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When Helping the Victim Matters More Than Helping a Victim

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2013

SCOTT M. JAMES
SCOTT M. JAMES*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, [email protected]
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Abstract

Consequentialists insist there is no rational basis for distinguishing between determinate (or identifiable) victims and indeterminate (or statistical) victims. Whether it's a child drowning at our feet or needy communities abroad, our reason to help is the same. Experimental data indicate, however, that we regularly make such distinctions. In this article, I show that there are indeed persuasive normative grounds for preserving this distinction. When potential beneficiaries are determinate, they have a special claim on us grounded in fairness. I present several cases that demonstrate that treating determinate beneficiaries the same as indeterminate beneficiaries is unjust. I conclude with an analysis of the relevant social psychology data.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 32 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

1 To be clear, this is not an examination of fairness itself (I do not offer any substantive account of the nature of fairness), but rather the way in which the determinacy of potential beneficiaries can directly affect the fairness (and, hence, morality) of available actions.

2 Greene, J., ‘The Secret Joke of Kant's Soul’, Moral Psychology, vol. 3, ed. Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (Cambridge, MA, 2008), pp. 35–79.Google Scholar

3 Greene softens his position later by suggesting that the ‘up close and personal’ feature represents just a ‘first-cut’ hypothesis in need of refining. He is nevertheless committed to the idea that it is at root an emotional response that triggers stereotypical non-consequentialist judgements.

4 Schelling, T. C., ‘The Life You Save May Be Your Own’, Problems in Public Expenditure Analysis, ed. Chase, S. B. (Washington, D.C., 1968), pp. 127–76.Google Scholar

5 For criticism of Greene's general strategy, see Kamm, F. M., ‘Neuroscience and Moral Reasoning: A Note on Recent Research’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 37 (2009), pp. 330–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kamm cites instances of non-consequentialistic judgments in cases of non-‘up close and personal’ situations as evidence that non-consequentialism is indeed sensitive to factors beyond the ‘up close and personal’ aspects.

6 Singer, P., ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972), pp. 229–43Google Scholar; Singer, P., Practical Ethics (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar.

7 Singer, Ethics, p. 230.

8 While my $50 contribution to UNICEF aids the agency's efforts, there is no fact of the matter as to which individual(s) were the direct beneficiaries of my contribution. See James, S., ‘Good Samaritans, Good Humanitarians’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 24 (2007), pp. 238–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a defence of this position and Unger, P., Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusions of Innocence (Oxford, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 3, for criticism.

9 Greene, ‘Secret Joke’, p. 36.

10 Small, D. A. and Loewenstein, G., ‘Helping a Victim or Helping the Victim’, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 26 (2003), pp. 5–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 The actual identities of victims were never disclosed, however. So while a non-victim might know that this number directly corresponds to some determinate individual somewhere, she would never learn any identifying features of that individual.

12 Greene, ‘Secret Joke’, p. 19.

13 True, even without Greene's hypothesis, non-consequentialism is threatened by the conjunction of (1) and (2). What Greene's hypothesis adds is an (allegedly plausible) explanatory alternative to the non-consequentialist account, thus rendering non-consequentialism superfluous.

14 This fact marks an important distinction between this case and, for example, another, oft-discussed, example introduced by Riebetanz, Sophia, ‘Contractualism and Aggregation’, Ethics 108 (1998), pp. 296–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In that example, a landmine is buried somewhere in a field in which 100 labourers are about to work. As with the cruise-liner case, there is no fact of the matter as to who will be harmed when the case is evaluated ex ante. But unlike the cruise-liner case, there is a fact of the matter as to who was harmed when the case is evaluated ex post. We can identify who was injured by the landmine. In the cruise-liner case, we cannot identify the additional life lost on Option A simply because there was no additional determinate life lost.

15 Remember that, with no. 1,000 partitioned off from the rest of the passengers, 500 individuals will be chosen from 999 – not 1,000.

16 By the same token, of course, choosing Option A guarantees no. 1,000's survival at the cost of reducing (by a tiny fraction) each of the remaining passengers’ chances of survival. Does this mean that they are treated unfairly? It's hard to see why. After all, as far as each of the rest of the passengers is concerned, it's only a statistician who would discern any difference at all between Option A and Option B. Life or death is, by almost any measure, a coin-flip – whichever option is chosen.

17 For a defence of the non-normative claim that there is no fact of the matter as to who (if anyone) is saved by our donations to large humanitarian organizations like UNICEF and Oxfam, see James, ‘Good Samaritans, Good Humanitarians’.

18 Gomberg, P., ‘The Fallacy of Philanthropy’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 32 (2002), pp. 29–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Several (determinate) individuals deserve thanks for helping me get these ideas into their final form: Brian Ballard, Jason Bowers, Peter Carruthers, Matt Eshleman, Mark Schroeder, Matt Waldschlagel and Heath White.