the factual claim in this argument may be correct and then write:

What would follow from the objection is that public advocacy of this [highly demanding] stan- dard of giving is undesirable. It would mean that, in order to do the maximum to reduce extreme poverty, we should advocate a standard lower than the amount we think people really ought to give. Of course we ourselves – those of us who accept the original argument, with its higher standard – would know that we ought to do more than we publicly propose people ought to do, and we might actually give more than we urge others to give … For a consequentialist, this apparent conflict between public and private morality is always a possi- bility and not in itself an indication that the underlying principle is wrong. The consequences of a principle are one thing, the consequences of publicly advocating it another. (Singer 2011, 214)

This is the view that Sidgwick sets out in his famous (or notorious, depending on your point of view) passage defending esoteric morality, which begins: ‘Thus, on Utilitarian prin- ciples, it may be right to do and privately recommend, under certain circumstances, what it would not be right to advocate openly … ’ (Sidgwick 1907, 489). Despite the criticism this passage has received,2 the present case is surely one in which it correctly describes what a

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utilitarian ought to do – given certain facts – and not in a way that should trouble utilitarians.

On this basis, part of the tension between the views I expressed in Famine, Affluence and Morality and those to be found in some of my later works can be explained in terms of the different audiences I was addressing. Famine, Affluence and Morality was written for an aca- demic journal, and therefore addressed philosophers interested in public issues. It advo- cates, as we have seen, a very demanding standard. In the years after it was published, after many discussions with philosophers and also with other friends and acquaintances, I began to think that when addressing a broad public audience, to advocate so demanding a standard is to risk putting most people off doing anything, and therefore likely to do less good than advocating a lower standard. That opinion is reflected in some of my later writ- ings, most explicitly in The Life You Can Save, which was published by a trade publisher for general readers. Admittedly, the audiences of the two works are no longer entirely separ- ate, partly because Famine, Affluence and Morality has been very widely reprinted in anthologies aimed at undergraduate courses in ethics, and partly because it has recently been published as the lead essay in a book with the same title (Singer 2015b).

Although some philosophers, including Rawls (1999, 112) and Hooker (2000, 85), have argued that ethical principles must be able to be publicly stated, I do not think this is correct. We all learn, as children, not to say everything we think, but to consider the effect of what we may say, in the circumstances in which we say it. If we are concerned about the consequences of our actions, as we should be, this must apply to stating ethical principles too.3

3. Is eating ice cream incompatible with living ethically?

The main theme of Igneski’s essay is summed up in the closing sentence of her opening paragraph: ‘I do not dispute the fact that an effective altruist is living an ethical life but rather that the only way to live an ethical life is to be an effective altruist.’ She then pre- sents her understanding of my view of what it is to be an effective altruist:

It is not going to be sufficient to do some good or even a lot of good – we must do the most good we can. Importantly, on [Singer’s] view, when making ethical decisions, we must take on the point of view of the universe from which no one’s interests (not even our own) are more important than anyone else’s.

Igneski then refers, as we have already noted, to the more moderate picture of effective altruism that emerges from the descriptions I give in TMG of the lives of effective altruists – they do things like having children, and eating ice cream! This is not, Igneski says, com- patible with doing the most good one can, and therefore cannot be, for me, compatible with ‘living fully ethical lives’. These ice cream eating effective altruists ‘fall somewhere on the spectrum but are falling short of the ideal’.

Although these statements present my views in a way that is literally accurate, more needs to be said to put these claims into the context of the way I think about ethics. We can start, once again, with Sidgwick, who notes (1907, 220) that

there seem to be acts and abstinences which we praise as virtuous, without imposing them as duties upon all who are able to do them; as for a rich man to live very plainly and devote his income to works of public beneficence.

