Famine
Andrea Knowles
Ethics and moral reasoning
PHI 208
Edwin Teall
10-29-2013

Explain Singer`s goal in this article, and then present Singer`s argument that supports his position.
I think Singer`s goal here is to inform people of the famine of a Bengal, starving country, and to show us that making certain decisions, proper decisions or contributions from the more wealthy will not only benefit ourselves but the others around us. The people whom make the decisions are of course our governments and they saw that building a new Opera House in Australia or the Anglo-French Concorde project was of more importance at the time rather than helping those people live. He states in his article that people are dying and becoming refugees because of the choices someone had made. For example the Civil War, Someone told us we had to fight instead of working together and look at where it left us. It says in his article that other nations have the capacity to help, but it seems as if they were not willing. Singer suggests that it should be a morality to help those in need without causing the same disaster upon them.

Explain three counter-arguments to Singer`s position that he addresses in the article, and then summarize Singer`s responses to them.
Singer states, “ he shall argue that the way people in relatively affluent countries react to a situation like that in Bengal cannot be justified; indeed, the whole way we look at moral issues-our moral conceptual scheme- needs to be altered, and with it, the way of life that has come to be taken for granted in our society” (Singer, 1972). This can be summed as: Death and suffering caused by lack of nourishments, home dwellings, and/or health care issues are damaging. If someone can prevent something from happening without giving up something of equal moral importance, then they should. One must contribute as much as they possibly can without hurting themselves. Singer feels that the poverty stricken people must not need to be in the position to donate or slave their money away if there are several wealthy individuals who have been more than capable of helping the needy. Several wealthy individuals waste money on the things they want instead of helping those in need. If I see someone who has nothing I will help them out regardless if there is someone of more wealth than I that can help more. It’s the type of person I am, I may not have much but I will give you the shirt off my back if I knew it would help.

Define Singer`s concept of marginal utility, and explain how this concept relates to his argument.
Singer`s basic argument is: The application of the principal, we ought to prevent people from dying of starvation by sacrificing our luxuries. As the quantity of goods and services enhances, the marginal utility diminishes. In economics, the marginal utility of a good and service is the utility gained or the loss from the increment or for the decrement in the consumption of such goods and services. (Dictionary) In other words, the more of something we have the lesser advantages you get from having more of it. Its concept has been that; our extra could be more of an advantage for the starving children than to us. The ideas of duty in the proposed world of Singer are; the suffering along with death caused through lesser food, shelter and medical care have been bad, when this has been in our power for avoiding anything bad from happening, without sacrificing anything of the comparable moral importance.
Compare how the ideas of duty and charity are different in Singer`s proposed world as opposed to how they are currently used in our society.
Having giving a lot or little to those in need is always appreciated, but for Singer to say that we all have to do it like it is a law is wrong. For the most part we all live in poverty. So yes I agree we should all help one another, but to a certain extent. I live in a world where there is famine everywhere, so why would I send my money to some other country when my own country needs it just as bad. I would not, but I will donate my time to those on the streets and give them a good meal. I would think with a big family like mine that’s all I would be able to afford to donate. We pay taxes to support this sort of help to Salvation Army`s, safe houses, and The Red Cross. I think that’s all we need to donate. Some of our taxes goes to those who do not need it and spend it on private planes or family vacations, so we bust our butts to benefit the wealthier than us. I will support those who fight for us, I am glad that they put their lives on the line but if it wasn’t for a certain someone’s attitude towards another country we wouldn’t have to deal with the war we are in now and cannot seem to break it.
Finally, present your personal response to Singer (no more than a page). Develop an argument either in support, against or in the middle of Singer`s position. Remember that when you present your own positions you need to support them with as much logical reasoning and factual evidence as possible.
In spite of the above, once everything I’ve said has been taken into account, it is still true that people should devote a great deal of their resources to famine relief and similar causes—in all likelihood far more than most people in affluent nations, including me, either do contribute or want to contribute. I would thus say that Singer’s main argument is sound, provided we accept the weaker version of Singer’s second principle, i.e., that one should prevent a morally bad state of affairs if one can do so without sacrificing something morally significant. It’s just that I happen to think that having the moral autonomy to pursue one’s interests is something morally significant, and from the foregoing it should be clear that this means one is morally free not to devote oneself to working full time to prevent famine. However, I would question the stronger version of the second principle, i.e., that one should prevent morally bad state(s) of affairs if one can do so without sacrificing something of more roughly equal moral importance to the bad state(s) of affairs one is trying to prevent. I question it not because I think it is false, but because I think in many cases it is vague whether two or more states of affairs are of roughly equal moral importance. In the case I considered earlier, there was a tradeoff between choosing to do something, namely donating to famine relief, which has a high probability of producing very beneficial results, and choosing to do something else, namely pursuing one’s interest in such things as higher mathematics, which has a much lower but still non-negligible probability of producing very beneficial results. The problem is that it is by no means obvious how we can compare the “beneficiality” of these results when we simply don’t know what results pursuing one interests might have, nor how beneficial they might turn out to be. For these reasons I think that while Singer’s conclusions are correct, they aren’t quite as correct as he thinks they are.

References
English Dictionary, Microsoft word 2013
Mosser, K. (2010). Philosophy a concise introduction. SanDiego California: Bridgepoint Edu.
Singer, P. (1972). Famine, affluence, and morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1(3), 229-243. Retrieved from JSTOR database.