Given the current social climate of the west, it seems that most people believe that awareness of one's ability to generate positive social progress through individual action implies a certain degree of social responsibility, and that a lack of such awareness in a person is simply a byproduct of ignorance. Yet the idea of a lack of social awareness and therefore a lack of moral action has become almost synonymous with that of deliberate immoral action.
Something less apparent to consider is the possibility that ignorance and the way in which it defines the human race has much deeper roots in something beyond the vague notion of this social awareness that is expected of everyone in contemporary society.
To understand the significance of this open-ended rant, let us play with a few thought experiments. With them, we shall attempt to avail typical human hypocrisy so not to justify ignorance, but to openly interpret it as a means of becoming more empathetic to the complexity of moral obligation. Hopefully you, the reader, will be influenced to reconsider rashly criticizing those who appear to be failing their social moral duties and instead try to understand why this might be so.
The sensitive topic of poverty will be specifically touched upon in order to provoke any bias’ you may hold in this regard; namely that, nowadays, it is easier to criticize others who are ignorant of certain moral actions that can be executed to help fix social issues than it is to take the time to critically evaluate one's own position as a moral agent.
The first thought experiment that will be used to help us reach a better understanding of ourselves in this way is one created by modern moral philosopher Peter Singer and featured in his essay, Rich and Poor.
In this thought experiment, Singer creates a scenario where he notices a small child drowning. He knows that he has two choices: he can either do something and save the child, or do nothing and allow the child to die. Given the two options and the outcome of the latter, this seems to be an obvious decision. However, there is more to consider when we question the fundamentals of deciding whether or not to take action.
When one hears the phrase “ought to" she might naturally assume that “ought” automatically implies “can.” What is meant by this, is that whatever it is that you ought to do is essentially something that you can do.
Although convincing, this proposition is not utterly definite. Too often our moral abilities pose unrecognized or are otherwise taken for granted. Nonetheless, we shall assume for argument sake the idea that, if given the opportunity, most people would choose to save someone’s life rather than killing them. We might also assume that if gifted the opportunity, most people would be more than willing to sacrifice something less valuable for something more valuable.
Said premises are forthright and quite easy to accept in a general sense. They do, however, become much more controversial when we substitute a key word “would” with “ought to”.
Let us apply this exchange to Singer's thought experiment. Instead of saying that any sane person would choose to save a drowning child rather than concede their death, we say that she ought to choose to save a drowning child rather than letting the child die. To gain further dexterity into this notion of a predestined ethical dilemma we identify “ought to” with “can”; whatever you ought to do supervenes on that which you can do. Therefore, so long as we are able to make a more positive impact, it could be argued that it is essentially our moral obligation to do so.
The significance of ability is tricky. It is the thin line between accepting or rejecting Singer’s argument for an Obligation to Assist (OTA), which will be explained in a moment, as well as the determining factor on what we ought to be doing in situations that are presented both directly and indirectly to us. By inserting dilemmas of moral importance into different hypothetical situations, we learn that how we ought to act is indeed determined by whether or not we are actually able to act.
To understand Singer’s OTA argument, we shall reckon with a more challenging thought experiment. Imagine your family wins the lottery! Before winning the lottery your life was still very comfortable - but now with 2 million dollars your family is able to completely retire and enjoy an endless amount of expensive family dinners and vacations together. Imagine now that your family is contacted by a charity organization and told that by donating 67 dollars, a child will be saved from dying, guaranteed. The charity organization then asks if your family is willing to donate 2 million dollars so that close to 30 thousand children’s lives can be saved. The only catch is that your family must either donate the entire amount, or give nothing at all. This is the moral dilemma: your family can choose to stop thousands of children (29, 850 to be exact) from dying, or they can choose to keep the won lottery money.