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The explanation Sidgwick offers for the apparent inconsistency between what we praise and what we regard as a duty (and therefore blame people for not doing) is not that rich people have no duty to live plainly and use their wealth for the general good, but that the questions ‘what ought we to do?’ and ‘what ought we to praise or blame people for doing?’ are distinct, and that the latter question is normally judged by a differ- ent, and laxer, standard. In explaining why this should so, Sidgwick focuses especially on blaming people for omissions, which makes his comment especially applicable to our obli- gations to aid the poor:

I think that there are not a few cases in which we refrain from blaming others for the omission of acts which we do not doubt that we in their place should have thought it our duty to perform. In such cases the line seems drawn by a more or less conscious con- sideration of what men ordinarily do, and by a social instinct as to the practical effects of expressed moral approbation and disapprobation: we think that moral progress will on the whole be best promoted by our praising acts that are above the level of ordinary practice, and confining our censure–at least if precise and particular–to acts that fall clearly below this standard. But a standard so determined must be inevitably vague, and tending to vary as the average level of morality varies in any community, or section of a community: indeed it is the aim of preachers and teachers of morality to raise it continually. (Sidgwick 1907, 221; also 428, 493; for further discussion, see de Lazari-Radek and Singer 2014, chapter 11)

How does this view apply to extreme altruists who donate a significant part of their income to effective charities, but treat themselves to the occasional ice cream even though the money they are spending on this treat would have done more good if donated to an effective charity? (To avoid further complicating the moral judgments involved here, I will assume that the ice cream is vegan.) We could say that, even though they are not doing the most good they can – and therefore, in Sidgwick’s terms, not fulfilling all of their duties, or as Igneski puts it, not living a fully ethical life – we ought to praise them. Their level of giving is far above the prevailing standard in our society, or indeed in any large-scale society, and moral progress is surely more likely to be advanced by praising what they are doing than by censuring them for their modest indulgences. Praising them publicly may also serve to raise the prevailing stan- dard. Given that I share Sidgwick’s views about praise and blame, there is no puzzle about the many positive things I say in TMG about effective altruists who do a great deal of good, but do not do absolutely the most good they can do.

Igneski’s remark that ice cream eating effective altruists fall ‘somewhere on the spec- trum’ shows that she appreciates an important point: whether we are living ethically or unethically is not simply a black/white distinction. There is a spectrum that stretches from totally unethical to fully ethical, with an infinite number of graduations along the way. So now, perhaps, we have a better sense of what it means when I accept that the ice cream eating effective altruist is not living fully ethically. It means that she is not completely at one end – the most ethical end – of the spectrum. It does not mean that we should blame her for not giving the money she spends on the ice cream to an effective charity. On the contrary, saying that she is not living fully ethi- cally is consistent with saying that we should praise her way of living very highly indeed.4

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4. Is doing the most good an ideal standard?

My position is now, I trust, clear, but it may still not be convincing. Both Igneski and Skelton think that it is not. Igneski argues that following it may leave people miserable and unable to form deep attachments, or to pursue the projects that give their lives meaning. Similarly, Skelton thinks there is a better set of norms that explain and justify the behavior of the effective altruists I describe, one that includes the principle of prudence as well as the prin- ciple of beneficence and so allows us to accord more weight to our own interests and the interests of those close to us than we accord to the interests of strangers. He interprets effective altruists as believing that we ought to commit ourselves to preventing suffering and loss of life, up to the point at which by doing more we would risk losing what makes our lives ‘satisfying or meaningful’.

Given what I have just said about the use of praise and blame, there is probably little practical difference between my position and those of Igneski and Skelton. (That is implied by Skelton’s suggestion that the lives of the effective altruists I describe – and praise – in TMG are consistent with the set of principles he prefers.) I would certainly not blame any effective altruist who is committed to doing the most good she can, subject only to the constraints of being able to form deep attachments and live a life that is satisfying and meaningful. The difference between us could be put like this: I think that the ideal is always to do the most good one can, without giving more weight to one’s own interests and the interests of those to whom one is attached, but I recognize that very few, if any, human beings are like that, and I praise, rather than blame, people who, while doing much more than most now do to reduce suffering and loss of life, fall short of this ideal. Igneski and Skelton think that the ideal is to give some extra weight to one’s own interests and those of people to whom one is attached, but this extra weight must not exceed the point at which we are still required to do much more than most now do to reduce suffering and loss of life.

