We have begun reading Peter Singer's excellent and challenging book, The Life You Can Save. It is the first book we've read that will be pressing us to DO something about what we read . . . sign the Pledge at the front of the book. Singer has been called by The New Yorker "the most influential living philosopher," and while I can't verify that that claim, he is surely providing good fodder for our discussion.
Thus far Singer has documented what we suspected: that the wealth of the developed world is way more than the rest of the world -- the newly-minted Facebook millionaires/billionaires would be another example of the kind of resources are floating around out there! That is, we in this country (many if not most of us) have money that could address the sources of poverty.
And he has raised and objected to common objections of folk who argue against helping the desperately poor of the world.
The very good question that follows; Why don't we (you, I, and especially people richer than me!) give more than we do? And Singer lists six weaknesses of our race -- things we probably know, but he has some psychological experiments that confirm and illustrate them. One of those characteristics -- that we respond to emotional appeals more than to factual,rational appeals -- is especially frustrating to folks who fancy ourselves to be smart people. On page 61 Singer says, "But of course concluding [rationally, I add] that others' needs should count as much as our own is not the same as feeling it, and that is the core of the problem of why we do not respond to the needs of the world's poorest people as we would respond to someone in need of rescue right in front of us."
Christian faith, based on the teachings of Jesus and the prophets (like Amos) before him, has since the beginning been urging its adherents to care for the poor, to give generously to those in need. Sometimes Christians have done that, and a lot of times we haven't. Faith adds to Singer's logic about the issue two things: First a sense of "command" -- from God, no less. The Great Commandment is that we love God, and our neighbor as ourself. And Jesus commands things like giving to beggars, and giving all we have to the poor. The second element faith offers to the task of alleviating poverty is emotional: If God has loved us so much as to give himself for us -- Jesus' dying for us -- then surely we can love others. That is, if one can feel God's love for us, then we are motivated (compelled, said St. Paul), to care for others. And that care would of course include care of the poor, and helping them have the basic things of life.
Does God's command (that we care for the poor, and share all we have with those in need) and God's love (compelling us to love others) do the job of getting us to give more? Discuss among yourselves!
Singer’s acknowledges the fact that traditional Christian ethics, or “God’s command”, requires us to help the extremely poor: “In the Christian tradition, helping the poor is a requirement for salvation” (chapter 2). But he goes on the make a compelling case that many of us are failing to take heed of that. It may be dangerous, however, to view ethics of a matter of commands, given that we need to be prepared to disobey an unethical command, as Derek Parfit argues in a section on Nietzsche (see section 124 in _On What Matters_, vol 2). Perhaps claims about “God’s commands” are best understood as a manner of speaking about ethics, and not taken too literally. Moral principles, such as the Golden Rule, and the sort of reasoning ability that you wrote about in your comment on speciesism and the Christian relationship to nonhuman animals, may be the key to making moral progress and getting the job done:
ReplyDeleteYour comment on animal welfare – Feb 24, 2012
http://ralphdbs2.blogspot.com/2012/02/can-we-be-good-without-belief-in-god.html?showComment=1330123349707#c2964603152379847418
In chapter 6, Singer applauds the work of a new charity evaluator called GiveWell, which has a “do it yourself evaluation” section on its website that includes suggested questions for the evaluation of various charity programs, including homeless shelters, churches, and religious education programs. This may be useful to the FCC:
Do-it-yourself evaluation
http://givewell.org/charity-evaluation-questions
BTW, here’s a cleaned up copy of my Google Books “user review” of Singer’s book, which got a bit garbled by Google:
User Reviews
http://books.google.com/books?id=gGn4cdxEgvEC&sitesec=reviews&rf=st:us
A truly **GREAT** and life changing/saving book on helping less fortunate members our own species. Here’s a choice passage that gets straight to the point:
“... [W]e can reasonably believe that the cost of saving a life through one of these [world poverty] charities is somewhere between $200 and $2,000. ... A 1995 Duke University study ... put the median cost of saving a life [in the United States] at $2.2 million. In 2008, the US Environmental Protect Agency valued a generic American life at $7.22 million ... . [pg 103]
TheLifeYouCanSave.com
The role of "commands" in ethics is worth discussing. The highest motivation to do the right thing is, I have been told, simply because it is the right thing to do -- regardless of reward, punishment, or Who told us what to do. The most mature among us will do the caring, loving, truthful, and even sacrificial act because we know it is right. But what of the rest of us? The rest of us just may need a little encouragement from above, so to speak. Believing that God has commanded me to love, even my enemies, does implant the idea more firmly in my mind. Doing the right thing for a less-than-perfet motivation is better than NOT doing the right thing.