The main probe of this thought experiment is whether or not it is a fair use of the word "can" to advocate Singer’s argument. Surely your family could refuse to give up their winnings and feel confident in their decision. But this raises another crucial aspect allowing us to grasp the correlation between the unsung difficulty of following what should be obvious moral judgement and Singer’s thought experiment; if Singer chooses to save the drowning child, he will get wet and miss his lecture. If your family chooses to save the lives of almost 30 thousand children, you will lose 2 million dollars and return to a much less glamorous lifestyle.
By comparing these two initiatives, we are able to identity the main point of the OTA argument: having the ability to stop something with a negative outcome from occurring (child drowning) without needing to sacrifice anything of comparable moral value (getting wet) means that you morally ought to do it.
If Singer chooses to ignore the child it is because he would rather keep something of incomparable moral importance to saving a child’s life. Similarly, if your family chooses to keep the money, they are also choosing something of incomparable moral importance over something with great moral importance, that being the lives of 29 thousand innocent children.
It has been established that if someone ought to act a certain way, it certainly entails that they are able to act this way. It follows then, that if someone chooses to take a certain action over another, they are at least aware of the possible repercussions of the action being taken. This is an important factor when we look at the topic of poverty. Most people would insist that if the opportunity were presented within their capacity, they would not object to helping an innocent person in poverty who is in the vicinity of death.
But our concern here is not whether providing aid for someone dying from malnutrition or some curable disease is moral. It is whether or not it is immoral for us to live without helping someone in such a circumstance when we have the means to do so. Are we responsible for the deaths of those suffering from poverty when we could easily save them? This is not a trivial question. We can, however, get closer to finding an answer with a more intricate thought experiment which Singer introduces in a separate essay, The Singer Solution to World Poverty:
“Bob is close to retirement. He has invested most of his savings in a very rare and valuable old car, a Bugatti, which he has not been able to insure. The Bugatti is his pride and joy. […] Bob knows that its rising market value means that he will always be able to sell it and live comfortably after retirement. One day when Bob is out for a drive, he parks the Bugatti near the end of a railway siding and goes for a walk up the track. As he does so, he sees that a runaway train, with no one aboard, is running down the railway track. Looking farther down the track, he sees the small figure of a child very likely to be killed by the runaway train. He can’t stop the train and the child is too far away to warn of the danger, but he can throw a switch that will divert the train down the siding where his Bugatti is parked. Then nobody will be killed – but the train will destroy his Bugatti. Thinking of his joy in owning the car and the financial security it represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch. The child is killed. For many years to come, Bob enjoys owning his Bugatti and the financial security it represents.”
As Singer indicates, Bob’s decision to avoid throwing the switch is not a moral action. The child’s fate was visible and Bob was given the opportunity to change it without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance. However it is the urgency of this moral dilemma that is extremely significant to understanding our concern with social responsibility. It encourages us to locate resemblance between the moral obligation of Bob and someone who finds themselves in a seemingly less urgent situation.
Let us imagine Ben, 25 years old, who has made a decent living for himself and lives without any financial worry. In fact, Ben's monthly income is able to cover all of his essential living costs, leaving him with a large amount of extra spending money each month. Ben is a kind person and he works hard for the money he makes. He uses his extra cash that he earns to go out with his friends, buy nice clothes, and he often gives change to the homeless. One day, on his way to work, Ben notices a sign. The sign reads, “Save a Child’s Life for $67 ($50 USD). Visit this website to donate $67 and stop a child from dying due to malaria: MalariaConsortium.org.” This gives us something to compare the similarities between Ben's and Bob’s situation.
First, like Bob, Ben is given the knowledge of the potentiality of a child’s death. The only difference between this knowledge is how it is offered. Unlike Bob, Ben cannot see the child. Although Ben cannot see the child whose life is threatened, we are still presented with a second similarity which is having the resources to stop the child from dying; Bob has a switch he could throw and Ben has a website he could visit. By applying the OTA argument’s main point, we may draw a third similarity: Bob must decide whether he is sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance if he throws the switch, while Ben must do the same when faced with the decision to visit the website and donate 67 dollars.
