If you’ve ever studied philosophy, chances are you’ve come across Peter Singer. He’s one of the most famous and controversial living utilitarians (a theorist that believes we should focus on maximising pleasure and minimising pain as these are the only intrinsically valuable things) and use his position to try and put more good into the world. He’s one of the earliest pioneers for true animal rights, with essays discussing speciesism (our current attitude of discrimination by completely disregarding animals’ interests), and for those in privileged positions giving much more to charity than we do in practice. I will summarise some of his key arguments and some of those of other theorists on the latter, but the original text is highly engaging and can be accessed here for anyone interested!
The first philosophical thought experiment I came across was this: picture yourself walking through an abandoned woods, when suddenly you come across a pond with a drowning child in. There is no one around and the child will surely die if you fail to step in and help, but you’re faced with a dilemma: recently, you acquired a new pair of your favourite but expensive boots (I’m going with New Rocks!), and you don’t want to ruin them by wading in to pull the child to safety. What do you do?
It’s almost laughable right – anyone I’ve presented this thought experiment to since has responded, well *obviously* you pull the child out, what kind of monster would leave them there? Or something along those lines. And they’d be right, anyone who left the child to drown would be highly judged by almost anyone. However, there is something of a double standard here – while we may feel we have a duty to save a drowning child at the expense of our brand-new boots, in real life we choose to value possessions over human lives again and again and again.
Singer’s argument is that if we claim to value human lives over possessions, we should be donating our surplus income to charity to save these lives over spending it on consumerist habits. There are always children dying somewhere, and surely their right to life is much more important than new clothes. If you can save several lives through donating to buy things like malaria nets, then surely this is where our money should go; no one should be living with an abundance of wealth until everyone has enough to survive.
In terms of objections to his argument, there are a few which crop up a lot. Here, I will respond to a few of the most prominent, using arguments inspired by Peter Unger’s Living High and Letting Die.
Firstly, there is the objection of physical distance; it seems more acceptable to disregard a check from UNICEF than to save the child due to the physical distance between you. However, you could adapt the thought experiment to accommodate this – perhaps, you are not present but your sister is who is wearing your boots. You are aware about the drowning child but she isn’t – almost all would agree you should still text your sister and inform her that there is a drowning child to be saved, despite you not being close to the incident. Therefore, you being far away from the children in need of saving in real life should not make a difference.
Another is social location – some feel that their position in society is so far from those of the recipients of the donations, they are not obligated to help, and instead those who are more similar to them/more able to empathise with them should. However, we can again adapt the thought experiment – you are now in a different country going for a walk, and the drowning child in front of you is of a different nationality. Most would agree it would be diabolical to treat them differently because of their different background, and so surely the case is the same regarding the UNICEF check. The reasoning behind the majority not donating cannot be due to the gap in social location.
Next, we face the worry about potentially disastrous futures: if we donate to UNICEF, we might be contributing to children dying in that those saved will have more children who will go onto suffer. This would be prevented if we avoid donating, and so we are actually doing moral good through not donating. This one is surely just an excuse people give to make them feel better as it’s highly unconvincing when thought about for more than a moment. In our drowning child thought experiment, we could propose that if you save the child, they might go onto have more children who might then themselves drown from risks of climate change. I don’t think anyone would accept walking away from the child based on this reasoning, and this objection again fails.
Another objection might be that in the drowning child situation, you were the only potential saviour, whereas lots of people are asked if they’d like to donate to UNICEF, and so the responsibility does not all fall on you. However, we could change our thought experiment to be that there are many other people walking, but for some reason no one is intervening. You would surely still be obligated to save the child! Or perhaps, there are multiple drowning children and multiple potential saviours focusing on different problems. Just because there are more saviours helping other children, you are not relinquished from your moral duty to save an extra life by helping a drowning child.
Perhaps, the difference comes in at the thought of governments intervening – you are not obligated to donate as it is the government’s duty to provide support for the children rather than yours as an individual. In our situation, this is like saying it is the government’s responsibility to provide lifeguards near ponds – it is nothing to do with me whether they are working well enough as an individual. Surely, this excuse is again not strong enough for you to walk away.
Unger goes on to object to several more key objections, which I lack the space to do here. These effective altruists end up creating a very strong case that we are ethically obliged to donate a large portion of our income to those who need it more than us in the Western world. Those in rich countries on the mean wage or above are typically in the top 5% of incomes, and so if you can afford to donate and value lives highly it is clearly worth it.
Givewell looks for the charities which do the most amount of good possible per dollar given. If you are motivated to donate, here is a good starting point of how best to do so.