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Children and Opportunity Costs

photograph of silhouetted figure alone on bench at sunset

In a previous piece, I argued that concerns about a potential child’s future carbon emissions do not give us any good reason to have fewer children. My basic argument there was simple: while a human life causes some harm via carbon production, it also causes far more total good. Human lives are, on net, a good thing for the world.

But while I don’t find the carbon cost argument persuasive, there is a different argument against having kids I find much more convincing.

Had I stayed single throughout my whole life, I expect I could have done a lot of good. Were I to eventually secure a good job — which I expect I will eventually do — then, with only myself to support, I could have donated a lot of money to high-impact charities.

I don’t have expensive tastes, and in the past I always found it easy after I receive a raise to mostly maintain my prior standing of living and funnel my new income to those in need. (To be clear, this is not because I’m a particularly generous person; I just don’t really buy much stuff. For example, I have a terrible time coming up with things for people to buy me for Christmas even when I know the money won’t otherwise be donated.) Had I not married, I expect that over the course of my life I could have easily donated well more than 50% of my income to those in real need.

But instead I got married and plan to have kids. And this, I expect, means I will do less good for the poor.

That is because kids are expensive. The USDA estimates that raising a child costs over two hundred thousand dollars (not including college). That is money that I could, and probably partly would, have spent providing malaria nets to families in Africa or funding vitamin A supplements.

This objection to having kids, what Stuart Rachels calls the “Famine Relief Argument,” is powerful. It points out that while the direct costs of having a child are not very high (my child will probably not make the world a worse place), the opportunity costs of having a child are huge. If one can save a life by donating about three thousand dollars to high-impact charities, then for the amount of money the average American spends raising a kid, I could save almost one hundred lives.

Of course, I could be more frugal than the average American parent (and do hope to be). But even living frugally, having kids will substantially increase my essential expenditures.

An Uncomfortable Demandingness

This argument is extremely strong, but you don’t see it brought up very much.

I’ve seen far more people on Facebook mention climate costs as a reason not to have kids than mention opportunity costs. Every couple months we see a new news article asking whether climate change should make us rethink procreation. I don’t see similar news articles about if global poverty should make us rethink procreation (other than those occasional very confused articles that suggest that poverty might be a result of overpopulation). There is a whole BirthStrike movement of women refusing to have kids until progress is made on climate change. Why is there not a BirthStrike movement of people refusing to have kids till we’ve eliminated global poverty? Why is more attention paid to the climate costs of having children, rather than the much, much larger opportunity costs?

It’s always dangerous to try and guess at underlying psychological motivations. But I expect two things are in play.

First, we never see opportunity costs. We see the damage our actions do but are never viscerally confronted with the goods we forgo by not performing certain actions. Thus, our brains are much better at considering costs other than opportunity costs.

Second, once you begin factoring in opportunity costs you suddenly realize just how radically demanding your ethical duties are. If I don’t have a child, I can donate far more money to charity. But also, if I give up philosophy and become a lawyer, doctor, or computer programmer, I can probably make far more money to donate to charity. Am I required to give up the career I love to help the poor?

Americans spend over 10,000 dollars per child on average each year. But Americans also spend over 3,000 dollars each year eating out. And the good of eating out is surely at least three times as small as the good of a child’s life. Are we doing something wrong anytime we eat out at restaurants?

Part of the reason you don’t see the opportunity cost argument made very often, is because making the opportunity cost argument forces you to confront the extraordinarily demanding nature of justice.

Responding to the Argument

Are there any plausible responses to this argument?

You could deny that ethics is really all that demanding. Perhaps your money really is yours, not just in the sense that you have the right to decide how it is used, but in the sense that you don’t have any moral reasons to use it to help others.

But, I’m convinced this is wrong. It really is wrong to spend money on luxuries when you could be donating that money to effective aid organizations. So are there any considerations that might justify having kids, even if they would not justify eating out or buying a new car?

Maybe. If there are, I think they come down to the special sort of value involved in a human life. The value of a child is very different from the sort of value involved in going to a restaurant, buying a new car, or taking international vacations.

All four (children, restaurants, cars, and vacations) are luxuries in the sense that they are not things that we need. Thus, you might think that since there are others who need food, shelter, clothing, and medication, it would be unjust to acquire those luxuries.

But there is also this important difference. If it was unjust to buy the car, it is obviously also unjust to keep the car. If I don’t need the car, not only should I not have bought it, but now that I have it I should sell it and donate the money to the poor.

