Peter Singer, a renowned philosopher and professor of bioethics at Princeton University, causes divisive controversy everywhere he goes through his unwavering ethics. He is a fierce supporter of a pure form of utilitarian philosophy, in which we should all strive to achieve the highest collective happiness of all animal life, into our daily lives. He, for example, believes that we should stop most of our involvement with animals (including eating them) due to the fact that the value of any animal’s life or experience is equal to that of a human’s, according to him. In this article, however, I will examine his utilitarian stance toward solving world poverty and reveal why his solution to this problem cannot practically work.
His philosophy states that we should all strive to increase the collective happiness of the human race (and all animals). In regards to world poverty, this means that he would have that we all donate all the money that we don’t spend on necessities to charities that help save the lives of suffering children in other parts of the world, such as Africa. He believes that when we go buy that new television or go out to eat at a new fancy restaurant with friends, we are effectively letting children die in some poverty-stricken part of the world.
He likens the situation to that of a student that sees a child drowning in a shallow pond while on the way to class. Peter Singer continues on to say that the student can either ignore the child and continue on his or her way to class, or the student can effortlessly save the child but get his or her pants muddy and wet, thus causing the student to have to go home to change and thus be late for class. Peter Singer says, and almost all of us would unanimously agree, that the student has a moral obligation to suffer the consequences of being late to one class if it means saving one helpless, drowning child. He asserts that since the student isn’t losing anything significant relative to the child’s life, the student should save the child. You can easily see how he applies such logic to poverty in order to come to the conclusion that we all have the moral obligation to sacrifice something relatively insignificant in order to save lives.
But what is “relatively insignificant” to a stranger’s life? According to Peter Singer, it is everything that you or I don’t need in order to live. Thus he concludes that we all must give up any hope of luxury or material comfort in order to live in an ethical manner.This strong utilitarianism, however, relies on assumptions that I shall attempt to undermine, as well as has significant practical implications that we cannot follow through with without sacrificing those we ourselves love.
One assumption is that all lives are uniformly equal in value relative to one person. While all lives may actually be intrinsically equal (everyone’s life has value that cannot be stripped away), every single person has those that he or she,frankly, loves more than others and thus cares more about. Since this relative inequality of care is truly the case, a person will sacrifice more for those he or she loves than the ones he or she doesn’t love relative to those he or she does love. If a situation were to arise where someone could save the life of a loved one over that of a stranger’s, it is obvious that the person will opt to save the loved one; this decision is ethically correct because we have a stronger duty to that loved one.
A non-comatose utilitarian, however, would point out that, in the case of world poverty, most of us aren’t in a situation where we have to sacrifice a loved one in order to save other lives. Well, if we take an extreme stance of utilitarianism, as Peter Singer prescribes, then actually we do-especially if we have children. Ryan Deschain points out that it costs the average American family $9,000 a year in order to raise a child. That is worth 45 African children. According to Peter Singer, we should opt to neglect our child and let him or her die in order to save those 45 strangers’ lives. Some may see that as a worthwhile sacrifice, but I hope most of you agree with me in thinking that such an act would be unbelievably heinous and ethically unacceptable. Peter Singer admits himself that he is a strong consequentialist, as all non-hypocritical utilitarians, are, which means that he judges the ethical worth of an action purely by its consequences in as unbiased of a manner as possible. Thus, he should logically conclude (even if privately) that the sacrifice of your child, or anyone’s child, is worth those 45 strangers’ lives.
Furthermore, the obvious practical, “real-world” counter-argument to Peter Singer’s solution is that we will not sacrifice personal luxury, even in the face of world poverty. We all have our selfish desires and will work to achieve them. It is obvious that most of us desire ever more money; not many of us believe that we could conceive to spare to give money away. Peter Singer himself only gives one-fifth of his income away; surely he could spare more if he was aiming to live as his philosophy of ethics dictates. (I’m making a guess here regarding his income level; I could be quite wrong.)
Thus I believe that Peter Singer’s solution to world poverty, and utilitarianism in general, is not the truly ethical manner to treat the issue of global poverty. I, however, have to admit that Peter Singer is a philosophical giant in the modern world, and that I am but nothing in comparison. He could probably metaphorically smash me with a mere thought, really. Still, while I admire those that give significant levels of their luxuries away, I personally would not agree with their actions if it sacrificed their loved one’s interests or if they did not selfishly obtain pleasure from the act of giving. Furthermore, I do not belittle the plight of people suffering from a myriad of issues in the developing world; I would wish them a better life, but I don’t think we have the resources to help everyone. I’m also not saying that we shouldn’t give at all; I’m just saying that Peter Singer’s proposed pure utilitarianism is far too much for us to handle or consider.
