Abstract
In “Save the Children!” Artúrs Logins responds to my argument that, in certain cases, it is morally permissible to not prevent something bad from happening, even when one can do so without sacrificing something of comparable moral importance. Logins’ responses are thought-provoking, though I will argue that his critiques miss their mark. I rebut each of the responses offered by Logins. However, much of my focus will be on one of his criticisms which rests on an unfortunately common misunderstanding of Singer’s argument in “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” My response, then, is important not only because it salvages my positive argument, but also because it identifies, and corrects, this misunderstanding.
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Notes
More specifically, it rests on a misunderstanding about the scope of the second premise of Singer’s argument in his (1972) and (2009), as well as part of the case he makes for effective altruism in his (2016).
Singer explicitly states this in his (2009: 18). I also make note of this in my (2015: 207).
This commonsense judgment is supported by what Portmore refers to as the “basic belief.” See (Portmore 2011: 153–159).
Though, I grant that it’s intuitively permissible to force Lisa to save another child if it comes at no cost to her, as Logins appears to be imagining the case.
One issue is that, as formulated, it is subject to troubling counterexamples on which no one would bite the bullet. For instance, in a basketball game, it is surely permissible for one player to block the shot of a player on an opposing team. But it would be incorrect to infer from this that it was wrong for the other player to take the shot and try to score points for his team. I presume Logins would want to offer a more fine-grained formulation of the Intervention Test to avoid these problems. Although it is unclear to me how this could be satisfactorily done without appealing to ad hoc principles.
The problem with understanding the Intervention Test to provide a sufficient condition for wrongness can easily be seen by considering its contrapositive. “If a person’s doing x is permissible, then preventing someone from doing x impermissible.” Though this may be generally true, it’s not true in every possible case. See Heller’s (2003: 5) for another counterexample to the Intervention Test.
This includes any view that can be consequentialized. For more on consequentializing, see Portmore’s (2007, 2009), and Dreier’s (2011). For the purposes of my argument, it doesn’t actually matter whether the consequentializing project succeeds. But I’ll proceed as if it does because it will make the presentation of my argument clearer. If the consequentializing project fails, deontologists can give a parallel response to the one I give here (see fn. 8).
A parallel response can be given by Kantians who want to resist describing their views in consequentialist terms. The Intervention Test cannot be a reliable heuristic for Kantians unless there is a sufficiently close correlation between A’s x-ing violating the Categorical Imperative and PI’s forcing A to ~x being in accordance with the Categorical Imperative. For similar reasons, I am skeptical that there is a strong enough correlation between these acts for the Intervention Test to be informative.
I would like to thank Kurt Blankschaen, Yishai Cohen, Neil Feit, Andrew Forcehimes, David Hershenov, Robert Kelly, Stephen Kershnar, Artūrs Logins, Don Marquis, Jake Monaghan, Catherine Nolan, David O’Connor, Marya Schechtman, Luke Semrau, Philip Swenson, Adam Taylor, Preston Werner, the anonymous referees who read my paper, and audiences at Felician University and the University at Buffalo for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
References
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Heller, M. (2003). The immorality of modal realism, or: How I learned to stop worrying and let the children drown. Philosophical Studies, 114(1–2), 1–22.
Logins, A. (2016). Save the children! Analysis, 76(4), 418–422.
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Portmore, D. (2011). Commonsense Consequentialism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Singer, P. (1972). Famine, affluence and morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1(3), 229–243.
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Singer, P. (2016). The most good you can do: How effective altruism is changing ideas about living ethically. New York: Yale University Press.
Timmerman, T. (2015). Sometimes there is nothing wrong with letting a child drown. Analysis, 75(2), 204–212.
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Timmerman, T. Save (some of) the Children. Philosophia 46, 465–472 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9920-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9920-2