Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowen

Author:Tyler Cowen [Cowen, Tyler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PHILOSOPHY / PHI005000 - Ethics & Moral Philosophy
ISBN: 9781732265134
Publisher: Stripe Press
Published: 2018-10-16T04:00:00+00:00

Who should sacrifice, and when?

Under more normal circumstances, with a long time horizon, a utilitarian or consequentialist framework may still recommend that some individuals sacrifice significant parts of their lives, or risk such sacrifices, for the greater social good. To cite a simple example, Martin Luther King Jr. brought much good to the world with respect to both justice and long-term economic growth. It would be fair to say that King did the right thing in choosing to pursue higher ideals rather than playing golf all day, even though he lost his life in doing so. The same can be said of Gandhi. Nonetheless, such obligations to sacrifice cannot be universal or near-universal. If we all went around sacrificing our own individualistic pursuits to an extreme degree, there would be no civilization left to advance. As we saw earlier, it is more sensible to reject collective sacrificial recommendations that will lower the rate of sustainable economic growth.

In many cases our obligations should be viewed at a collective level. This framework does not pin down a uniquely correct course of action for each individual, so it’s not morally clear which individual is obliged to make the sacrifice. What if there were an innocent girl drowning in a lake, and any one of us could jump in and save her? In these cases the question, “What should I do?” allows for considerable latitude, and the scope of my individual obligation, as a group member, may be indeterminate. It’s good if I risk my safety and jump in after her, but it’s also fine if someone else does it instead. Similarly, it doesn’t have to be my group that protests government injustice, because many other groups could do this as well. This becomes a problem of game theory, and as we know from game theory, the implied obligation of a single individual or group is very often indeterminate.

Imagine a game with payoffs, so that it is better if someone makes a sacrifice to achieve a socially valuable end, but it is worse if everyone sacrifices or tries to sacrifice to achieve that end. The structure of this problem is common to many questions of morality and individual obligation, including the problem of global poverty. Some people should make sacrifices to help out, but, because we must keep our economically advanced civilization up and running, not everyone should make such sacrifices. Arguably this is the paradigmatic payoff structure with which to address questions related to global poverty, sacrifice, and obligation.

A utilitarian standard, in its simplest form, would suggest that the “least cost supplier” should make such a sacrifice. That moves us a little bit closer to common sense morality, namely by stipulating that the sacrificers should be the people most inclined to do so. This would include saints, moral saints, and dedicated agents of social change, as well as individuals who, for whatever reason, don’t find the required sacrifices to be so very daunting.

If several potential sacrificers face the same cost and can produce

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