But the same is not true of a child. Once I have a child, I should not sacrifice that child even if it means I can donate more to charity. Why is that? Because the value of a human life is profoundly different from the value of a car. Cars have a fungible value. It makes sense to trade one car for another, or to exchange one car for a certain amount of food.

Human lives are different, as is clear when we consider the unique type of tragedy involved in a human death. Consider how the point is put by Tal Brewer:

“Human beings have a very distinctive kind of value, wholly unlike the value of a physical pleasure, or a pocket full of money. It can make perfect sense to trade off physical pleasures against each other, foregoing one so as to experience another that differs only in being longer and more intense. … The loss of a human being is not compensable in this sense by the creation or preservation of another human life. This is not to deny that it sometimes makes sense to choose a course of action that will lead to the foreseeable death of one person but will spare the lives of many others. It is only to deny that in the wake of such a choice, it would make sense to regard the lost life as compensated for without remainder—indeed, without a literally grievous remainder—by the fact that other lives have been spared. This is precisely the blindness at the heart of utilitarian conceptions of value. …

It is worth pausing for a moment over the enormity of what we are referring to when we say such things as that the loss of human life cannot be compensated without remainder. … What is at issue here is that which we cannot or at any rate won’t quite believe in the possibility of when we struggle to fathom the fact that someone no longer is: it is an unfillable absence, a sense of which opens like a fresh wound when we turn our thoughts to the person who has been lost.

… For example, mature grief at the death of a loved one involves an awareness, whether articulate or inarticulate, that nothing could represent a compensation for what has been lost. Consolation might be possible, but compensation is not.

When we seek to stretch ourselves towards a fuller appreciation of the badness involved in the death of strangers, we often remind ourselves that the deceased was someone’s son, someone’s best friend, someone’s lover. … This familiar discipline of vision, then, testifies to a widespread confidence that the value of human beings is seen more clearly through the eyes of love than through the aggregative arithmetic of the utilitarian or the bureaucrat.”

Of course, the choice to not have a child is different from the choice to let a child die. To let a child die is monstrous, it is not monstrous to not have a child.

But even if this does not show there is any obligation to have children, I do think this should give us reason to doubt that we are obligated to not have kids in order to donate more to charity.  A human life has a type of value totally different than that of a car — it is a life with its own sort of incalculable meaning and importance.

And because of that unique value, it is unclear to me if it makes sense to make the sort of comparison required to say that it is more important to donate to charity than it is to have a kid. I worry such a comparison misunderstands the unique kind of value possessed by each and every human life.

“Phantom Champion” Memorabilia and Global Justice

photograph of 49er flagbearers celebrating on field

On February 2nd, the San Francisco 49ers were defeated by the football team from Kansas City (Missouri) in Super Bowl LIV. Almost immediately after the game ended, Kansas City players and coaches were sporting t-shirts, hats, and other celebratory memorabilia trumpeting their team’s victory. Clearly, in order for them to be ready when needed (for both post-game merrymaking and for sale), the souvenirs needed to be created well in advance – long before it was known that Kansas City would end up the victors. Presumably, the losing side of the field held a similar shipment of now-inaccurate collectibles heralding the triumph of the 49ers. What happens to this “phantom champion” memorabilia? And what sorts of ethical questions might it provoke?

The answer to the first question comes in two parts: in many cases, souvenirs made unmarketable by a team’s loss are donated to charities that distribute the clothing to parties in need; in some others, they are simply destroyed.

In both cases, although certainly some fans would jump at the chance to purchase tchotchkes celebrating a history that never happened, sports leagues are interested in preventing such merchandise from entering the secondary market; as a representative for the Major League Baseball Association explained in 2016, their choice to trash memorabilia celebrating Cleveland’s (nonexistent) win over the Cubs was motivated by a concern to “protect the team from inaccurate merchandise being available in the general marketplace.”

More frequently, rather than simply letting such materials go to waste, leagues have coordinated with non-profit groups to distribute the clothing to people in foreign countries or who have been victimized by natural disasters. As Jeff Fields, then-representative of a charity which has worked with the NFL in this way, explained in 2007, “Where these items go, the people don’t have electricity or running water. They wouldn’t know who won the Super Bowl. They wouldn’t even know about football.”

Which, for all of its humanitarian veneer, might suggest something less-than-morally-praiseworthy about how phantom champion materials are handled: either they simply go to waste (thereby contributing further to the problems inherent to “fast fashion”) or they work to perpetuate what Teju Cole has called the “White-Savior Industrial Complex.”