ReplyDeleteI dislike imagining God as a tyrannical Commander-in-Highest-Chief, for I believe that God's love, grace, and mercy are who God really is. But the "commands" of God (Jesus said that the "greatest commandment" is to love God, and your neighbor) do establish the standard that, left entirely to our own devices, we would rather conveniently ignore. The state of our current political life seems to be me enough proof of that: "Thou shalt not lie" is not one of the 10 Commandments, it appears, that we want enshrined on our courthouses.
I cannot say much more about ethics as a matter of commands, right now, because I'm not up to speed. The best I can do for now is to refer you to the source I cited, which is available for a fraction of the hard copy price in a Kindle edition, and (if you are patient) it is free at the OPL:
ReplyDeleteOn What Matters : Two-volume set (Kindle Edition)
by Derek Parfit
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0066KU6ZW/ref=kcp_pc_dp?ie=UTF8&lc=as2
The whole chapter on Nietzsche (vol. 2, chapter 35) is related to commands and hugely interesting. You can read the summaries of the 3 sections in that chapter here:
On What Matters - Google Books
http://books.google.com/books?id=paCqx7FF2XQC&lpg=PT58&dq=%22On%20What%20Matters%22&pg=PT51#v=onepage&q=%22CHAPTER%2035%22&f=false
CORRECTION
ReplyDeletePlease allow me to correct a statement I made on May 19, when the Group discussed Singer's formal argument on page 15 (hardcover edition).
I was attempting to lend support to the first premise by appealing to Parfit's claim that it is an objective moral truth that suffering is bad, or that it is always wrong to inflict pointless suffering. In defense of that, I further commented on Parfit's "Convergence Claim" about moral disagreement about the existence of moral truths, and said something like "it is not an empirical claim." I was wrong about that, as you can see here:
"Convergence Claim, or CC:
If everyone knew all of the relevant non-normative facts, used the same normative concepts, understood and carefully reflected on the relevant arguments, and was not affected by any distorting influence, we and others would have similar normative beliefs.
"Unlike the claims that different people might disagree, or could rationally disagree, CC IS AN EMPIRICAL CLAIM [emphasis added]. Though it is a normative question what would count as ideal conditions, it is a psychological question whether, in these conditions, people would have similar normative beliefs."
MORE:
http://books.google.com/books?id=paCqx7FF2XQC&lpg=PP1&dq=editions%3AOqzpcFtlNLYC&pg=PP1#v=snippet&q=%22Convergence%20Claim,%20or%20CC:%20If%20everyone%20knew%20all%20of%20the%22&f=false
Summary of that section:
Section 120: The Argument from Disagreement
"When people deny that there are moral truths..."
http://books.google.com/books?id=paCqx7FF2XQC&lpg=PP1&dq=editions%3AOqzpcFtlNLYC&pg=PP1#v=snippet&q=%22120%20The%20Argument%20from%20Disagreement%20When%20people%20deny%20that%20there%20are%20moral%20truths%22&f=false
I certainly do not fully understand these things, and so far I've only previewed the 2nd volume, but it sure is interesting, isn't it?