The Wisdom of Death [Final Version]

The Wisdom of Death:

Wisdom on how we face our ends…
The Youtube video series this write up is for is located at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK0jmqMlLWY&list=PL27B78A5F41CEF487&index=1 

                After reading through “The Last Lecture”, I sat back and reflected. I had remembered a few articles here and there in magazines about people who have near death experiences and afterwards live lives that I believe most of us would call flourishing. Even more so, such as in the case of Randy Pausch, those who are given a set time left to live seem to suddenly live lives that seem, at least on the outside, to be more flourishing.  

With this thought I decided that there must be some type of knowledge, some kind of wisdom that the people in question take away from the experience. As such I continued my reflection, and asked the basic question ‘why?’.

It seems to me that people at some point of inner reflection, have an understanding of what things in their lives are important. What was it that caused these people at the end of their lives to suddenly start living life in such a way?

I formed a basic hypothesis with the idea of people innately having some such knowledge, it is as follows:

People have a base understanding of what things in their lives are ‘ultimately important’ and worthwhile. It is due to a factor I term the ‘illusion of time’ that a person loses sight of those things of importance. When a person approaches certain death with the knowledge of a given timeline, the ‘wisdom’ gained shatters the ‘illusion of time’ and the ‘ultimately important’ things come into focus once more for the person in question. The person then lives a life that is more fulfilling or flourishing.

Ultimately important – This term is used to describe ‘valuable dimensions of our lives’ as Valerie Tiberius calls them in “The Reflective Life: Wisdom and Happiness for Real People” [Tiberius218]. These are the things of which are really worthwhile that we tend to lose perspective on [Tiberius 217].

Illusion of time - This is essentially the opposite of what is dubbed as an ‘existential crisis’ as described by Gerald Corey in “Theory and Practice of Counseling & Psychotherapy” and by Viktor Frankl in “Man’s Search for Meaning”. The ‘illusion of time’ is the feeling of having an infinite amount of time even though a person acknowledges mentally or academically that their time is finite. This illusion comes from a person’s unconscious forward-looking temporal analogy regarding their own lifespan. Basically a person unconsciously seems to think ‘I lived today, and yesterday and the day before that, and the day before that, (and so on). Therefore I will live tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after (and so on).’ The fallacy of this is, of course, that by definition we are finite beings thereby there must be a day in the future in which a person will not live.

Wisdom – This is the unknown factor. I use this term here to represent some type of knowledge or understanding that only seems to occur when a person is confronted with their own mortality.

                I approached the interviews with this hypothesis in mind, firmly believing that it was correct. It was not until I met with Moshe Gittelson (LCSW) that I felt it necessary to reevaluate my hypothesis. In the interview he made a statement that caused a review on my part of the other interviews and even a few of the source materials. With this review, I have now formed a new hypothesis, which is formed on an insight from the interviews. The insight is as follows:

                     

                        A person faces death in the same way that they have faced life.

                                                Or

An agent deals with their end in the same manner in which they have faced the rest of their existence.

Case one: Melissa Massey (LPC)

Illness: Chronic Pancreatic Shutdown

Abstract:

                Melissa was the first professional counselor that I had interviewed. Initially the conversation centered on grief counseling and end of life counseling. At some point in the conversation she mentioned that she was speaking from experience. Asking for explanation she explains that she has had multiple cases of pancreatic shutdown.  

During an operation due to her illness, it seems that she had almost died twice. She explained in the interview that the experience caused her to reevaluate her life and how she lived it. She then explained how she had moved away from this reevaluation due to outside factors (work). She has since been hounded by doctors to undergo more surgeries to extend her life, but it is still a struggle for her to prioritize her personal needs above her responsibilities at work.

                Melissa values her work and the responsibilities that her work implies. She lives her life for those responsibilities, and even given the information from her doctor that she may not live to see the age of 40, she still refuses to prioritize her own health above her work. It wasn’t until a doctor had told her that she would not be able to have children of her own that she decided to schedule the necessary procedures.

                This gives us an insight about the nature of her view of her responsibilities. Melissa is so focused on her want of a family of her own that it was not until the doctor pointed out that she would be jeopardizing this that she reprioritized her views regarding her health and her responsibilities.

Case Two: [name withheld]

This case is only being presented to the professor.

