The Life You Can Save

It seems that the term "less important" is too arbitrary for such simplistic tests of humanity. If "less important" is anything uneccessary for life ( food, water, shelter) than in order to be considered a good person you would have to sacrifice everything you have until you are living with only the basics of food, water, and shelter yourself. Spreading the money around in such extremity for equality is the type of communism that robs the human spirit. Part of what makes life worth living is pursuing dreams and those dreams generally cost money. To travel and see different cultures may be essential to some people's happiness. What good is a life if it is a miserable one devoid of pleasure? It makes more sense to pool portions of money in programs that promote self-suffiency so that more people will amass the money needed to pursue thier own dreams rather than throwing money at a problem too vast to affect without some structural change. All the money distribution in the world does not fix mental health issues or the natural differences in humans that make some more successful than others. Life is unfair but that is what gives us the spirit to challange ourselves. We all have the right to celebrate our own lives and we all have the obligation to give a boost to fellow man once in a while, but to totally level the playing field leaves us all sitting on the groud without hope of ascending higher. Basically without the happiness that ascension in an established system affords.

Forgive me, but I'm having some difficulty following this logic all the way through. Personally, the two examples you provide are just no-brainers for me; I would do whatever I could to help those real, live individuals at that time.Perhaps I could run to reach that child on the tracks, which I'd have to gauge before I let my Bugatti go. I'd also have to consider if the man with the injured leg might take my life with the firearm he has in his jacket- the decision would have nothing to do with my car seats. I am not so sure that giving money to aid organizations actually helps real people in such a concrete manner as your examples might. If I was as clear about an aid organization as I was contemplating your examples, I'd probably give, but I would not endanger myself.That I must give if I hold true your previously stated tenets is too large a leap, logically speaking, for me.Make sense?

Good post that raises interesting questions.
My response is pretty much the same as what Becky
says in the other comment.

However let's add a few things to muddle things up.
What if the child that was saved happens to be a future
mass murderer, then saving that life, we could argue,
would result in the loss of many other lives.

In the case of aid organizations, some create short
term solutions at the expense of long term improvements,
how do we know exactly.

If you believe in reincarnation like 1 billion + people
on this planet then suffering is both something we want
to alleviate and to recognize as a normal part of the great
cycle.

Or do we help because there is a need or to feel good
about ourselves, or both.

Or when we help do we give fish and help people stay helpless
in the long term or do we teach them how to fish.

Obviously there are no clear answers and that's part of
the play of life. We take things on a case by case basis
and struggle with each one the best we can.

I agree with anonymous that it is not a simple subject and things we do are case by case and it just "depends". First you must check out the aid organization and give if you believe in their effort. I was raised by very practical and conservative parents. I was diagnosed with vision problems and needed several operations by the age of three. My parents didn't have the money so my mom researched and found Easter Seals. They paid for the operations. My mom paid them back in full when she had the money. It's important for me to give of myself, time and effort to those who need my help. I do this on a regular basis in my community. When I can I give monetarily. I see lots of very good people in my life. There are many who strive to be Christ like but never talk about it. You will never know unless you are right there next to them. Good things happen all the time. And I mean selfless acts when no one is looking. Also people should not be put down for driving a nice car or living in a nice house. You don't know that they worked for five hours in a soup kitchen this morning and do it regularly.

Well, there's the very real possibility that the company whose runaway train that is would be responsible for the damage to the car. He would likely have no difficulty in getting the return on his vehicle.

The biggest problem is the fact that the Bugatti isn't going to save all the children. Not dropping bombs on each other, on the other hand, would free up enough resources to save them all. There are millions - hundreds of millions of children who are all in dire circumstances, and there's not a lot that sacrificing a Bugatti's going to do about it.

Some folks mentioned Gandhi and Jesus as prime sacrificial individuals who went all out to help their fellow man. But still there are these millions of children who still need saving that they can't help now because they're both dead - and all the other folks who try to help won't be able to stop it all. So, the question then becomes is it really worth it? Shall I stick my finger in the dyke and drown with the rest of the town or shall I high tail it out of there in time to save my butt?

If I had control over a nation's wealth - in choosing over weapons and food for tax dollars, I'll go for the latter every time. Unfortunately, too many people are more willing to spend billions on bombs than billions on helping other folks out.

When I was still in school an Astronaut came to give a speech. A young child (obviously coached by his parents) asked if the money wasn't better spent of poverty.

Several thoughts that came to my mind:
1. There has always been impoverished people. While North and South America was being founded and built up there was a lot of poverty in the countries doing the exploring.

2. I don't think poverty will ever be ended. Like the posters above have stated people have to give up their comforts and that will never happen. If society really wanted to put an end to poverty it would have happened already.

So I still keep giving to the charities that I like. I know if I wanted I could give up my internet connection and put my money to charity but I'm not and I think most people are like me. They will give until it becomes inconvenient and uncomfortable and then they will stop.

While I'm sure many people would disagree and likely pounce on me for saying this, I do not believe that every person has equal value. They certainly don't to me, but I don't believe they do objectively to society and the world either.

Perhaps the moment they are born, due to the concept of 'potential,' they might have equal value. Or they might not, depending on the biological circumstances surrounding their birth.

But in any case, I personally would never give to third world aid agencies in the conventional manner. What kind of contribution would these people make to the world? Admittedly, it's hard to tell. But growing up with a great deal of deprivation and violence leads me to believe that psychologically they will not be very balanced.

Perhaps an even bigger factor in my mind is the birth rate and disease rate in such areas. Heck, I disapprove here in the West of people having children when they're not mentally or financially or emotionally ready to bring them up properly. By "nature" they may be fine, but what kind of adults they'd become with that kind of "nurture" worries me considerably.