Bob would be sacrificing his Bugatti and the financial comfort attached to it and Ben would be sacrificing his 67 dollars and the financial freedom it offers. Both of these things are not of comparable value to a child’s life, therefore officially placing the two thought experiments in a state of equilibrium. Bob has the knowledge, the resources, and the ability to save the child, yet the child dies because of a sacrifice he is not willing to make. If we accept that Bob can be held morally responsible for his decision, we must also accept the same for Ben. Like Bob, Ben has the knowledge, the organization's website, and the money to donate so that a child threatened by infectious disease will not die.
Accepting these three key aspects with the OTA argument, we can analyze further universal topics such as where we think we stand as moral agents in regard to helping those suffering from poverty - especially innocent children who were born into it. A very common objection to this may be that we are not put face to face with the children suffering from poverty, thus it is out of our hands. It assumes that, since we are not personally presented with a dire choice to help them, there is no dire choice to be made.
Of course there are many facts on the damaging effects of poverty that do make us personally aware of these children's circumstances. According to the most recent World malaria report, "children aged under 5 years are the most vulnerable group affected by malaria. In 2017, they accounted for 61% (266 000) of all malaria deaths worldwide." It was reported in the same year by IHME's Global Burden of Disease study that if left untreated,1 in every 12 children threatened by this illness will die. What's more, as Malaria Consortium points out, it "is both a cause and a result of poverty, making it imperative that it should be controlled so that affected economies can develop and grow."
By reading these facts, we have been made aware of something terrible happening in the world due to poverty. We are given the incentive of knowledge.
Nevertheless, as we previously decided, awareness of the possibility of death alone is not enough to be held accountable for it. Even if we are informed of an organization that claims to protect these children stuck in poverty who are more likely to die from Malaria, how can we be sure of their legitimacy? To save the time it may take to research this, Singer's organization The Life You Can Save provides numerous reliable resources that ensure the effectiveness of their suggested charities, one of which Ben reads on a sign on his way to work.
Be that as it may, even if we know from accurate studies that we can help save a child’s life by clicking and donating 67 dollars to Malaria Consortium, an objector may still feel as though choosing not to donate is in no way similar to choosing not to save a child’s life. By reflecting on our previous thought experiments, we may argue against this.
Making the conscious decision not to perform a certain action is still an action itself. If we choose not to help those in need and we know what will happen if we do not, we are, in a sense, responsible for something that could have otherwise been prevented.
We must always keep in mind that what we ought to do is always implied by what we can do. Ben has the information of the potential death of a child, he has 67 dollars to spare if he visits MalariaConsortium.org, and most importantly, nothing of comparable moral importance to lose. Now that Ben can be sure that he has a reliable resource and that his donation will certainly have a positive moral impact, Singer would concede that he has an absolute moral obligation to use this capability.
By analyzing such complex ethical dilemmas which are vital for understanding the idea of how we ought to behave as moral agents, a conspicuous truth can be found in our actions; again that, what we ought to do is never asking for anything more than what we are capable of. This leaves one last question that you may be hesitant to address, perhaps already knowing the answer: Just how responsible am I?
Most of you reading this will not take advantage of the information offered in this article and donate 67 dollars to the aforementioned charity - but then again, this article was not written to make you feel guilty for choosing an action of non-action. Nor is it meant to persuade you to give to charity. Its purpose is to suggest that, due to the arrant subjective nature of moral obligation, we ourselves as subjects should try to think more empathetically before criticizing someone else's moral strength for doing the same thing (that “thing” being nothing) in other situations containing moral speculation.
It might do us better to spend less time judging others and more time reevaluating our own abilities to take moral action where it counts, perhaps by integrating the OTA argument into our daily lives.
Certainly such things are easier said than done.
Although we are free subjects, the looming social pressure of constant moral deliberation is an indelible feature of the modern world; what you choose is always up to you, no matter the external distractions that sometimes hover too close, bemusing you so that you lose site of what holds true moral value.
Yet as we have hypothesized, this is (ironically enough) where your power lies as a moral agent, and most importantly, as an empathic person.
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