Case Three: Ruby Hutchins

Illness: Congestive Heart Failure

Abstract:

                Ruby Hutchins is a devout Christian, to the point that in the interview, she treated it as if she were ’giving her testimony’. Mrs. Hutchins is retired and divorced with three children, all adults at this time. In 2001 she was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure and given a lifespan of no more than ten years.

                Nine years later, Mrs. Hutchins is convinced that her lifespan as of this point stems from her faith in God. “Jesus is my doctor,” was not only the theme of the interview, but also stated outright in the dialogue. Mrs. Hutchins faces her end much the same way as she has lived her life, with the absolute certainty that her Lord and God will guide her regardless.

                This created for a fairly amusing interview, as she insisted on giving her testimony, preaching the word to me and plying me with a handful of bible tracts. Considering the position I was in, the best I could do was simply smile, nod and laugh later.

Case Four: Richard Bowles [not included in video]

Status: Elderly, retired

Abstract:

                Richard was raised on a farm in Kansas as the youngest boy of 8. After high-school he went to the Air Force to become a mechanic. After leaving the Air Force, he worked for Eastern until they shut down and he picked up two full time jobs working for Airborne Express and Northwest Airlines.

                Richard has always taken the practical route to solve a problem, more than likely a by-product of being an airline mechanic his entire life. In his personal life he was known to tell the honest truth regardless of who asked or what the question was. Richard also put his family first in most situations, but even more so his wife.

                After retirement, Richard and his wife Joan have moved to northern Alabama, building a new house with some of the retirement money near Florence. He would have preferred to stay near Atlanta, but Joan wanted to move, so they did.

                In the discussion regarding his end of life, Richard simply laughs and shrugs. “As long as they don’t waste a lot of money on my funeral, I don’t really care much about what they do with me,” he tells me. When hearing that Joan wants him to have a military service he shakes his head. “Too much trouble,” he says.

                While facing his end, Richard only considers his wife and family. ‘Don’t waste your money,’ and the like are common mantras for him.

Case Five: Bill Roy [Not included in video]

Status: Elderly, retired

Abstract:

                Bill Roy is a retired airline Pilot living in Senoia. Enjoying his life as a grandfather and an agent of the community, Bill has an amused outlook on the end of life. He is known for taking people half his age on gambling trips and joking about ‘shoe shows’ he once looked at me and said, “at my age, you can only hope for one of two things, a quick recovery or a smooth exit.”

                   Bill is a tangible example of someone who has lead a life that, upon reflection, he feels was satisfactory. This of course ties into the definition of wisdom in Tiberius’ work, “The Reflective Life: Wisdom and Happiness for Real People.”

Case Six: Tia Cash

Status: Younger Sister passed away within the past year

Abstract:

                Tia Cash’s situation is slightly different. She is not ill, but has recently dealt with the sudden death of her younger sister within the past year. Having interviewed her prior to the rejection of my initial hypothesis, I felt it would be insightful to learn whether or not a person considering their mortality due to the passing of a loved one would influence the person’s outlook on their own mortality.

In the interview, Mrs. Cash states that she tries to be more oriented on her family and being sure that she shows compassion toward the people around her. She also states that she tries to be more lenient with herself if she does not accomplish everything she sets out to do.

                I refrain from calling Mrs. Cash a procrastinator, but I do point out that, having known her for a number of years, her attitude toward things that don’t get accomplished has always been that of one who doesn’t view it as a high priority. Mrs. Cash is well known among her friends to have in depth conversations with strangers, including wrong numbers, as she has always tried to show compassion to those around her.

                Beyond that however, she seems to use the passing of her sister to reinforce those actions and choices that she believes are the correct actions and choices for a higher quality of life. This isn’t to suggest that she is wrong about those beliefs per se, but to simply point out that her sister’s death seems to be reinforcement.

Case Seven: Randy Pausch (Deceased)

Illness: Pancreatic Cancer

Abstract:

                Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and died from Pancreatic Cancer on July 25^th, 2008. He is of course famous for giving “The Last Lecture” and for the book with the same title.

                During the lecture, Professor Pausch gives an account of the values and takeaways that he wanted to impress upon his own children. The reason that I felt it necessary to include a few of his clips is that it was after the insight that I realized that he had confirmed the insight in an interview.