Not to mention the concept of dependence. Temporary help when one is down is one thing, but continually living only on the good graces of others does not do much to foster independence.

I admit that the situation in the third world can be very sad indeed, especially viewed in contrast to the extravagances of the west (look at how much money goes to pop stars and professional athletes, let alone the sex industry). And while I would support reducing the extravagances of the west, I think aid would need to be directed in a very careful manner.

The most important factor would be education. As someone mentioned above, "teaching people how to fish" is more important than simply sending them fish. If I knew more about how a particular aid agency operated, then I might trust them more to do a good job of it.

Security is also crucial - ensuring that the aid sent is not simply captured by warlords for use on their own soldiers. And development - ensuring that the circumstances change.

But I think it needs to be a collective decision by society, a shift in what we value. Reducing the rampant levels of consumerism and greed, and instead focusing more of that money on development and education in the third world.

To me, that is more important than the sentimental idea of feeding starving families. Especially when I can't trust those same people to hold ethical views themselves, to value others regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. After all, helping get people back on their feet when they're just going to go battle and get revenge on each other for the atrocities they've endured is not terribly productive.

I agree with much of what Alex says above. But I believe we all get too carried away thinking about the "masses" instead of the individual. Having said that, if each of us just helped one person, then that person just helped one person, and on and on, you can see how an individual can make a difference with the "masses".

Unlike some commentators here, I agree with premises 1 and 3 and the logic that premises lead to the conclusion.

Suffering and death from lack of food/shelter/healthcare in unseen places is just as real as the suffering in the hypothetical situations.
Plenty of aid organizations do verifiable good and save lives with additional donations, beyond a reasonable doubt.

Arguing that the child might become a murderer is a non-starter which leads to being indifferent to saving a child at no cost.

Saying that following dreams is as important as not dying also makes no sense since you usually have to live to pursue dreams. It's not comparing the importance of the leg of a stranger to the importance of your money. The premise means the importance of one's leg to one's car seating.

Saying that humans have different value objectively is questionable, but even then, I believe most people would save even a "low value" third world baby about to get run over by a train in front of them for a $1000, but they would not donate $1000 to UNICEF (see wiki child mortality). Most people would even pay just to avoid a 50% of that occurring.

Therefore, either premise 2 or the conclusion most give. (representing strict or loose moral code) I believe it is premise 2.

The strict code implied by premise 2 and conclusion may be valid depending on one's subjective ethics, but it is not valid in the mainstream moral code. This is evident by the induction raised by earlier comments, where a person must continuously give up money until a subsistence level because life is more important in order to be right. This is not happening in practice. Society does not reproach members for not donating all their money.

The second premise, then, though seemingly intuitive, must be false. And indeed it is demonstrated to be false since we as a society do not feel owning non-subsistence assets morally reprehensible.

The second premise, then, needs to be modified to better reflect society's moral standard, for paying lip service to vague golden rules has no place in logical deductions where semantics is important.

I propose that the second premise read:

Second premise*: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, and your lack of action is sufficiently direct to the bad outcome such that you would hold a sufficiently large portion of the blame, then it is wrong not to do so.

The conclusion then clearly does not hold since suffering preventions by donation is very indirect and the blame widespread since billions of people had the opportunity to prevent said suffering.

Alex..who appointed u as the center of the universe leader?? Who knows who is valuable? When I began in the "helping profession" I wanted to save the world..I was lucky to have saved myself..At any rate I told this to a wise person who informed me that "just saving one person could make a huge difference because that one person may end up saving billions of lives." No one can predict who that person could be. Having been surrounded by the criminal element, poor and undereducated offenders I have always found something in all people that makes them valuable in some way...Are we born innocent or evil? Anyone can change in a moment bad or good...
True your comment is your right to state, unfortunately though, are you valued enough for us to believe you...I couldn't make that educated valuable guess.

As Singer points out the vast majority of people say that the child should be saved at the cost of the car, yet the vast majority of posters state the opposite. So you are not a representative sampling of the population. You are flame.

This is kind of a stupid hypothetical. Anyone with a priceless car would also have terrific insurance on the car, so he would get the value of the car recouped. Also look at how bad Tiger Woods looks and how much money he is losing for having an affair. A guy who kills a kid to save a car? That would cost him some jobs at work. Companies market their community mindedness as well as their profit margin. Bob would lose a lot of investors, customers, jobs if word got out that he killed a kid for his car. The collateral losses are not factored in. The fact that Bob took his priceless car out of the garage assumes that he was taking a risk with the car, and that risk might involve damage to his property. If he did not want to risk damage to his car, he should have left his car in the garage.

Sorry if this is ethics 101 but does this really jump the is/ought and fact/value gap by itself?

As far as I can see unless I share this value and want the same consideration shown me within a social setting -where my actions would lead to reciprocation or not- then it isn't necessary for me to do anything.

I would change it along the lines: if I agree with premise 1 2 and would want someone else to help me at no harm to themselves, realising that in a social setting it would be irrational to expect help but not do the same for others, then the conclusion follows.

Saving a child from drowning is not an analogy with saving a child from hunger. If a starving child came up to you while you were eating food, hopefully you would give him or her some or all of that food. If you were asked at that point to commit to feeding that child through to adulthood, most people would think twice, not regard it as their responsibility, moral or otherwise. So, it is with world hunger. It's not like a single act to save a life in front of you. It's the work of many, or governments or large organizations over a period of time. I still think it's a good idea to give to world poverty (or even closer to home) charities, I just think this philosophical premise is not the reason to do it.