Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence

by Peter Unger

Overview

By contributing a few hundred dollars to a charity like UNICEF, a prosperous person can ensure that fewer poor children die, and that more will live reasonably long, worthwhile lives. Even when knowing this, however, most people send nothing, and almost all of the rest send little. What is the moral status of this behavior? To such common cases of letting die, our untutored response is that, while it is not very good, neither is the conduct wrong. What is the source of this lenient assessment? In this contentious new book, one of our leading philosophers argues that our intuitions about ethical cases are generated not by basic moral values, but by certain distracting psychological dispositions that all too often prevent us from reacting in accord with our commitments. Through a detailed look at how these tendencies operate, Unger shows that, on the good morality that we already accept, the fatally unhelpful behavior is monstrously wrong. By uncovering the eminently sensible ethics that we've already embraced fully, and by confronting us with empirical facts and with easily followed instructions for lessening serious suffering appropriately and effectively, Unger's book points the way to a compassionate new moral philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199880430
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/20/1996
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Peter Unger is Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He is the author of Ignorance (OUP 1975, 2002), Philosophical Relativity (1984, OUP 2002), and Identity, Consciousness, and Value (OUP 1990).

Table of Contents

1.	Illusions of Innocence: an Introduction	3
1.	Some Widely Available Thoughts about Many Easily Preventable Childhood Deaths	4
2.	Singer's Legacy: An Inconclusive Argument for an Importantly Correct Conclusion	8
3.	Two Approaches to Our Intuitions on Particular Cases: Preservationism and Liberationism	10
4.	An Extensive Exploration of the Liberationist Approach: Overview of the Book's Chapters	13
5.	The Liberationist Approach to an Unusual Family of Moral Puzzles	14
6.	Morality, Rationality and Truth: On the Importance of Our Basic Moral Values	21
7.	An Introductory Summary: Morality, Methodology and Main Motivation	23
2.	Living High and Letting Die: A Puzzle About Behavior Toward People in Great Need	24
1.	A Puzzle about Behavior toward People in Great Need	24
2.	An Overview of the Chapter: Distinguishing the Primary from the Secondary Basic Moral Values	27
3.	Physical Proximity, Social Proximity, Informative Directness and Experiential Impact	33
4.	The Thought of the Disastrous Further Future	36
5.	Unique Potential Saviors and Multiple Potential Saviors	39
6.	The Thought of the Governments	40
7.	The Multitude and the Single Individual	41
8.	The Continuing Mess and the Cleaned Scene	41
9.	Emergencies and Chronic Horrors	42
10.	Urgency	45
11.	Causally Focused Aid and Causally Amorphous Aid	48
12.	Satisfying Nice Semantic Conditions	49
13.	Epistemic Focus	51
14.	Money, Goods and Services	52
15.	Combinations of These Differentiating Factors	53
16.	Highly Subjective Morality and Our Actual Moral Values	55
17.	Resistance to the Puzzle's Liberationist Solution: The View That Ethics Is Highly Demanding	56
18.	Further Resistance: Different Sorts of Situation and the Accumulation of Behavior	59
3.	Living High, Stealing and Letting Die: The Main Truth of Some Related Puzzles	62
1.	A Puzzle about Taking What's Rightfully Another's	63
2.	Stealing and Just Taking	66
3.	The Account's Additional Morally Suspect Features	67
4.	Proper Property, Mere Money and Conversion	70
5.	Appropriation and the Doctrine of Double Effect	72
6.	Combination of Factors and Limited Conspicuousness	73
7.	The Influence of Conspicuousness Explained: Overcoming Our Fallacious Futility Thinking	75
8.	Beyond Conspicuousness: Dramatic Trouble and Other Potent Positive Subjective Factors	77
9.	In a Perennially Decent World: The Absence and the Presence of Futility Thinking	80
10.	The Liberationist Solution of This Puzzle and What It Means for Related Puzzles	82
4.	Between Some Rocks and Some Hard Places: on Causing and Preventing Serious Loss	84
1.	A Puzzle about Causing and Preventing Serious Loss	86
2.	The Method of Several Options	88
3.	The Deletion and Addition of Options Spells the Fall of Preservationism	91
4.	The Liberation Hypothesis and the Fanaticism Hypothesis	94
5.	Projective Separating and Projective Grouping	96
6.	Protophysics and Pseudoethics	101
7.	A Few Further Funny Factors	103
8.	Using the Method of Combining to Overcome Protophysical Thinking	106
9.	Using the Method of Combining to Overcome Projective Separating	108
10.	Putting This Puzzle's Pieces in Place: A Short but Proper Path to a Liberationist Solution	110
11.	A Longer Proper Path to that Sensible Solution	111
Appendix	Two Forms of the Fanaticism Hypothesis	115
5.	Between Some Harder Rocks and Rockier Hard Places: on Distortional Separating and Revelatory Grouping	119
1.	A Strange Psychological Phenomenon: No Threshold	119
2.	Another Strange Psychological Phenomenon: Near Tie-breaker	121
3.	A Causally Amorphous Egoistic Puzzle: Introducing Dr. Strangemind	123
4.	A Causally Amorphous Altruistic Puzzle: Strangemind's Terribly Ghastly Ingenuity	126
5.	A Sensible Liberationist Solution of the Altruistic Puzzle	129
6.	A Similar Solution for the Egoistic Puzzle	130
6.	Living High and Letting Die Reconsidered: on the Costs of a Morally Decent Life	133
1.	A Pretty Demanding Dictate	134
2.	An Argument for This Dictate from the Consideration of Three Cases	135
3.	Two Principles of Ethical Integrity	139
4.	A More Principled Argument Also Yields More Highly Demanding Dictates	141
5.	A Decent Principle of Aiding: Being Appropriately Modest about Lessening Early Death	143
6.	Currently Common Lifesaving Costs, Important Efficiencies and Irrelevant Probabilities	146
7.	Special Obligations and Care for Dependents	149
8.	More Than Merely Material Costs	150
9.	Extremely Demanding Situations	152
10.	Morality, Publicity and Motivating Morally Better Behavior	156
7.	Metaethics, Better Ethics: from Complex Semantics to Simple Decency	158
1.	Diverse Judgments of the Envelope's Conduct: Two Main Considerations	159
2.	Preparation for an Introduction to a Selectively Flexible Semantics	160
3.	Rudiments of a Context-Sensitive Semantics for Morally Useful Terms	162
4.	How This Semantics Can Reconcile My Disparate Judgments of the Envelope's Behavior	167
5.	Reconciling My Other Disparate Judgments: Stressing a Conservative Secondary Value	170
6.	This Conservative Value and Barriers to Moral Progress	172
7.	How a Broad Perspective Supports the Chapter's General Approach	173
8.	From Complex Inquiry to Some Simple Decency	174
	Bibliography	177
	Index of Cases	181
	Index of Persons	183
	Index of Subjects	185

