Social ethics: duties to others and to the planet
Some of the most pressing moral questions concern strangers, future generations, and other species.
Helping distant strangers
Peter Singer asks you to imagine walking past a child drowning in a shallow pond. You would ruin your shoes to save her, and failing to would be wrong. He argues that distance makes no moral difference, so if we can prevent serious suffering abroad at small cost, we ought to. Critics question whether morality can demand so much of ordinary people.
Moral status of animals
If suffering matters morally, the suffering of animals seems to matter too. Utilitarians stress that the capacity to suffer, not intelligence or species, is what counts. Rights theorists argue some animals are subjects of a life with interests of their own. These views raise questions about factory farming, animal testing, and wildlife conservation.
Environmental and future-generations ethics
Climate change involves harms spread across the globe and far into the future, caused by billions of small actions. This makes it hard to apply ordinary ideas of blame. Philosophers ask what we owe people not yet born, whether nature has value beyond its usefulness to humans, and how to share the burdens of reducing emissions fairly between rich and poor countries.
Flashcard
Peter Singer's case for aiding distant strangers
Check your understanding
Singer's drowning child example is used mainly to argue that: