Global neglect is moral equivalent of letting children drown, argues ethicist

By Lissa Harris

Suppose you are out for a stroll and happen to pass a pond in which a toddler is drowning. You contemplate wading in to rescue the child, but realize that doing so would ruin your brand new $250 shoes and, moreover, would make you late for work. What a pity, you think, and walk on.

Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer, left, debates Cornell professor of philosophy Richard Miller, far right, in Goldwin Smith Hall, April 4. The debate was moderated by David Grusky, Cornell professor of sociology, center, the director of the Cornell-sponsored Center for the Study of Inequality. Charles Harrington/University Photography

Most people would find such inaction unthinkable. But, according to the highly controversial Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer, as residents of an affluent country we find ourselves in exactly that situation: capable of saving lives by making small sacrifices, yet unwilling to do so.

"I'm sure you would agree that you ought to sacrifice your shoes and clothing in order to wade into the shallow pond to save that child's life," Singer told a Cornell audience Friday, April 4. "Shouldn't you be giving $250 or $1,000, or whatever you estimate [the cost] to be, to save the life of a child endangered in the Third World? What's the morally relevant difference between those situations?"

Singer defended his views on the ethics of inequality in a debate with Cornell professor of philosophy Richard Miller on "What Duties Do People in Rich Countries Have to Relieve World Poverty?" The debate was the fourth in the series "Controversies About Inequality," sponsored by the Cornell Center for the Study of Inequality and the Atlantic Foundation.

Previous debates in the series have focused on the facts of inequality: how much there is and what it is caused by. In this debate, however, Singer and Miller squared off on the difficult issue of what -- if anything -- we ought to do about it. While both agreed that the largely comfortable dwellers of the industrialized world have moral obligations to the world's poorest, they differed on just what those obligations consist of.

Possibly the best-known living philosopher and arguably the most widely misunderstood, the Australian-born Singer has achieved public notoriety for his controversial ethical viewpoints. His defense of infanticide for severely disabled babies, for example, has incited so much outrage that he has a bodyguard perpetually in attendance in his classes at Princeton, where he is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at the Center for Human Values.

He is the author of Animal Liberation, first published in 1975, which is widely credited with triggering the modern animal-rights movement with its insistence on the moral equality of humans and nonhuman animals. His Practical Ethics is one of the most widely used texts in applied ethics, and Rethinking Life and Death received the 1995 National Book Council's Banjo Award for non-fiction.

But Singer's judgments of how we should act, however controversial, are just the result of taking a particular brand of utilitarianism (an approach to ethics that weighs the morality of an action according to how much happiness or suffering it results in) to its logical conclusions.

As a utilitarian, Singer judges actions by their consequences. Since failing to save a drowning child and failing to donate $250 to Oxfam have basically the same consequences, Singer believes, they are equally morally reprehensible.

What this means, said Singer, is that when we choose to spend money on luxuries instead of donating to the destitute, we commit wrongs on a par with walking past drowning children.

Miller admitted that although their reasoning differed, he and Singer shared common ground. "This is a strange debate," he said. "Peter Singer and I both think that relatively well-off people in per-capita rich countries ought to do much more to help needy people in poor countries." However, he argued, it is wrong to suppose that we have exactly the same moral relationship to starving children halfway around the world as to those immediately in front of us. We have a "duty of special concern," he said, to those near to us -- friends and family, members of our community and our compatriots -- even though their lives are no more or less valuable than others' lives.

Miller offered a theoretical dilemma of his own: Supposing his accountant daughter and a brilliant neurosurgeon were both trapped in a burning building, and he could only save one. While saving the neurosurgeon would result in more lives being saved overall, said Miller, he wouldn't be morally remiss in saving his daughter instead.

"I'm sure I would save my daughter in that situation," Singer conceded. "I'm not sure I could morally justify saving my daughter in that situation."

Singer said he donates a large part of his income to international charities, including Oxfam and UNICEF. But he conceded to an audience member who grilled him about how well he adhered to his own moral code that he occasionally buys a CD or goes out to the movies, using money that could, instead, have been donated to charity. "I don't claim to do everything that I should do, and so I don't justify these luxuries. I guess I just recognize a certain amount of self-interested behavior that I cannot morally defend," he said. "I'm not going to blame myself for it, and I wouldn't blame anyone else if I knew they were doing something reasonably substantial in terms of sharing what they have with the world's poorest people."

Two more debates remain in the series. Alex Portes, also from Princeton, will debate Cornell professor of sociology David Grusky on "Are There Big Social Classes?" at 3 p.m. Friday, April 18, in Room D, Goldwin Smith Hall; Richard Freeman, of Harvard University will take on Cornell professor of government Jonas Pontusson on "Does Inequality Increase Economic Output?" at 3 p.m. Wednesday, April 30, in 251 Malott Hall.