To challenge my students to think about the ethics of what we owe to people in need...

>To challenge my students to think about the ethics of what we owe to people in need, I ask them to imagine that their route to the university takes them past a shallow pond. One morning, I say to them, you notice a child has fallen in and appears to be drowning. To wade in and pull the child out would be easy but it will mean that you get your clothes wet and muddy, and by the time you go home and change you will have missed your first class.

>I then ask the students: do you have any obligation to rescue the child? Unanimously, the students say they do. The importance of saving a child so far outweighs the cost of getting one’s clothes muddy and missing a class, that they refuse to consider it any kind of excuse for not saving the child. Does it make a difference, I ask, that there are other people walking past the pond who would equally be able to rescue the child but are not doing so? No, the students reply, the fact that others are not doing what they ought to do is no reason why I should not do what I ought to do.

>Once we are all clear about our obligations to rescue the drowning child in front of us, I ask: would it make any difference if the child were far away, in another country perhaps, but similarly in danger of death, and equally within your means to save, at no great cost – and absolutely no danger – to yourself? Virtually all agree that distance and nationality make no moral difference to the situation. I then point out that we are all in that situation of the person passing the shallow pond: we can all save lives of people, both children and adults, who would otherwise die, and we can do so at a very small cost to us: the cost of a new CD, a shirt or a night out at a restaurant or concert, can mean the difference between life and death to more than one person somewhere in the world – and overseas aid agencies like Oxfam overcome the problem of acting at a distance.

How is he wrong, Veeky Forums?

morality is a spook

he isn't, you can objectively save human life for less than a weeks worth of pay.

International aid organization only perpetuate and even generate suffering through facilitation of inherently unsustainable demographic and ecological trends.

Those people need to migrate to places where we help them take care of themselves.
We could supply them with farmland and they could grow their own food and drink their own fresh water.

If human life takes priority over your own personal spending, at what point do you draw the line?

Do you live and work solely for the sake of other people, becoming some kind of frugal monk subsisting on only the bare necessities, whose only purpose is to support the lives of others by diverting their pay towards them? Is this not slavery? You're still alive, and have the ability to keep others alive. Not doing so is tantamount to murder, so aren't you morally obligated to enslave yourself for the benefit of people half the world away -- according to your own principle?

There's this island in Scotland I think, that is uninhabited except for sheep. The sheep have no predators, and breed prolifically. Eventually the number of sheep grows too big for the island to support, and there is a mass die-off. Then the cycle starts again.

The story of this island reminds of of Africa somehow.

Charity will never prevent the problems that cause regular death in distant countries

This.

Same for corporations like Starbucks and Toms that claim to direct some portion of their profits towards such aid.

Really all you can do is try to be a good person in your day-to-day life and limit the damage your money does by supporting those entities causing suffering.

It's because people don't give enough. We only give the bare minimum to assuage our sense of guilt but the end result is only palliative care, enough to lessen the severity but never cure the problems of the 3rd world.

I'd rather have the week's worth of pay.

>about the ethics
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH


another retarded liberal

No, it's because the biosphere is already extended beyond its limits.

>being a Malthusian
>1800 + XXXX
This has literally never been true once throughout all of human history.

>How is he wrong, Veeky Forums?
He's not.

What he wants you to do is think "oh, because I would save the child in the pond I must save the children in Africa."

I did the opposite. I wouldn't save the children in Africa, so I no longer think I have to save the child in the pond either.

>Those people need to migrate to places where we help them take care of themselves.

Is the kid black?

of course since he argues that there is a moral obligation to save the child

this is the most retarded post I have ever seen on this website. "Doing nice things for people? Then you have to do more nice things! this makes you a slave!"

You are a fuckup, stop posting.

I would save the drowning child because it would make me feel very good, giving money wouldn't be the same.

>He believes in negative responsibility

>I then ask the students: do you have any obligation to rescue the child?
i don't think so

What a badass.

I'd rather become a moral vacuum than allow a philosopher to impart a meaningful lesson on me, to be honest.

Who hurt you?

>it's a Veeky Forums blatantly lies on the internet to impress anonymous strangers with their edginess episode
I hate reruns

>the very concept of someone having a different answer to a moral question is so alien that you assume any who profess to do so are lying
I hate retards.

Anyone from a modern western society that suggests they are just going to casually walk away from a drowning child they could easily save is full of shit. Maybe 1% of the population are sociopathic enough to do such a thing, and even then it wouldn't be intuitive. I doubt anyone here is that special.

>that suggests they are just going to casually walk away from a drowning child they could easily save
I never said I wouldn't save the child. Simply that I didn't have to.