In the case of the first, recent years have seen much attention given to the problem of low-quality, inexpensively-produced clothing and other textiles ending up as landfill waste. Not only does so-called “fast fashion” (named for its ever-increasing speed of turnover to match ever-more-quickly-changing trends) produce upwards of 10% of humanity’s carbon emissions, but the fashion industry is the second-largest consumer of water in the world. Many of the products targeted at fast-fashion consumers are made with polyester or other fossil-fuel-derived synthetics and washing these clothes introduces a significant amount of microplastics into the water supply. Overall, somewhere on the order of 85% of all textiles produced globally end up in landfills each year. Insofar as the NFL, MLB, and other professional sports organizations dump their undesired merchandise straight into the trash, they are directly contributing to problems of pollution and climate change.

Regarding the second, in critiquing American sentimentality that “is not about justice…[but]… is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege,” Cole directly channels W.E.B. Du Bois’ criticisms of “whiteness” as that which patronizingly treats the Earth as being under the care of white people. Even – and perhaps particularly – when acting as a “caretaker,” whiteness exudes the “assumption that of all the hues of God, whiteness alone is inherently and obviously better than brownness or tan…even the sweeter souls of the dominant world as they discourse with me on weather, weal, and woe are continually playing above their actual words an obligato of tune and tone.” Writing in his essay “The Souls of White Folks,” Du Bois continues, “Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen!” When American corporations disguise their garbage disposal as “humanitarian aid” and pat themselves on the back for donating unwanted products that, arguably, should never have been produced in the first place, it’s hard to avoid cynicism when assessing their motivations – particularly when they patronizingly excuse the distasteful design of their gifts by belittling the targets of their supposed concern. “They wouldn’t even know about football,” indeed.

Certainly, there is much about the state of modern American football that is well-deserving of criticism; its unnecessary environmental waste is simply one more item on the list. This year, the NFL pushed to approach a zero-waste certification for the host of the 2020 Super Bowl (though it is worth noting that “zero waste to landfill” is not the same as “zero waste”); eliminating the problems posed by phantom champion products (even if that requires foregoing immediate merchandise sales) would be another small step in a positive direction.

Christmas Music and Emotional Manipulation

blurry photograph of decorated Christmas trees

There is a predictable pattern of reactions to Christmas music every year. First, stores start to play it much too early – typically right after Thanksgiving, or maybe even right after Halloween – and people comment on how stores are playing it much too early. Then there’s that sweet spot, where for a few weeks the songs are fun and comforting to listen to, and Wham’s “Last Christmas” is still tolerable. Inevitably, though, patience starts to run out as holiday stresses mount, and by the time the season’s over pretty much everyone is ready for another 10-month break from Christmas music.

There is, however, one class of song that is particularly difficult to tolerate no matter what time in December: the preachy Christmas song that doesn’t celebrate the spirit of giving so much as it seems to chastise you for having been a terrible person all year long. Two such songs stand out: John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” (that’s the one with the “War is over/If you want it” chorus) and Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” (that’s the one with the “Feed the world/let them know it’s Christmastime again” chorus).

While both songs come from a place of good intentions – Lennon’s song was written partly in protest against the Vietnam War, while Band Aid were attempting to help raise awareness for a famine in Ethiopia in the early-to-mid 1980s – I doubt they make many people’s holiday party playlists. And for good reason: I don’t want to feel bad about myself during the holidays. And although I didn’t really do anything this past year to try to put an end to war or famine, do I really have to be reminded about my many moral failings?

If you think that I’m being too hard on these types of songs, then you should know that I’m not alone. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” has been criticized repeatedly, for many different reasons. Perhaps most damning of all is its ill-informed message about what was happening in “Africa” at the time. Consider, for example, the following lyrics, which describe Africa as a place:

Where the only water flowing
Is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you

And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmastime
The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life
Where nothing ever grows
No rain nor rivers flow
Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?

While undeniably schmaltzy, it’s also bizarre to talk about all of Africa in a single breath. As Bim Adewunmi at The Guardian writes:

“There is a humourless danger in taking song lyrics too literally, but I can’t help it: yes, they do know it’s Christmas time in Africa because huge swaths of that vast continent are Christian; the greatest gift anyone can have is life; and actually, it is more likely to be water, not just “bitter tears”, flowing across Africa’s 54 nations.”