                During this interview with the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Pausch makes two assertions, that it was because he was a lecturer that he chose to give a lecture, and that his preparations for the end of his life was approached by him as an engineering problem[Pausch/WSJ July 30^th, 2008].

The take away from this project is that Moshe’s commentary and the insight gained from it are correct, and the wisdom that can be gained is as follows:

                One faces death in the same manner as they face life.

This makes one pause and think, if we face our death the way we face our lives, then what we want to take with us in those last hours we need to build while we live. If you want to face the end courageously, then you need to build courage in your life. If you want to be surrounded by love while facing death, you need to surround yourself with love in life. If you want to be prepared for death, then prepare yourself in life.

One must remember, if you are told that you will die in ten years, it is all but guaranteed that you will be doing throughout those ten years, the same things that you are doing now.

The Wisdom of Death

Project: T. West

Instructor: Dr. E.Nahmias

Georgia State University Department of Philosophy

References:

“The Last Lecture”

Randy Pausch, Jeffery Zaslow; Hyperion 2008

“Man’s Search For Meaning”

Viktor E. Frankl; Pocket Books 1984

“Theory and Practice of Counseling & Psychotherapy 7^th Edition”

Gerald Corey; Thomason Learning, Inc. 2005

“The Reflective Life: Wisdom and Happiness for Real People”

Valerie Tiberius, 2009

“Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”

Randy Pausch; Carnegie Mellon 2007

“A Final Farewell”

Jeffery Zaslow; The Wall Street Journal May 3, 2008

Special Thanks:

Melissa Massey, LPC	Moshe Gittelson, LCSW
Ruby Hutchins	Tia Cash
Richard Bowles	Bill Roy
Tawn West	Caroline Harris
John Thomas	Eddy Nahmias

And the various grad students in the department that acted as a sounding board.

Music for the project:

“Redemption Day”

Johnny Cash

American VI: Ain’t no Grave

©2010 American Recordings

Georgia State University

AmoralTalk.com

The Guilt of Affluence

The Guilt of Affluence

Section I

The argument of Peter Singer

T. West

            In this section of the paper I do a critical review of Peter Singer’s argument found in his paper “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”. In Part 1 and Part 2 I lightly go over the sections of his paper where he states the main premises for his position. Part 3 is the standardized form of the argument. In Part 4 I outline and deconstruct his analogy of the baby in the pond. Following this deconstruction I lay out four main problems with the analogy and give a conclusion in regards to the analogy.

            In part 5, I evaluate the premises of the argument and I end this section of the paper concluding that Singer’s position is unsound. It is my intent to show the flaws found within Singer’s argument and his assumptions in regards to his position. I also hope to raise a few questions in the mind of the reader to be explored in later sections.

Part I: Bengal

            In the first section of “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” Singer sets the tone of his paper by pointing at the plight of refugees during the East Bengal crisis in November of 1971. Singer states that people are dying from a lack of food, shelter, and medical care and that it is in the ‘capacity of richer nations to give enough to reduce any further suffering to very small proportions’, yet they refuse to do so [Singer 1].  Singer states that on a general populace level, people have not given large sums to relief funds [Singer 1]. Meanwhile, on the governmental level Singer says that, not only do the governments of richer nations not give enough in overseas aid, but that the governments in question value public works projects, such as the Sydney opera house or the Anglo-French Concorde project more than they do human life [Singer 1].

            As we can see Singer has opened his paper with a few key points that he will use later in his final argument.

1)      People are suffering and dying from lack of food, shelter, and medical care [Singer 1].

2)      It is not beyond the capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any suffering to very small proportions [Singer 1].

3)      The people of rich nations have not given large sums to relief funds and the governments of these nations view public works as more valuable than the suffering and death of refugees [Singer 1].

Part II: Suffering is Bad

            Singer opens the next section of the paper by stating the empirical claim that ‘suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad’ [Singer 2].

            Feeling no need to support this claim, Singer makes the next claim, that, ‘if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it’ [Singer 2].

            To support this, Singer uses the following analogy: ‘if I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing’ [Singer 2].

Part III: The argument

            From these two pages we can now construct Singer’s basic argument:

1)      People are suffering and dying from lack of food, shelter, and medical care [Singer 1].