Read what is written and stop making assumptions.

?

>One morning, I say to them, you notice a child has fallen in and appears to be drowning
>Once we are all clear about our obligations to rescue the drowning child in front of us, I ask: would it make any difference if the child were far away, in another country perhaps, but similarly in danger of death, and equally within your means to save, at no great cost – and absolutely no danger – to yourself?
In the first instance, there is immediacy and imminent peril without any other figure to secure the child. These alone can constitute a moral case for saving the child. It is further arguable that one could still continue to class if one really wanted to, so there is effectively no loss.
In the second instance, there is no immediacy, and in the mass distance there are numerous figures tasked with providing security for this child before the moral obligation gets to you. In fact, you do not even know whether your contribution is actually saving that child or whether it is simply being pocketed or at the worst going to the hands of militia groups that are part of the problem. It is not the same, morally speaking, and therefore it is still morally consistent to act in the first case and not the second.

I literally said I would save the child retard.

There's no effective difference, and I still don't believe you, because you don't believe yourself.

>In fact, you do not even know whether your contribution is actually saving that child or whether it is simply being pocketed or at the worst going to the hands of militia groups that are part of the problem.
This rebuttal has been debunked countless times, and anyway it's irrelevant. Assuming that the money actually finds and helps people, do you have the obligation? There are undoubtedly organizations that do function.

If you're chinese or have chinese genes this doesn't count.

If you're not chinese then congrats on walking the talk friend.

>would it make any difference if the child were far away, in another country perhaps
Yes.

It's the logical conclusion of the described obligation, brainlet.

>There's no effective difference
You can personally save the child while believing there is no obligation.

>There's no effective difference
The question was "is there an obligation to do X"

You are effectively saying that there is no "effective" difference between a yes or no answer to that question. If you think that the answer is meaningless because the question is pointless then I would agree with you because philosophy is just feelgood wank pursued by cloistered academics whose frail, flabby bodies would fail to save a child regardless of how little effort is required to do so anyway - but the question now asked, the answer should be taken seriously in that context.

>congrats on walking the talk friend.
I wonder if you would be so congratulatory if you realised I'm a positivist.

Why then do you save them? And what's the reason for the reason? And so on. Eventually and inescapably you arrive at the obligation.

>positivist

...

>I have literally never died before
>guess I'm safe from that lmao

>Eventually and inescapably you arrive at the obligation.
No, you don't.

I will buy a stick of lollies every day before I catch the bus back from the city. Doesn't mean I have a moral obligation to do so. I will save drowning children. Doesn't mean I have a moral obligation to do so.

>Assuming that the money actually finds and helps people, do you have the obligation? There are undoubtedly organizations that do function.
You do not have an obligation because there is no immediacy, and you are not the only one capable of helping. The fact that these organizations do function mitigates the immediacy for your own personal involvement, which is what makes the first instance so morally persuasive. You are the only one to help the child and can only do so in that specific frame of time. This is not true in the second case.

Assuming that you would save the child why would you do so?

>why would you do so?
Literally for no other reason than pic related.

I am empathetic, like most humans, and so the bad feelings of others which they experience as a result of the death of their child would lead inevitably to bad feelings in me. This phenomenon is captured with other similar experiences in the concept of 'guilt'.

If I save the child and perform a service to my fellow man they will be grateful to me, and as mentioned above I am empathetic and their good feelings will probably lead to 'pride' in me.

But the root of all this motivation is simply because that is how I am. There is no conceivable way to transfer 'how I am' to 'how I ought to be' save invoking God - or worse, heathen
spirituality disguised as reason.

Do you think by your free will you could choose not to feel this way and simply walk away?

Why would it make you feel good you dunderhead

I'm standing at the edge of an enormous pool, my basket of pool floats and noodles rests at my feet. Along the edges beginning at my shoulders and continuing on far into the distance stand other waders. My immediate neighbor tells me he's heard something terrible, there's kids drowning at the other end of the pool. Looking at the endless pool stretching towards the horizon I try to imagine these floundering children and how sad a situation that must be for my antipodal counterparts. Speaking up again he explains that he knows a guy who has a system and if I give him a pool noodle or perhaps a kick board they will be used to fish some of the children out.

I could perhaps deliberately expose myself to bad things and bad feelings over a length of time until I build up more of a tolerance to them than Veeky Forums has given me and are no longer bothered at all by them, but short of this no. I don't think I can just decide to feel differently.