Can such a difference be resolved? Skelton is right to say that even Sidgwick, on whose work I draw in supporting the idea that we should not give more weight to our own inter- ests than we give to the similar interests of others, was unable to reject the egoist’s claim that the fact that we are distinct individuals gives us a reason to be more concerned about our own interests than those of others. His inability to overcome the contradiction inherent in this clash between universal and egoistic reasons for action (what he called the ‘dualism of practical reason’) led him to despair of ever putting ethics on a rational basis (Sidgwick 1907, 508). Skelton’s solution that we should think of each of the principles having pro tanto weight is consistent with what Derek Parfit says about the dualism:

When one of our two possible acts would make things go in some way that would be impar- tially better, but the other act would make things go better either for ourselves, or for those to whom we have close ties, we often have sufficient reasons to act in either of these ways. (Parfit 2011, 137)

In The Point of View of the Universe Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and I argue, against both Sidgwick and Parfit, that egoism and concern for those with whom we are in close relation- ships is likely to have an evolutionary basis, whereas Sidgwick’s principle of universal ben- evolence is not – and that therefore we should regard the latter, and not the former, as a self-evidently rational principle (de Lazari-Radek and Singer [2014], chapter 7). I will not

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repeat this argument here, but my case for the ethical principles that underlie what I say about extreme altruism in TMG rests on it.

Igneski has some other concerns about doing the most good that one can. She believes that it may reinforce gender inequality because in the situation, common to heterosexual couples, in which the man earns more than the woman, if they have a child and one of them must stay at home to care for the child, the couple will be able to do more good if the woman stays home. This may be the case, but the source of the gender inequality is, of course, the fact that the man earns more, coupled with the need for one adult to stay at home with the child. The outcome would be the same if the couple were trying to maximize their own wealth, rather than to do good, so clearly the solution lies else- where, and this is not a reason for abandoning effective altruism. In addition, in deciding what to do, extreme altruists should take into account any harm that results from reinfor- cing gender inequality, and this may sometimes tip the balance.

Igneski also writes: ‘A moral theory must show that a young mother in a Syrian village can live a fully moral life just as a stockbroker on Wall Street can.’ I agree; but I do not understand why Igneski thinks that my view denies this. If the young mother is already at the level of marginal utility – that is, if there is no one in greater need than her own family – she is doing everything that she can do by providing as well as she can do for her family, and hence she is living a fully moral life.

5. Working together for effective altruism

I turn now to Tracy Isaacs’ suggestion that effective altruism would benefit from a more coordinated approach. She writes:

In the face of pressing issues of enormous scale and scope, such as child poverty, animal suf- fering, climate change, individual effort will rarely make a marked difference except for the likes of Ted Turner and others who have a billion dollars to give to eradicate or at least put a serious dent in diseases that kill large numbers of children across the globe on a daily basis. Issues of this scale, that befall groups require a larger scale solution. And here is where thinking in terms of collective action can be helpful.

I do not think that Isaacs is intending to say that one cannot do good without being able to put a serious dent in diseases that kill large numbers of people, but there is a danger that this passage could be misread in that way. Something akin to that is a common psycho- logical obstacle to taking action to help people in great need, so it is worth explicitly rebut- ting that misconception. If my donation to the Against Malaria Foundation prevents one child from getting malaria, it has done good and if I am comfortably off, it has almost cer- tainly done much more good than I could have achieved by using the money for myself. The goal may be to eliminate extreme poverty and all poverty-related diseases, but every single person helped still achieve something important, no matter how many other people remain to be helped.

With this possible misconception set aside, I agree with the thrust of Isaacs’ remarks. Collective action on these issues is very much to be desired. As Isaacs says, ‘you can get the same result if more people give smaller amounts than if fewer people give larger amounts’. The problem is: how do we get more people to give? One answer would be, by increasing the amount of foreign aid that our government gives, since the tax

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system ensures that this revenue is drawn from all taxpayers, with the rich paying, as they should, a larger proportion of their income than the poor. It is important, of course, to ensure that government aid gets closer to achieving the same high standards of effective- ness per dollar spent as the charities that are most highly rated by Give Well or The Life You Can Save.

Some countries have made good progress in increasing the amount of foreign aid that they give, and in making it more effective. In the UK, as the result of a sustained, coordi- nated what campaign by organizations working to reduce global poverty, there has for some years now been a non-partisan political agreement to raise foreign aid to the level recommended many years ago by the United Nations: 0.7% of gross national income (GNI). That goal has now been achieved. In the US, however, despite the fact that Barack Obama indicated, when a candidate for the Presidency, that he would raise foreign aid to 0.5% of GNI, US foreign aid is languishing at 0.19% of GNI.5 In the present US political climate, the chances of a significant increase in this figure seem slim.

