Compulsory Altruism? Or, A National Moral Economy? (original) (raw)
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Shat-hast samāhār sahasra-hast sankir" [Collect with a hundred hands and give it away with a thousand] -Vedic sūkti In 2005 in New Delhi, I sat in a car with my son, who was three at the time. A woman in tattered clothes ran to the car and demanded medicines for her son, who was slumped over the shoulder of a man a few cars down the road. Just beyond the hysterical woman, I caught the eye of an auto-rickshaw driver in the next lane. Looking at me, he shook his finger as if to say, "Don't give money to them." I followed his social directive, the light changed from red to green, and they ran toward another car. My son often tried to talk to beggar children who tapped on the windows. The immediacy of his response was visceral and emotional, not filtered through moral judgments and political frames, as were my attempts to theorize poverty and charity. Both my son and I worked to create categories to understand what we saw on the street. However, while my son focused on the moment of confronting others in need, and the impulse to respond, my vision was clouded by the sinking feeling that I must do more than identify the problem. There must be solutions. I could not notice suffering and drive away without putting it into a web of causality-how did they get there? Why were they destitute? What was their story? What could be done?
Effective altruism for the poor
Ethics & Bioethics
The aim of the paper is to contribute to the debate on effective altruism. It is an attempt to present it as a universal moral proposition – not only a new charity model for the richest citizens of the world. The article starts with a definition of a hypothetical group of relatively-poor effective altruists. Their hypothetical living conditions and opportunities are juxtaposed with the theory of effective altruism developed by Peter Singer and William MacAskill and with career guides proposed by 80000hours.org – one of the websites gathering effective altruists. In the last part, selected practices for relatively poor effective altruists are described. The conclusion of the paper is, that although most of the reflections behind the concept of effective altruism are developed for the richest people in the world, it is a universal ethical position that can be applied into lives of relatively poor people, whose contribution should not be underestimated.
2003
The paper defines altruism as charity. The second section of the paper criticizes three rationalistic (what is called ‘‘interactional’’) theories of altruism, viz., the egoistic, egocentric, and altercentric perspectives. The third section criticizes three normative (what is named ‘‘selfactional’’) theories of altruism, viz., the Kantian, the socialization argument, and ‘‘warm glow’’ story. The fourth section elaborates on three implications of altruism qua charity. First, while altruism differs from self-interest, it is still within the domain of rational theory. Second, altruism should not be confused with parental care or, what is the same thing, philanthropy. Third, altruism should be distinguished from honesty. 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. PsycINFO classification: 2360; 2950; 3020 JEL classification: D0
Effective Altruism and Extreme Poverty
2021
Effective altruism is a movement which aims to maximise good. Effective altruists are concerned with extreme poverty and many of them think that individuals have an obligation to donate to effective charities to alleviate extreme poverty. Their reasoning, which I will scrutinise, is as follows: Premise 1. Extreme poverty is very bad. Premise 2. If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything else morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it. Premise 3. Individuals ought to choose the effective option in preventing very bad things. Premise 4. Donating to effective charities is one of the best ways to alleviate extreme poverty. Conclusion. Individuals ought to donate to effective charities working towards extreme poverty alleviation where doing so does not require them to give up anything of moral significance. I will scrutinise each of these premises in turn. For Premise 1, I focus on hedonistic utilitarianism and criticise its outlook on extreme poverty. I claim that hedonistic utilitarianism might be problematic for effective altruism. Premise 2 is Peter Singer's Weaker Principle of Sacrifice. I introduce several possible interpretations of it, and press several objections to it by stressing overpermissiveness, luck, and rights. I defend strengthening the Weaker Principle of Sacrifice without making it overdemanding. I claim that Premise 3 can be attractive to both consequentialists and non-consequentialists. Nevertheless, by showing that effectiveness sometimes violates fairness, I propose a method which avoids always helping the greater number and always giving everyone equal chances of being helped, which is compatible with effective altruism. Against Premise 4, I assess the systemic change objection, which states that effective altruism unjustifiably distracts individuals from systemic change. By considering risk and the moral standing of the future extremely poor, I claim that the systemic change objection is partially successful, but cannot undermine effective altruism. After analysing all of these, I argue that individuals have an obligation to donate to effective charities to alleviate extreme poverty where doing so does not require them to give up anything of moral significance.
The Effective Altruist's Political Problem
Polity, 2020
Critics of private charity often claim that the better off should instead assist the disadvantaged through political reform. The present article explores this idea with reference to effective altruism, a powerful new paradigm in the ethics of philanthropy. Effective altruism presses the relatively affluent not only to give generously, but also to subject their practical deliberations to rigorous evaluations of impartiality and cost-effectiveness. The article contends that the movement's sophisticated methodology is not sufficient to overcome the worries of institutionalist critics. At the same time, it shows that a transition from assistance to advocacy faces underappreciated and serious limitations. The measurement-based methodology that allows effective altruists to identify promising assistance programs does not carry over well to political reform. In addition, unleashing greater private wealth into politics may exacerbate unequal opportunities for political influence. The paper closes with preliminary suggestions for overcoming these concerns and connects them to broader developments in the politics of philanthropy.
Effective Altruism in Our Society
International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on the Dialogue between Sciences & Arts, Religion & Education, 2019
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0xUnported License, permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work isproperly cited.
"Effective Altruism: A Consequentialist Case Study"
Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism, edited by Douglas Portmore, 2020
Effective Altruism 549 my dependents as I would relieve by my gift. " In so doing, Singer, an avowed utilitarian, married his philosophical theory to the so-called demandingness problem. Ever since, moral philosophers have been asking whether it is reasonable or morally right to expect people to make such significant sacrifices to alleviate the suffering of others. Singer's 2015 book The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas about Living Ethically puts the point more clearly and explicitly. In contrast to the original, negative formulation in terms of "preventing something bad from happening, " it expresses the point positively-"Effective altruism is based on a very simple idea: we should do the most good we can. "4 In his 2015 book Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference, MacAskill similarly asserts that EA is about making the biggest difference you can. "Of all the ways in which we could make the world a better place, which will do the most good?"5 Singer's and MacAskill's books, and other products of the EA movement, have undoubtedly generated some very good results. For one thing, they help rebut the scores of books and articles published over the last several decades arguing that international "aid" is at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive. These books have names like The White Man's Burden, Dead Aid, The Road to Hell, Lords of Poverty, Famine Crimes, and The Dark Sides of Virtue.6 Aid's critics do not really deny that it's possible for affluent westerners to improve the lives of the world's poorest people-improving health outcomes is the most obvious example-but that fact often gets obscured by the titles and headlines. Effective altruists help set this record straight. They show how without enormous sacrifices people can greatly improve the odds that their donations will make substantial improvements in human well-being. But EA, I shall argue, rests on problematic assumptions. Are effective altruists right that one should always do the most good one can? Even if the answer is no, is doing more good always morally better than doing less? Before tackling these questions I consider a prior one: does EA necessarily presuppose consequentialism?