Is helping other people too demanding?

Preface

A simple inconsistency is apparent in the way most of us live our lives. A common moral intuition is that we ought to promote wellbeing and prevent suffering: the greatest good for the greatest number is surely socio-ethical utopia. However, we simultaneously fail to do everything in our power to pragmatically support this vision; the majority of the western population has enough money in their wallet to save a life or many. And yet, they seldom do. This post fundamentally considers two questions. Why are global issues neglected? Is there any justification for this neglection?

Introduction

This post will discuss utilitarian principles in relation to the demandingness objection and egalitarianism, partly through an examination of interpretations on utility from economics. I will also explore the paradox of moral detachment as described by Singer (Singer, 1972) and consider if the causal reasons for this paradox could also represent justificatory reasons to accept this paradox. I propose that the question of whether utilitarianism is too demanding is determined by the extent to which Singers paradox can be rationally accepted; I argue that, on balance, this critique of utilitarianism is not fatal to the overall theory.

Utilitarianism and the Demandingness Objection

Utilitarianism is an umbrella term for moral theories supporting promotion of utility. Definitions of utility vary, but consistent is emphasis on maximising wellbeing, as summarised by Hutcheson’s iconic phrase ‘greatest good for the greatest number’. Egalitarianism hence seems to be central to utilitarianism, stressing the distribution of welfare; J.S. Mill argued equality was central to both the conception and practice of justice (Mill, 1863, p.31), the highest ideal of utilitarianism. But dilemma arises when utilitarianism is associated with total egalitarianism: maximising utility selflessly becomes the highest ideal, even if that means abandoning our own projects (Williams, 1973, pp.108-18). Constant interruptions to our own development challenge our narrative identity and sense of personal temporal coherence (Hills, 2010, p.225). Hyper-globalisation accentuates our moral obligations to an arguably absurd degree. Ashford summarises, noting “we live in a constant emergency situation, which results in an irresolvable conflict between fundamental moral and personal commitments” (Ashford, 2000, p.435). The utilitarian position is thus accused of being too demanding because it breaches our individual property rights and infringes upon our own personal projects through the formation of unrealistically pious obligations.

Pareto Efficiency Theory

In response, I look to economic theory. This seems appropriate considering the inherent socio-political nature of this topic. A pareto efficient outcome is one where it is impossible to reallocate resources so that someone is better off without making any individual worse off e.g. 3 coins is better distributed between 2 people at 2:1 rather than an egalitarian 1:1, due to the inefficiency of the latter. So far, the utilitarian has no objection. But suppose person A possesses all three coins, with person B broke. Here, the status quo is pareto efficient, but the utilitarian, committed to maximising utility, would urge (A) to share their wealth. Underlying Pareto theory is a focus on individual rights and objective respect for efficiency.

Contemporary understandings of Pareto Efficiency (Van Staveren, 2007, p.9-10) distinguish utility from welfare, not focusing on efficiency of utility. Rather, economic welfare analysis looks at satisfactions. If this theory of welfare analysis were upheld, utilitarianism would not principally suffer from being too demanding – instead, utility itself as a measure is viewed as a hard to define and inefficient quantifying unit within economics.

That said, Pareto Efficiency can be reconciled with utilitarian principles. Hansson argues wellbeing is equally problematic to quantify as utility, creating a complex system of interdependence (see left): “Pareto efficiency on the level of well-being may require the reduction of inequality on the level of material resources. Equality and efficiency are not as incompatible as they have often been believed to be” (Hansson, 2004, p.379). Moreover, Hansson’s attempt to reconcile welfare economics with ethical theory (Hansson, 2004, p.361-379) is bolstered if utilitarianism is understood as an attitude regarding moral interest, rather than normative guidance for moral action. If emphasis is placed on equal amounts of happiness being equally desirable rather than equal distribution of the means of happiness (Guidi, 2008, p.63), utilitarianism doesn’t ‘step on the toes’ of welfare economics. Moreover, a weak egalitarianism is more flexible regarding the ubiquity of moral disagreements and conflicts of interest in politics (Jubb, 2015, p.680). Hence, weaker understandings of egalitarianism remove some of the issues of the utilitarian demandingness objection.

Singer's Paradox

However, Singer argues that circumnavigating the demandingness objection with weak egalitarianist theories misses the point of utilitarianism. His drowning child thought experiment (Singer, 1972, p.231) uses analogy to argue from ostensibly uncontroversial moral intuitions to save a drowning child in front of you, to much stronger altruistic obligations. Rather than evaluate Singer’s argument directly, I intend to identify the causal reasons for the phenomenon Singer’s analogy highlights – what I will call the paradox of ethical scale. When we see suffering on TV, despite the best efforts of charities to be emotionally evocative through personalisation and appeals to immediacy, we cannot feel the same levels of empathy and moral demandingness that we do with morally intimate cases such as Singer’s drowning child.

What are the Reasons for Singer's Paradox?

