To clarify for anyone reading this, I am not writing this as a persuasive piece. In fact, I'm writing it as a way for me to seek clarity, for myself, about how I feel regarding an argument I saw recently online. The argument began as one regarding the immorality of not giving charity for those less fortunate than ourselves. If we allow children to starve while we have the ability to prevent it by giving charity, are we any different from the man who watches a child drown because he does not wish to save it?
The piece that really got me to question my moral beliefs just now was at Tomkow.com, in response to a discussion of Peter Singer's ideal that modern western man is morally obligated to give much more than he currently does to charity. He currently gives 25% of his income to charity, a laudable act in my eyes. The critique is that inaction and action are not morally equivalent, a statement with which I am disposed to agree. I am uncomfortable with the statement from of which this is an obvious corollary; that there is no moral obligation to actively interfere in a wrong, even if doing it actively is immoral. The problem is that there is "no thoroughly convincing account of [the] source [of the idea that there is a difference in weight between positive and negative duties.]"
The argument to justify the non-existence of an imperative to act to forestall a bad thing is simple, but I think easy to dismiss. The argument follows: A man sees a child drowning. He should save the child. This is a positive duty. If the man, however, had not seen the child, the world would be no worse off than had he ignored it. No-one, however, really believes that the man ignoring a drowning child has done nothing wrong. We can claim that this is a defect in the personality of the person, but we must still admit that it is a wrong action. Tomkow claims that virtue ethics is wrong because we cannot judge the ethical nature of an action by examining the character of ethical agents, because then we are assuming that ethical agents actions are intrinsically correct, and can do no wrong. This assumes the conclusion.
But he continues; heroism isn't morally good, it's just a good trait. Preventing bad is esthetically right, but morally neutral. It does not matter if the state of the world improves by the action; we cannot label not doing it as making the state of the world worse - the world gets worse on its own. But doesn't that remove us completely from the moral picture, and excuse anything?
Claiming that the man might not have been there to see the child drowning doesn't remove the moral obligation to help him once he did. Tomkow makes the claim in order to use Singer as an example: "If you [think that the bystander did anything morally wrong] then you will have a problem with Singer's equivalence: if failing to donate all you can is as unvirtuous as letting that child drown then you are going to have to say that even Singer lacks moral virtue. But look at that picture!" So by way of claiming that no one has solved the issue of how to deal with third world poverty, and because we see that people are imperfect, we simply dismiss the critique completely.
We view our actions as meaningful, whereas the default of doing nothing is viewed as morally never bad. This is clearly untrue, however convenient it may be to believe. There was a time when our actions' purview was limited to what we could see, and morality was simpler then. We could simply say that inaction when seeing a wrong was itself t some degree wrong, and that ignorance was an excuse because is was impossibly to have the knowledge needed.
Now, however, we face a problem. It is the "Beggars in Spain" problem: if you see a beggar, you give him food. What do you do about all the beggars in Spain? (I label it this because of where I first saw it, in a book of that title. The question there was posed as an issue of objectivist "philosophy," about whether productive members of society owed anything to their unproductive counterparts. I reject the philosophy, but wish to have a convenient label for the problem.)
We basically paint ourselves into a corner. Not pretending to have the answers, I simply point out that inaction isn't an excuse for moral wrongs, and that with modern knowledge and communications, essentially all of humanity is aware of drowning children, constantly. This is where I think it is important to realize that tithing is a fair minimu for the amount of charity anyone should give to the less fortunate. Either we start to address the problem, as Singer does, or we philosophize about how we are not morally bad, we are just, as Tomkow claims, sons of bitches. And if Tomkow is going to label himself that for not trying to address these problems, I will not disagree
My personal values system is informed by and, I believe compatible with, but not identical to that of Orthodox Judaism. I like to think that it is defensible without reference to the un-provable. By this, I mean that it should be defensible without reference to the fact that God told me to do certain actions. Of course, I will refrain from participating in activities that others without my beliefs would, but I think I do not do anything that is condemned as immoral outside of my belief system, and that Halachic Judiasm is compatible with this claim. (Not necessarily as practiced, but that is a separate discussion.)
2 comments:
I think you're falling into a trap similar to "whatever isn't forbidden is obligatory". There's a reason why we laud people who actually, say, rescue people from drowning, or burning houses -- exactly because that's not "just the right thing to do", it's something above and beyond that.
Then too, there's risk to the rescuer -- there's any number of situations where someone who tries to personally save a drowning person (or someone in a fire, being attacked by animals, overcome by gas, etc) can just add themself to the body count. (Calling for help is a lot safer, and failure to do so has correspondingly less excuse.)
I understand your point, but disagree.
You admit, I think, that there is a good involved in saving lives; it is not simply the prevention of a moral bad. Since it is good overall, do you claim that it may somehow still be a neutral act? Acts can only be neither discouraged nor laudatory if they have no effect on others. Either you deny that saving lives is a moral good altogether, or you claim that there is no claim on people to behave virtuously.
The fact that it's "just" the right thing to do is itself laudable. You use the limiting word to create what I think is a false impression that there is right, and then there is virtuous, as a qualitatively separate category.
On the topic of risk, I have been thinking about this a lot recently in various contexts. If you assume that saving other peoples lives is a good deed, and risk of dying is a bad thing, the only question is what is an acceptable risk. Clearly if the danger is low enough (a bar that must be clarified in many practical situations,) it is then once again mandatory to save the other person. This follows from the fact that all actions contain some inherent risk. I would say that an economic model could be employed to quantify trade offs between the risk and reward, once preferences have been established; not simple, but that is irrelevant for the discussion.
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