>If you're not chinese then congrats on walking the talk friend.
Tip top kek

>feel like a hero
>get a cool story
>maybe someone sees me saving the kid
>hold the life of another human being in my hands
Are you autistic or something, pretty sure our brains are programmed to feel good about saving a kid.
Tapping my credit card number in a website just doesn't feel the same.

All of these things are derived from the obligation in question.

How?

always glad to see threads like this, they keep dweebs out of the book threads

Don't you understand the relationship between quilt and responsibility?
So you would save the child because if you don't you would feel guilty. You also admit that you couldn't by your free will choose to not feel guilty. It means that you would feel "compelled" to save the child.
Even if you choose by your free will not to save the child you wouldn't be able by your free will to dispense with of the feeling that you "should have" saved the child.

What did he mean by this?

>there's no difference between doing X and having an obligation to do X
you have an obligation to kill yourself

That is a harsh NEGATIVE on that one Mr. Professor. What appears to be a child seemingly drowning in 'shallow pond' without anyone paying it any mind or any sort of guardian watching it is so outside the realm of possibilities which would face me on my walk to class that I would conclude it to be an elaborate trap. Nobody else noticing is another red flag, this means that on top of the likelihood that the child is actually an IED, I could simply be hallucinating. You know what, this is actually a great analogy for this kind of international aid, he's right.

So?

None of that proves that I have a moral obligation to save the child. It's accurate, but irrelevant. How I feel, and what I believe, and what you believe, and how you feel, are utterly meaningless. In seeking to understand the world we must embody not the participant but the observer.

I ask - what if you saw someone else saving a child in the pond. You see them saving the child. Afterwards you ask them why they did it and they said they did it because they felt like they should. When you write this event down in your scientific logbook to compile for your research, can you accurately write that you SAW any sign - at all - indicating that the saviour /should/ save the child? No. You can only write what you observed - that the saviour did save the child, and that he did it because he /felt/ he should.

Aha! you say. Then I have observed a force that makes people /feel/ like they should save children. Congratulations. This 'force' is called 'emotions' and it is known to exist already, and it is not the force you are looking for. You can write down what the saviour felt a thousand million times. It will never be what you need to observe to prove that this mysterious moral force exists. When I drop an apple from a balcony to see if gravity exists it falls to the ground and my hypothesis is proven. It also splatters when it hits the ground, but this is just noise - not part of my experiment. When I drop a child in a pond to see if morality exists I don't see anything at all. Sometimes the child drowns and sometimes the child gets saved but who cares? I'm not dropping children in ponds to observe how people feel about it. If I cared how people felt about it I wouldn't be dropping their children in the pond at all.

what the professor didn't explain to his kids is that the child "seemingly drowning" is actually an elite navy seal, waiting until you're in the water to take you out. The bushes by the side of the pond? Trained close-ranged killers.

So admit you would feel "compelled"?

>Why do the thing
>see? You obligated nao

Why does anybody do anything if we have no obligation to do everything?

Yes.

Please, explain in detail how feeling "compelled" is different than feeling "obligated".

It's not.

The operative word in that sentence is "feel."

I would feel compelled, or obligated, or whatever word you want to use. This is different from actually being compelled/obligated.

People with Murchinson's syndrome feel like they have diseases. That doesn't mean they do.

>wacky world hypotheticals
>logical

Pic none.

>Implying saving a life, regardless of the person in question, is always the moraly right answer

Well, from my point of view, a black child who is both young enough / physically weak enough that hes unable to save himself and is, at the same time, so utterly and soul crushingly alone in this word that theres no parental figure anywere near to prevent this situation from umfolding in the first place, is sorta destined to curse my name for saving his life instead of sparing him the cruel existance he has ahead of hymself.

Im not a determinist per se, but its kinda hard to draw some educated conclussion. I think he will probably have an extremely troubled chilhood in an orphanage and probably end up either dedicated to a life of pety crime, or in the worst of cases, as a BLM activist.

Big deal.

what is an actual obligation, to you?

The word "obligated" expresses an abstract relationship between the subject and the object. It's not something substantial. In this literal sense you can't "be" obligated.

From a utilitarian point of view shouldn't we just kill the African kid?

who said anything about africa?

>drown in a shallow pond
>drown in a
>shallow
>pond

Obligation is a subjective concept, it has no intrinsic value.

>Obligation is a subjective concept
Yes.
>it has no intrinsic value.
No.

God dammit. Meant for

Is this meant for the child in the nearby pond, or for the one on the far away pond?

An obligation is something that you have to do. As ably points out a literal obligation doesn't exist because I don't have to do anything. There are consequences if I don't - some impractically severe - but I can always choose to bear them.

