PHIL 1104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Act Utilitarianism, Kantian Ethics
Document Summary
What duties (if any) do we have to the millions of people around the world at immediate. This specific questions also raises more general ethical questions: Even the strong principle is weaker than act utilitarianism: wouldn"t require us to do something seemingly wrong in itself in order to prevent the harm, doesn"t require us to actually promote welfare, just to prevent harms. Singer"s argument is that most citizens in affluent parts of the world should be doing much, much more to help people in less affluent parts of the world. In many cases, wsp gets plausible results: If i am walking past a pond and see a child drowning, i ought to pull the child out. This will mean my clothes get dirty, but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing . Is there any relevant difference between saving the child and saving.