In any case, effective altruists are already organizing together. Charities are themselves a form of coordination, enabling thousands of donors to work together for a common goal, and beyond that, the effective altruism movement has several ‘meta-charities’ like The Life You Can Save, Giving What We Can and the Centre for Effective Altruism, which are doing their best to expand the movement or assess which charities are the most effective, and get more people involved in giving to effective charities.

I also accept Isaacs’ view that it is wrong to portray people in developing countries as helpless victims lacking in moral agency. But I do not believe I have ever denied that people in poverty have moral agency. The more progressive charities, like Oxfam, have for many years been aware of the need to respect the moral agency of the people they are assisting. It would be unthinkable for them to go into a developing country to set up an aid project without first finding out what local people want, and finding a local partner to work with. I saw an example of this in 2003 when I visited, in connection with a documen- tary on my work, an Oxfam project in Pune, India. The project was assisting Dalit women (i.e. women from the caste formerly known as ‘untouchables’) who were working as ragpickers on the city’s dump, picking over the stinking pile of refuse for metal, plastic, rags or anything they could sell to recyclers. (When I went with the film crew to the dump, the producer found the smell and heat so offensive that she spent the entire shoot sitting in her air-conditioned vehicle.) Oxfam’s involvement came about as the result of an approach from a teacher at a local university that had been running a literacy course for the women. The women had told the teacher that what they really wanted was safer conditions and better payment for the materials they were collecting. Oxfam assisted the women to form a collective, and to arrange with, middle-class residents living in apartment blocks to separate their recyclables so they could be collected at the apartment building rather than having to be picked out of all the trash at the dump. The collective was also successful in bargaining for better prices and was able to protect women from harassment. I attended a meeting of the collective at which the women thanked the local Oxfam representative for her organization’s help in enabling the collective to come into existence, and said that they were now standing on their own feet and would not require further assistance.6

If I have not said more in TMG about the need to recognize the moral agency of the people that effective charities assist, it is because I have taken for granted that this is how effective organizations work. At the same time, we should not make the mistake of

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thinking that these local movements have no need of our assistance. There is, as Isaacs mentions, a thriving women’s movement in India, but the dire problems of women in India are far from being overcome. The ragpickers of Pune may no longer need outside assistance, but hundreds of millions of other women in developing countries still do.

Notes

1. In the first and second editions of Practical Ethics I proposed that the absolutely wealthy give 10 % of their income to the absolutely poor. In the third edition I advocate the same position as The Life You Can Save.

2. Bernard Williams (1986, 108) calls it ‘Government House utilitarianism’. 3. For further discussion, see de Lazari-Radek and Singer (2014), chapter 10, especially 293–312. 4. On the idea that right and wrong is a matter of degree, see de Lazari-Radek and Singer (2014,

333–334). 5. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, ‘Aid Statistics by Donor’, http://

www.oecd.org/statistics/datalab/oda-recipient-sector.htm (Figures are for 2014, the most recent available at the time of writing, 8 April 2016.)

6. ‘India: Ragpickers Take Control’, Oxfam Australia News, September 2003. The documentary is ‘Singer: A Dangerous Mind’ directed by Terry Carlyon and produced by Margie Bryant, 2003, http://abccommercial.com/contentsales/program/singer-dangerous-mind.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Peter Singer is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, and Laureate Professor in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, Pushing Time Away, The Life You Can Save and The Most Good You Can Do. His most recent book, Famine, Affluence and Morality, reprints one of his best-known essays, which helped to inspire the effective altruism movement.

References

Ayer, A. J. 1954. “On the Analysis of Moral Judgments.” In Philosophical Essays, edited by A. J. Ayer, 231–249. London: Macmillan. Originally published in 1949 in Horizon 20 (117): 171–184.

de Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna, and Peter Singer. 2014. The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hooker, Brad. 2000. Ideal Code, Real World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parfit, Derek. 2011. On What Matters. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rawls, John. 1999. A Theory of Justice. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sidgwick, Henry. 1907. The Methods of Ethics. 7th edn. London: Macmillan. Singer, Peter. 1972. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (3): 229–243. Singer, Peter. 2009. The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. New York: Random House. Singer, Peter. 2011. Practical Ethics. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Singer, Peter. 2015a. The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas about Living

Ethically. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Singer, Peter. 2015b. Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1986. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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