2)      ‘Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad’ [Singer 2].

3)      ‘If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it’  [Singer 2].

4)      It is not beyond the capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any suffering to very small proportions [Singer 1].

TF

5)      We ought to prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care.

6)      The people of rich nations have not given large sums to relief funds and the governments of these nations view public works as more valuable than the suffering and death of refugees [Singer 1].

TF

7)      The way people and governments of affluent nations react to the suffering and death of people due to lack of food, shelter, and medical care is unjustified [Singer 1].

Part IV: Babies and Ponds

            As stated previously, Singer uses the ‘baby in a pond’ analogy to support premise three. To properly analyze the analogy, we will approach it line by line.

Line 1)             ‘If I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out’ [Singer 2].

            In this line we can deconstruct the following phrases as such: By ‘shallow pond’ Singer seems to want to relate this to abject poverty and the suffering and death associated with it. ‘Child drowning’ seems to refer to the people who are living in this abject poverty and dying from the suffering it entails, the refugees in the East Bengal crisis for example. Finally for this line, ‘wade in and pull the child out’ seems correlated with the giving of massive levels of financial aid.

Line 2)             ‘This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the

death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing’ [Singer 2].

            Following the same model of deconstruction, we have the following: ‘Getting my clothes muddy’ is the large monetary sacrifice the people of affluent nations would be giving to the point of those people in the affluent nations living at marginal utility [Singer 7]. The phrase ‘but this is insignificant’ is Singer giving a moral value on the sacrifice made. The line finishes with a rephrasing and reassertion of the empirical claim that ‘suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad’ [Singer 2].

            So, if we take our new phrases and plug them into the analogy we arrive with the following:

                        If I [am aware of the suffering and death caused by abject poverty] and I see [people in abject poverty], I ought to [give massive levels of financial aid]. This will mean [my living at marginal utility], but this is [of no moral consequence], while [suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad].

            After the plugging in of the new phrases, we find that the analogy Singer uses says exactly what he wants it to say. Unfortunately, the analogy doesn’t work during the deconstruction phase.

Analogy Problem I

            His relation that abject poverty is nothing more than a shallow pond shows a clear non-understanding of what abject poverty entails. A shallow pond is nothing more than a small body of water, whereas abject poverty is something much more complex. Abject poverty has push and pull, governmental, cultural, geographic, and economic factors. Depending on the area, poverty can stem from one or all of these issues and this is only scratching at the surface of possible reasons. The sheer reality is that abject poverty and all it entails could very easily be the subject of a doctoral thesis and we could still not arrive at the heart of the matter.

A better analogy for Singer would be an ocean, as an ocean can an extremely complex entity. Where a pond is dependent upon rain and perhaps algae, an ocean varies widely in temperature, dangers, currents and more.

Analogy Problem II

            Singer uses the ‘child drowning’ phrase to obviously get an emotional response from the reader, but one must ask if Singer had ever considered just how condescending he sounds by relating the people who are struggling in abject poverty as ‘drowning children’. By calling these people children, Singer implies that they are helpless and unable to make decisions for themselves regarding their lives or their own future. To go further with this, this phrase implies that the people in question have no control over their own destinies.

In all actuality, Singer should have used ‘a person drowning’ as opposed to ‘a child drowning’. Granted, this would not have given the same emotional response, but it would have been more accurate as well as keeping Singer from looking like a bigot.

Analogy Problem III

            When Singer uses the phrase ‘wade in and pull the child out’ to represent the giving of massive quantities of financial aid, he seems to be trying to treat the symptoms of the disease as opposed to curing the illness.

To give an analogy of my own, abject poverty in its many forms is much like having a racking cough. Its root could be a cold, or it could be tuberculosis, but guzzling cough syrup won’t cure the actual illness in either case.

Of course I acknowledge that my counter analogy is a bit on the rough side as it doesn’t quite cover the nuances involved in the act of giving large sums of money to groups of people in abject poverty. For example, it is quite possible that the source of the abject poverty in question could very well be the financial aid itself. Flooding local markets with currency and goods has a tendency to destroy the economies they are entering.