Adewunmi also argues that the song perpetuates a narrative in which the people of Africa need to be “saved” by those in the west, and ignore the efforts of those actually living in countries affected by some of the problems that “super groups” like Band Aid are meant to draw attention to.

So not only is it emotionally manipulative, but it’s patronizing as well. Is there any good reason to keep playing this song around Christmas?

Well, perhaps there’s one: the song and subsequent concerts put on by related act Live Aid have raised a good quantity of money for charity. Although the original Band Aid song was released in 1984, subsequent re-releases – including Band Aid II in 1989, Band Aid 20 in 2004, and Band Aid 30 in 2014, with updated rosters of contemporary popular musicians – donated a portion of profits from sales of the single each time to various charities in Africa, approximately £40m worth – although there has been debate about the overall benefits or detriments of the original Live Aid efforts, with some arguing that unforeseen political consequences of Live Aid’s donations may have caused a significant amount of harm, as well.

Whether the consequences were overall positive or negative, we can also ask the more theoretical question of whether it is appropriate to solicit charitable donations by means of emotional manipulation. Clearly the song is meant to make the listener question their relative position of privilege – especially when they are told to “thank God” it’s “them” instead of you who are suffering. We might then be motivated to donate to the Band Aid cause not out of legitimate concern for the suffering of others, but instead to assuage our own guilt. We might worry, though, that while it’s overall a good thing to donate to charity, one should be motivated by actually helping others, and not just to try to feel less bad about oneself.

That being said, if it does indeed help distribute some of the wealth and goods from those who have a lot to those who need it, it is hard to see how a little emotional manipulation in the form of cheesy Christmas songs could hurt. And while it might be close to another year before you hear “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” again, next time you do it’s worth thinking about the best way to assuage that year-end guilt.

Cultural Value, Charitable Giving, and the Fire at Notre Dame

The Notre Dame cathedral in Paris photographed in 2015 from the side

On Monday, April 15, viewers looked on in horror as Notre Dame Cathedral was devastated by fire. Onlookers hoped that the flames would be fought back before too much damage was done, but the cathedral’s spire came crashing down, taking much of the roof with it. The extent of the damage remains to be seen.

Construction on the stunning piece of gothic architecture began in 1163, and the wood out of which it was built was taken from trees that are hundreds of years older.  Among other noteworthy events, Henry VI of England was crowned King of France inside of Notre Dame in 1431, and it was also inside its walls that Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned emperor in 1804. Perhaps Notre Dame is most famously known for the attention drawn to it by Victor Hugo in his 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The now classic novel raised awareness of the dilapidated condition of the cathedral at that time, and led to restoration and greater appreciation for the historic site.

The landmark is valuable for many reasons. Arguably, it has both instrumental and intrinsic value—that is, it has value both in light of the joy it brings to people, and value in its own right. Some argue that cultural artifacts that have stood the test of time have intrinsic value in light of their continued existence. The more important events take place within a structure, and the more tribulations that structure withstands, the greater its value in this respect. Key historical figures participated in sacred rights in its chapels. This sets the cathedral apart from most other buildings with respect to significance.

The cathedral is also one of the most beautiful buildings ever constructed. All things being equal, it is a tragedy when a thing of beauty is destroyed. Art and architecture have the potential to represent the heights of human creativity. The building is not simply beautiful to look at; it expresses something both existential and essential about the human ability to bring monumental, almost inconceivable visions into reality. As a result, when a building like this is destroyed, it hurts us all in a way that is difficult to fully articulate. The building was a testament to our values, our resilience, and the transcendent ability we have to express appreciation of those things we take to be deserving of our best efforts.

Notre Dame speaks to us all in the way that all great works of art do. It is especially significant, however to French citizens. The art and landmarks of a country are a tremendous source of pride for its citizens, and the destruction of Notre Dame no doubt changes how it feels to be French.  

Finally, Notre Dame has substantial religious value for many people. Pilgrimages are made to Notre Dame frequently—an experience at the Cathedral is often a profound one. Notre Dame is home to artifacts that many consider to be relics, including a crown of thorns purportedly placed on the head of Christ, a piece of the “true cross,” and a nail from that cross on which Christ was executed. These relics were salvaged from the flames, but the fact that the Cathedral was the sacred home to such important artifacts in Catholic history highlights the gravity of the loss of the structure.