Firstly, bigger scale issues are often understood as political rather than moral; principles of representative democracy demand our attention during election periods, allowing apathy the rest of the time. Designating responsibility from the individual to the politician also encourages the idea that moral crisis is at a scale too great for any one person to have concern for. When I speak of scale, I categorise this into three forms:

1. scale regarding extent of crisis: perhaps we’ve become saturated due to over-exposure to moral obligation, having a negative impact on our altruism. Ashford’s description of the constant moral emergency has the psychological effect of there being no emergency at all: we shrug at the state of the world because we seem to have been desensitised to famine and war.

2. scale regarding severity of crisis: partly due to the politicisation of big issues, the individual can feel like a tiny fish in an ocean full of issues so large that they become hyper-objects: “massively distributed entities that can be thought and computed, but not directly touched or seen” (Morton, 2013, p.37). Some entities and phenomena have such a large influence, that it cannot be measured, tamed or visualised e.g. global inequality and environmental collapse.

3. scale regarding temporality: Nixon’s concept of ‘slow violence’ notes that climate change has all the characteristics of a violence act, yet people continue to be apathetic to environmentalism. Current affairs are dominated by multi-media; the most shocking images can get attention over the most important issues: “We are accustomed to conceiving violence as immediate and explosive, erupting into instant, concentrated visibility. But we need to revisit our assumptions and consider the relative invisibility of slow violence” (Nixon, 2011, p.1). Perhaps through linguistic skills we can change our attitudes to prolonged moral crisis.

Moreover, constructions of ‘us versus them’ that are so common in modern political discourse (e.g. neo-liberal emphasis on the nuclear family and populist/nationalist emphasis on ‘otherness’) re-enforce the socio-ethical intuition that we are perfectly justified in looking out for ourselves and the people directly around us. This contrasts the utilitarian principle of objective concern for others both within and outside of our own constructed national identities.

Are the reasons for Singer's paradox justificatory as well as causal?

Consequently, there is a paradox of ethical scale, in that bigger issues are somewhat counter-intuitively less morally evocative that smaller issues. It can certainly be said that there are clear causal reasons for this paradox: politicisation of ethical issues, crisis saturation, scale of issues, time scales, and a nuclear view of ethical obligation. The question now follows: could these causal reasons for this phenomenon also represent justificatory reasons that could reasonably allow us to sit back and accept the phenomenon. Or, on the contrary, perhaps this paradox simply clarifies why we are in such desperate need of an ethical theory such as utilitarianism that has clear moral demands.

Exploring the first option, perhaps we associate ethical actions with intimacy because ethics is personal and social. Moral frameworks aren’t ends in themselves, but rather the means to the end of social order. It seems improbably convenient that different communities have independently developed similar ethical frameworks that seldom encourage unpleasurable and chaotic social outcomes. These ethical frameworks almost universally represent fundamental aspects of human conditioning: freedom within ordered, just and compassionate societies. Additionally, it seems further inductively convincing that these foundational ethical intuitions are conducive of survivable conditions. The fundamental principles that all cultures ostensibly lean towards are prime ethical conventions to facilitate thriving and prosperous social tribes. Thus, if ethics is merely socially/evolutionarily constructed to encourage survivability, we come to a form of ethical nihilism in which moral obligations lose all value. In this situation, utilitarianism is indeed too demanding – the absence of any objective value is veiled by an appeal to our intuitions.

In contrast, Ashford argues the very purpose of ethical theories is to produce moral obligations. Moral realists that advocate the demandingness objection are trying to have their cake and eat it by rejecting moral nihilism, while also selfishly complaining about the responsibilities that come with morality in the real world: “any plausible moral theory has difficulty in showing how agents' impartial moral commitments and their personal commitments can be harmoniously integrated… it is a strength rather than a weakness of utilitarianism that it explicitly acknowledges the current threat to agents' objective integrity” (Ashford, 2000, p.434).

Conclusion

To conclude, utilitarianism appears to demand an altruistic lifestyle driven by egalitarianism, attacking personal projects and hence personal identity. However, economic welfare theory has demonstrated weak egalitarianism remains realistically compatible with efficient and pragmatic understandings of utility. That said, Singer maintains physical distance mustn’t affect moral obligations. I used his argument to highlight a paradox of ethical scale. Both the arguments accepting and challenging the paradox are inductively forceful, but it is the fact that Ashford’s argument is so purpose-driven that makes it successful: it is in the very nature of ethical theory to produce demands, so utilitarianism is not undermined by this challenge.

Bibliography

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Guidi, M., (2008), The Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests from Bentham to Pigou, Review of Benthamite Studies No.4, University of Pisa

Hansson, S., (2004), Welfare, Justice, And Pareto Efficiency, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 7, Kluwer Academic Publishers

Hills, A., (2010), Utilitarianism, Contractualism and Demandingness, The Philosophical Quarterly (1950-), Vol.60, No.239, Oxford University Press

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Mill, J.S., (1863), Utilitarianism, Chapter 5, available at: [http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/mill1863.pdf]

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