This effect is something that I’m dubbing ‘accidental imperialism’. Imperialism is defined as ‘the way that one country exercises power over another, whether through settlement, sovereignty, or indirect mechanisms of control’ [Kohn[1]]. ‘Accidental imperialism’ is when these ‘exercises of power’ or ‘indirect mechanisms of control’ are established without the intent for them. Basically, by flooding the economies of the areas stricken by ‘abject poverty’ we create a dependency over a certain amount of time of those people to the nation giving the aid.

Analogy Problem IV:

            When Peter Singer draws a line between the idea of ‘getting one’s clothes muddy’ [Singer 2] and ‘living at minimal utility’ [Singer 7] he misses the mark of the likeness of the two situations. More specifically, there really isn’t any comparison between the two. On one hand we have a person with muddy clothes, which only affects their standard of living in the sense that they need to run home and change clothes. On the other hand, we skip right past the clothing and focus on the standard of living itself, lowering it until it is only just above being intolerable.

            Aside from that, the inclusion of a moral rating of muddy clothes, while important for the analogy itself, is only important in that sense. The truth is that, no one actually considers the moral weight of having muddy clothes on.

Analogy Conclusion:

            In Singer’s analogy we are dealing with a simple problem; a person sees a baby drowning in a shallow pond. This problem has a simple solution; the person carries the baby out of the pond. In addition the solution has a simple consequence; the person’s clothes get muddy.

            In truth we are dealing with a problem that includes millions of people dying from abject poverty. The solutions are vague and unclear and the proposed solutions are potentially exasperating the problem, or causing the problem to develop in other areas. The consequences from the proposed solutions are at best that the problem is solved for the immediate and at worst, that by giving aid a person is guaranteeing the people in abject poverty are locked into a cycle of dependence on the people of the affluent nations.

Part V: Evaluating the argument:

            With the deconstruction of the analogy in mind, we can now turn our attention back upon the main argument.

            Premises one and two, People are suffering and dying from lack of food, shelter, and medical cares [Singer 1], and ‘Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad’ [Singer 2], are fairly uncontroversial, at least from the viewpoint of general preference of a given agent. Regardless of a person’s moral conventions, I would find it hard to believe that any person would willingly agree to live a life in where they were suffering and/or dying from a lack of food, shelter, and medical care.

            Premise three, however, is considerably more problematic. If Singer were to leave the premise on its own, it would probably be fine. But, as he is supporting the premise with both premise four and with the ‘baby in a pond’ analogy, he runs into serious problems.

            If we were to examine the spirit of premise three, in and of itself, even someone who was a moral error theorist could look at it and conclude that, yes, if we can stop bad things, we should probably do so. This could be due to a moral error theorists views on society or any number of reasons. The point isn’t to necessarily argue for moral error theory, but to state that the spirit of the rule sounds plausible.

            Singer gets into trouble for a few reasons in regards to the stated premise. The first, Singer isn’t referring to any random ‘something bad,’ he is specifically referring to the symptoms of abject poverty. Once again, using deconstruction and replacing terms, we now have ‘If it is in our power to prevent [abject poverty] or [the things associated with abject poverty]…’ Now we can see the issue more clearly. We don’t know if we can solve or prevent abject poverty and once again referring to the deconstruction of the analogy, abject poverty and all it entails is a vast and complex issue worthy of a paper of its own.

            But if we accepted that there may be a way to solve the issue of abject poverty, of which I personally think there is, his solution is still problematic for two reasons. The first is my previous mention of ‘imperialism’ and the means of control exerted by peoples and their governments. Had Singer simply stayed with the plight of refugees from things such as natural disaster, he would have completely stayed away from this issue, but he did not. Singer uses the plight of refugees and those suffering from abject poverty interchangeably.

            I feel it necessary to give a little bit of room for Singer’s position, as it is a very wide held belief that such measure would work. For various reasons, be it education or media sources, people seem to think that the solution for poverty is to give the person money or basic goods and services. This of course is a flaw in logic as it does nothing to solve the underlying issues, though admittedly it makes people feel as if they are doing something.

            I do not intend to suggest that we should not give any aid or support various NGO’s or the like. What I do suggest, is that, if we are serious about solving the case of abject poverty, we must start looking at root causes and make decisions based upon those rather than a feeling of guilt due to ‘affluence’.