In light of all of these considerations, our hearts rightly ache at the thought that Notre Dame will never be exactly what it once was. There seems to be no question about whether renovations will occur. In the immediate aftermath of the destruction, Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, vowed to rebuild the beloved landmark, commenting that, “We will rebuild Notre Dame even more beautifully and I want it to be completed in five years, we can do it. It is up to us to change this disaster into an opportunity to come together, having deeply reflected on what we have been and what we have to be and become better than we are. It is up to us to find the thread of our national project.” Restoration experts anticipate that the project will take closer to ten to fifteen years. Before construction can even begin, the site must be secured—a substantial task on its own.

To advance the objective of renovating the building, both individuals and private organizations have, in the immediate aftermath of the fire, donated hundreds of millions of dollars to renovate the cathedral. The combined donations of the L’Oreal cosmetics company, the Bettencourt Meyers family, and the Bettencourt Schueller foundation came to 226 million. On Tuesday, the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, pledged a donation of an unspecified amount to restoration efforts. The University of Notre Dame in the United States pledged $100,000 dollars to the cause. Many individuals and institutions understandably don’t want the iconic building to remain in a skeletal form of its former glory.

This event raises interesting philosophical and moral questions about the causes that motivate us to come together to donate resources. The reasons one might want to donate to the renovation are clear. In addition to the recognition of the value of Notre Dame across a variety of domains, people want to continue to have meaningful experiences at the site, and they want future generations of people that they care about to be able to have such experiences as well. It is unsurprising that we should feel motivated to donate money to preserve things that help provide meaning to our lives.

These are moments in which it is appropriate to be reflective about what charitable giving should look like. One important question to ask is, “is charitable giving superogatory?” That is, is it the case that donating money, time, and effort to the world’s problems is something that it is good to do, but not bad not to do? Or is charitable giving, when one has discretionary resources, the kind of thing that we are morally obligated to do, such that we would be remiss, morally speaking, if we failed to do it?

A situation like this might also give us cause to reflect on the motivation and reasoning behind charitable donation. Should we pull out our pocketbooks whenever we feel a tug at our heartstrings? Should we be primarily motivated to donate to those causes that are near and dear to us, such as local causes or causes to which we otherwise feel a close personal connection? It may be the case that feeling satisfaction in response to making a donation of a certain type plays an important role in motivation to donate again in the future. For example, the public’s passion for donating to renovate to Notre Dame has motivated people in Louisiana to rebuild three churches that were seriously damaged by arson that are located in historically black neighborhoods. People recognize the value that churches often have for communities, and this tragedy has put them in the giving spirit.

An alternative theory about how our charitable funds should be directed is that we should give our resources to those causes where our money would do the most good. Imagine that your money could either go to a cause that prevented 1 unit of suffering, or it could go to cause that prevented 5 units of suffering. Intuitively, we should prevent more suffering when we can, so the rational choice is to donate to the second cause. Are we morally obligated to make our decisions in this more calculated way?  

Hundreds of millions of dollars could go a long way to prevent needless suffering in the world. Millions of people die of preventable diseases every year. Countless people don’t have reliable access to food, shelter, clean drinking water, and basic medical care. In a world in which people collectively have hundreds of millions of dollars to spare, is it morally defensible for that money to be spent on the restoration of a building, no matter how beautiful or historically significant that building was?

Some might think that the answer to this question is yes. There are some human cultural achievements that we simply must preserve, if we are able. If we accept this conclusion, however, we must also be willing to admit that the preservation of some art seems to be more important to us, as a human family, than the suffering of our fellow beings.

Where Should Your Money Go?

Photo of five boxes of girl scout cookies

We’ve all experienced pitches for donations that tugged on our heartstrings.  During certain times of the year, when you walk into a supermarket, you can’t help encountering smiling, toothless young girl scouts pleading with you to buy cookies.  On other occasions, you may run into firefighters who encourage you to put money into a boot to support the local fire department. On yet other occasions, you may be asked by a cashier at the department store if you’d like to donate to the Make-a-Wish foundation or the Special Olympics. I’m sure that all of us have, at one time or another, capitulated to these requests.  Are we right to do so?

To be sure, a lot of good comes from charitable giving.  The Make-a-Wish foundation makes lots of suffering children happy every year.  The Girl Scouts provide valuable, formative experiences for young women. The good that firefighters do is quite obvious. If we are assessing the consequences of our donations to these causes, there is no doubt that our giving brings about something positive.

What’s more, donating to these causes makes us feel good because we observe firsthand the good that is done for our communities.  These are people who, in many cases, we know. At the very least, these causes are closely related to people and institutions that we care about.  Caring is an important component of moral motivation. What’s more, when we actually see the good that is being done with the money we’ve given, we might be more likely to give to good causes again in the future.

