‘’Singer’s view of our obligation to help relieve the suffering of people in distant nations.’’ In this paper, I’m going to argue that Singer’s view of our obligation to help relieve the suffering of people in distant nations are right because, if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it. The fundamental defect of Singer's argument is that, given our experience of human nature, he sets the moral bar at an impossibly high level. Very few of us readily would or could live up to the standard he asks of us. If society attempted to set its moral standards at Singer's level, we can predict one of three consequences. If his standard
His first premise is, death and suffering due to starvation and malnutrition are very bad. Famine is prominent in many third world countries, and as people living on the same planet it is horrible to know that those less fortunate do not have the amount of food needed to survive. This is a fact, not an argument. Moving on to the second premise which states, if we can prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing something of equal moral importance then we ought to do it. I previously stated death and suffering from malnutrition are bad, therefore if we can prevent famine without harming ourselves we ought to do it.
When it comes to giving to charities, there becomes a moral dilemma of whether it should be done by personal choice or through a sense of duty. There is also a choice of whether to even help countries that cannot help themselves, when we at home have our own troubles with famine and poverty. I think it is important that we are good ambassadors to third world countries that are in need of assistance. We are not obligated to help those in need, but in a world of morality, it's the right thing to do. In the article by Peter Singer, he writes of the struggle in East Bengal.
This is a major problem that we need to solve. The Bliss type of homeless should not be incorporated into the statistics we as a nation gather this is because they are not the true homeless people, they are the lazy and unmotivated people of society. They can choose to be houseless if they want to, but they should be excluded from any sort of statistic that we
It is an irrefutable fact that we should help each. However sometimes help to others poses some danger to either us or others. Thus Peter Singer’s argument that, “we ought to prevent evil whenever we can do so without sacrificing something of comparable moral significance” in my view is a better school of thought or a sound moral law. We shall find out how he arrives at this conclusion and how convincing he is. Singer begins his argument by outlining some very important facts about human beings.
A Letter to the Editor It is Walter Cuffey's opinion that providing free housing and healthcare naturally would diminish people's desire to work for the government and pay their taxes, which in the long run would lead the country to bankruptcy. This contradicts Congressman Jesse Jackson Junior's opinion who believes it simply would create millions of jobs in the housing and health care industries and because of that generate a greater economic prosperity. I do not believe that the free housing Jackson mentions is meant to be expensive and luxurious. However, by free housing I imagine, he in point of fact means shelter, so that no-one in America have to live on the street. Once you have got a roof over your head, a solid base to return to,
Having a third of our population without healthcare may sound bad; however, some would argue that we are sticking to the roots of our founding fathers who wanted the power to be in the people. They wanted less government control and more individual responsibility to make it or break it. When referring to the idea of “make it or break it”, in this sense, it refers to whether or not the people were successful enough to pay for healthcare or whether they were less fortunate and were not successful enough to pay for health care. This is what makes America so great, while it does create a third of the population to have no healthcare, it generates brilliant thinkers and entrepreneurs that makes our great society what it has become today. Having a third of the population without healthcare allows hard working Americans that own businesses, or who have worked hard to make the amount of money they have, to be taxed fairly and not to have to pay higher taxes for other Americans who were less fortunate and could not afford healthcare.
If I was to apply Kantian ethics to the trolley problem I would not even consider how I would feel when making the decision. My feeling should never play a part of an ethical decision (Waller, 2011). My actions have to stem from duty (of universal law) to be qualified to be considered moral or have moral worth ("philosophy.lander.edu," 2011). The Kantian approach would not be to flip the switch or throw another man
In the article “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”, Peter Singer is trying to convince the people of America to donate a large portion of their income to help prevent world hunger. He recommends they save the money they would have typically spent on extra or luxury goods, as they are not a necessity to life, and give it to a charity that aids in helping to end world starvation such as UNICEF or Oxfam America. Although Singer’s proposition sounds like a good idea in theory, I don’t believe it is a practical way that this issued can be solved. It would be very hard to find someone who is willing to give a large sum of their earned income to aid people so far away. Singer attempts to appeal to your inner moral being by comparing his idea to two different situations.
Oddly enough, with this theory, it is prohibited to tell lies or commit suicide because that is morally wrong within itself and does not support the universal good of a rational decision, but if people acted in line with their duty to the universal law of their society, the results were of no consequence (Butts & Rich, 2008, Chapter 1). Kant stated that a person should act without emotion and with a complete sense of duty to serve the morally universal law of society and that the intention is of more importance than the result – consequences of the actions do not matter (Jasper, 1962). The theory of deontology follows this thought by setting demands that humans act at all times as though their actions would be universally accepted into an overall rule for society. He believed that duty and law are always one unit and cannot be separated and that with this duty to law, we shape our world. My criticism of this theory is that thought processes without emotions make our decisions too concrete.