Famine, Affluence, and Morality

“Famine, Affluence, and Morality”

Jimmy Pugh

PHI208 Ethics and Moral Reasoning

Prof: Paige Erickson

December 2, 2013

Peter Singer’s goal in “Famine, Affluence, and Morality was to convince people that the people as well as the governments should help with famine relief, primarily in East Bengal. Peter Singer wanted to let everyone know that the way that they deal with disasters is "morally unjustified".

Mr. Singer’s three counter-arguments I think are that people from Bengali are far removed from people in the developed world. Singer argues that many other places need money, so why not give to this charity. Singer states that we would have to completely revise "our moral scheme" to give reason for providing aid until the principle of marginal utility "kicked in" to replace his first principle of responsibility to help famine sufferers. According to Singer you have to donate until you can't afford to without losing something that has an equal moral value to you as the lives of strangers. Singer states that the value of every life is the same.

Marginal utility could be defined as the point where by giving more one would cause as much suffering as the actual suffering people that we are trying to help. This relates to Singer’s argument by giving an example of how Singer states that thi can be accomplished.

When Singer speaks of duty and charity, he states that it is our duty to provide charity. In today’s society, we usually leave our charity to those closest to us. Not many people even think about providing assistance to others outside their own inner circle. We all have a duty to help those less fortunate and the world would certainly be a better place if you could do just that.

I can understand some of what Singer says and they sound good but are not that great in practice. Mr. Singer seems to have a...