One question we can ask, however, is whether our money should be going to promote a modest amount of good when the same amount of money could, instead, be spent preventing a significant amount of harm.  Consider, for example, that delicious box of thin mints that you bought from an adorable girl scout. Recently the price of girl scout cookies went up from around $4.00 to around $5.00.  On its website, the Girl Scouts proudly advertises that, “100 percent of the money stays local! That means you’re not only supporting girls’ success, but the success of your community too—sweet!”  Individual troupes have the option to donate the money earned by individual camps back to the troupe or to donate it to another worthy cause. The values that The Girl Scouts are trying to instill in young members are laudable.  Scouts are being taught the importance of good decision-making, goal setting, money management, people skills, and business ethics. If The Girl Scouts as an organization is effective in its endeavors, young girls develop crucial virtues and, ideally they spread those virtues to other members of society as they develop into citizens, professionals, and parents.  But is it a good thing that the money you donate is staying local?

If we are reflective about our charitable giving practices, one important question we must ask ourselves is whether it is better to spend money doing good or preventing harm.  We aren’t preventing harm when we choose to buy a box of Girl Scout cookies, though we are doing good. On the other hand, another way that we could spend that same discretionary five dollars is to donate to, for example, a cause like the Against Malaria Foundation.  Malaria is a preventable and treatable disease, but in impoverished nations, it is a deadly and destructive one.  Ninety percent of malaria cases take place in sub-Saharan Africa. Even when people afflicted with malaria don’t die from the disease, it can have significant effects on the body, including severe cognitive impairment.  A $2.50 donation to the Against Malaria Foundation provides a insecticidal bed net that can help prevent two at-risk Africans from contracting Malaria for up to a year. This means that the $5.00 we spent on buying a box of thin mints could prevent four people from being infected with malaria for a year.

One proposal we might consider is the following: as a general rule, we should focus our charitable giving on reducing and eliminating harms first.  Harms should be, as far as is possible, ranked in terms of severity. Once we have dealt with the most significant harms, we can then move on to the harms that are less significant. Only when we have dealt with all of these harms can we finally move on to charitable causes that seek to provide benefits rather than to reduce harms.  This kind of strategy is predicated on the idea that, in our charitable giving, we should strive to do the most good we can do, which means that we should seek to donate our discretionary funds as effectively as possible. This is a strategy endorsed by a growing group that calls themselves effective altruists.  Effective altruism is a movement that maintains that charitable giving should be motivated not merely by fellow-feeling (though empathy is, of course, not discouraged), but instead by the results of careful inquiry and evidence collection on the subject of where the money could really do the most good.

This is a rational, evidence-based approach.  On the other hand, some argue that important features of moral behavior and the development of virtuous character are missing when the issue is approached in this way.  One lesson we can take from care ethics, for example, is that morality is a matter of developing relationships of care with others. This involves putting ourselves in a position to understand the people involved and be receptive to their needs.  This is a practice that involves more than brute calculations. It involves really getting to know others. It may follow from this view that we are in a better position to care for the local Girl Scout than the malaria ridden person oversees. The care ethicist wouldn’t argue that we shouldn’t help those who are struggling in distant countries, however, they would argue that morality can’t simply be reduced to math.    

Good people can all agree that charitable donation is important. We all need to ask ourselves which set of moral considerations should guide our decision making.  Is a decision fully moral if it relies on rationality alone? Do we need to be emotionally invested in the causes to which we commit our resources?

Why Give $75 Million to Philosophy?

Image of Johns Hopkins University's Main Campus

When Bill Miller, a wealthy businessman, recently made a $75 million donation to the philosophy profession—specifically, to the Johns Hopkins philosophy department—philosophers rejoiced in unison, right? Not exactly. Some rejoiced while others engaged in a debate. Mike Huemer, a philosopher at the University of Colorado, kicked it off in a Facebook post, which was reposted at the What’s Wrong? blog.

Continue reading “Why Give $75 Million to Philosophy?”

Peter Singer and the Ethics of Effective Altruism

In the first part of this two-part series, we explored the views of Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer and whether they count as “eugenics.” Although his possibly eugenicist views are what drew protestors to Singer’s recent talk at the University of Victoria, Singer wasn’t there to discuss bioethics. Instead, he had been invited by the Effective Altruism club, and the event included a screening of Singer’s 2013 TED talk on Effective Altruism.

Continue reading “Peter Singer and the Ethics of Effective Altruism”