Editorial Reviews

"Unger has pioneered a new way of testing and exploring our intuitions, with results that are devastating for traditional ideas of how to do ethics. This will shake normative ethics to its roots. A major work of fundamental importance both to moral philosophy and to the poor of this world. Important in a practical way, as well as in an academic way."—Peter Singer, Princeton University

"A terrifically powerful piece of work, and its publication will make a nuclear-sized explosion."—Jonathan Bennett, Syracuse University

"Unger's vigorous investigation of irrationalities in our daily thinking...suggests convincingly that we owe others far more than we typically think we do. This, then, is a book on a topic of great importance, written with much moral passion by a skillful and ingenious philosopher."—Martha Nussbaum, London Review of Books

"A very fine book...carefully argued, imaginative, fearless."—David Lewis, Eureka Street

"[Unger's] discussion of how much the well-off should sacrifice for the world's most needy stands as the state-of-the-art treatment of the subject."—Brad Hooker, Times Literary Supplement

"Unger's book is full of subtle and oddly entertaining cases to support his view....[He handles conterarguments] with stunningly effective simplicity."—Globe and Mail

"Unger challenges our moral beliefs with arguments that are always powerful, and often original. Everyone who can understand these arguments ought, I believe, to read and think about this book."—Derek Parfit, author of Reasons and Persons

"Living High & Letting Die will annoy many students and faculty—which is a good thing. Unger challenges and illuminates our moral thinking in a direct, forceful way, causing students to engage in moral reasoning and moral psychology with more passion than is ordinarily the case. I used Unger's book alongside a standard anthology in ethical theory in An Introduction to Ethics course. The book's presentation is clear and understandable to undergraduates, and the examples are interesting, thought-provoking, and make doing philosophy fun. Challenge and incite your students with this book!"—Tobyn DeMarco, Hunter College, City University of New York

"Students either love or hate Living High & Letting Die—bored indifference is not an option. Unger's book prods, provokes, infuriates, and inspires. His ingenious and passionate arguments compell students to examine their beliefs as precious few do. They illustrate the significance and urgency of ethical decision-making, and powerfully demonstrate that philosophy can be much more than an abstract, theoretical, barren discipline."—Larry Temkin, Rice University

From the Publisher