            The second problem is his suggesting that not only could the ‘consumer society […] slow down and perhaps disappear entirely,’ but that this ‘would be desirable in itself’ [Singer 7]. Holding aside some of the more colorful language I could use here, I feel it necessary to ask Singer what it is that he thinks our economy is based upon? What I mean here is that, if the ‘consumer society’ were to disappear, it seems that our own economy would likely collapse.

            Granted, I am no economist, so I may be entirely mistaken, but upon simple reflection I would ask, where would the people that worked in most of the fields related to retail work once this collapse takes place? From people who deal with the raw materials, to the various stages of transportation of those materials, to the production of the goods, to the shipping of the goods, it seems that these people will no longer have jobs.

What’s more disturbing is that, if Singer had thought through the statement and feels that such an outcome is ‘good,’ then I must ask the obvious question of why. Why is this good? Why does he feel that the people that are a part of the economy in a given affluent nation no longer having an income is a good thing? Not to sound snide, but, not everyone can be a philosophy professor at a major university.

From this point I feel comfortable with moving on to premise four in and of itself. The problem with premise four, ‘it is not beyond the capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any suffering to very small proportions’ [Singer 1], has been dealt with in our assessment of premise three. His assumption in the premise is that affluent nations can give proper assistance to reduce said suffering.

I still assert that, while he refers to monetary assistance, that this is a flawed position. As stated previously, we don’t actually know of a proper solution. To bring even more complications into the mix, it is highly unlikely that any one solution will fit more than a few of the cases of nations or groups of peoples in abject poverty.

From this stance, I feel confident in stating that the conclusion, premise five, falls short. It is no longer a case of ‘we ought to prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care’. It is now more complicated: If we have the knowledge and ability, we should prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care by dealing with their root causes.

Remember that Singer’s position is meant to include those living in abject poverty for reasons other than simple natural disasters. Had he stayed with the narrow scope, his argument would be considerably more sound. 

After his first conclusion, Singer goes forward with premise six: The people of rich nations have not given large sums to relief funds and the governments of these nations view public works as more valuable than the suffering and death of refugees [Singer 1].

I agree that, it is more than likely that the people of affluent nations have not given large sums to relief funds. Of course I must temper my agreement with a basic question: In reference to the majority of the peoples of these affluent nations, what percentage of that nation’s wealth do these people have or are in control of?

The second half of the premise is based off of a sub argument in the first paragraph of his paper. Singer outlines the amounts of fiscal aid that a few affluent governments have given versus the amount spent on a public works projects. Using Britain for an example, he states that, at the time of the writing, Britain had given about 15 million in aid and had spent in excess of 275 million on a rapid rail system. He then asserts that the implication is that the government of Britain holds a rapid rail system to be of more worth than the plight of refugees living in abject poverty.

            I find Singer’s view on the purpose of a government to be puzzling to say the least. Once again, admitting that I am no economist, I think that upon simple reflection Singer would realize that the money that he proposes the government spends on foreign aid doesn’t actually come from the government itself. People are taxed for that money. Ideally, the government is put into and held in place by the people to represent their needs as a community. If the community is in need of a rapid rail system, which many communities are in need of for various reasons, it is the government’s responsibility to address that issue.

            Without getting into too much political philosophy, at least in this section, I assert that a government’s only responsibility is to the safety and welfare of its peoples. It is ethically required to only stand by those principles in which will best benefit its peoples and moreover it would be unethical for a government to forcibly take money intended for the betterment of its own people to benefit the people of another government. Such an act could easily be called theft, but this will also be addressed later.

Section I conclusion:

            Upon reviewing the standardized version of Singer’s argument and the analogy that he makes regarding drowning babies, I think it is clear that his argument is at the very least unsound. He, as well as many who agree with him, seems dis-informed at best as to the basics of abject poverty, standard economics and the roles of governments.

            The looming question is ‘why?’ I think aside from his assessment on those issues, Singer’s major fault was the assertion that the problem he presents has a moral value. This attitude toward moral obligations is common and often causes both knee-jerk reactions and unethical decision making, which makes us ask ‘what is the separation between morality and ethics?’  

Section I Bibliography

Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”; Philosophy and public affairs vol. 1, no. 1

Spring 1972.

Margaret Kohn, “Colonialism”; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy May 9, 2006

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[1] Colonialism entry on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website.