So I use the word in the way that it is used colloquially - i.e. that a legal obligation is something that I have to do for legal reasons, and that I have to do it because the consequences are severe if I don't. I also accept that an agreement by which I enter into a relationship making a promise to do some task also confers an expectation bordering on an obligation, so obligations can be acquired via promise even if the consequences for not doing them are mild.

Seeing as the question is being asked in a moral context (and it has to be, otherwise it is asking if we have a literal obligation which I have shown do not exist) then we are asking if I have a moral obligation. This means 'do I have to save the child because the moral consequences for not doing so are too much to bear'. The answer is no. The moral consequences for not saving the child are fucking nothing. You cannot observe a single consequence. It's the old thought experiment - if a child drowns in a pond and nobody but me knows, what are the consequences? There are none other than perhaps my guilt, but my guilt is merely a feeling.

The consequences that you will propose - that people will be disgusted with me and refuse to associate with me and castigate me and so forth - are certainly consequences, but they are social and not moral. They are born from people /feeling/ like there was a moral obligation. Such feelings are mistaken, because as I have shown no such obligation exists through consequence.

But what about obligation through promise? This is social contract theory. Even if a social contract does exist it is just that - a social contract. My obligation in respect to it would be a social obligation. The only way it would become a moral obligation would be to show that morality demands I honour my obligations. And then we're back to the fact that nobody so far has observed any such moral obligation in respect to honouring my obligations.

>>Obligation is a subjective concept
>Yes.
That's right. Yes, it is a subjective concept.
>>it has no intrinsic value.
>No.
That's right. No, it has no intrinsic value.

Glad we understand each other.

You said you would feel under obligation. So you would save the child under your own value system, because it is valuable for you and in accordance with your society's values to save the child. Is this correct?
You admitted it yourself you would be under obligation, which is to say you would feel obligation.

>As ably points out a literal obligation doesn't exist because I don't have to do anything.
I have pointed out no such thing.

I have misunderstood you then.

No, what I said was;
"Obligation is a subjective concept, it has no intrinsic value."

>There are none other than perhaps my guilt, but my guilt is merely a feeling.
It IS a moral consequence you dumbass.

Pretty sure you did.

Both, for its not as if they are going to stay by the kid's side to nurture him and make sure he is provided an educating, love and affection, its just the illusion of morality, a noxious form of charity as shallows as the aforementioned pond.

And is without a hint of irony that I say, im one of the few persons on this thread who is selfless enough to choose the right choice over the perherse self gratification of thinking oneself a here while st the same time, perpetuating anothers misery.

Pretty sure I didn't.

But what IS morality? Mankind might never know.

I don't understand how giving money to a child stops them from drowning.

but that doesn't mean it lacks value. The fact that you feeling obligation in this circumstance indicates that it is valuable to you to act, because it is in accordance to a system of symbols and values in which you were born, conditioned, and in which you now operate, whether you are conscious of it or not. The fact that it isn't intrinsically valuable does not mean it is complete devoid of all value.
I really don't understand what impact this semantic distinction has on the problem.

No, it's not.

If I were the observer and not the participant and I witnessed the drowning I could observe the following things.

1. the drowning
2. a man who says he feels guilty in relation to the drowning
3. (with the right technology) the biological process that causes the guilty feeling

What I could not observe is... anything else. No hint of morality anywhere.

Well, I mean, I hate to break it to you, kid. Maybe you did it unintentionally, but alas, you did it. You did it and that's that, yknow? I mean, it is what it is. And that's fine. It's alright, there's no problem here. You're not being attacked. It's just what it is.

I dont blame you, niggers in america have enough cash to buy 700$ Jordans and they still drown all the time.

What in the world are you talking about?
What exactly do you think that morality is?
What do observers have to do with it?

>be me
>encounter a rude piece of shit who I want to punch in the face
>he says to me:
>what if I told you there were other rude pieces of shit 50000000000 miles away, don't you have an obligation to punch them in the face?

Who am i supposed to punch, Veeky Forums?

Theres no problem here. Just stating that it doesn't have intrinsic value. It might have emotional value or subjective value, but not intrinsic value. That's it, that's all. Mankind has no obligation to do anything. I don't know why you're trying to use unquantifiable abstracts as a basis for your argument on wether we should, or shouldn't save the child.

>>I then ask the students: do you have any obligation to rescue the child? Unanimously, the students say they do.

>what if I construct an elaborate scenario where the only choices are to look like a callous individual or to give me money, what then?

It's almost like morality is rooted in vague process of empathy.