This paper argues that universal consequentialism — particularly its principle of equal consideration — is the most appropriate moral framework for evaluating global situations such as poverty in developing countries. Drawing on Peter Singer's landmark 1972 essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," the paper examines key sub-categories of consequentialism and explains why universal consequentialism best captures the impartiality required for fair global assessment. The paper also evaluates the United Nations Millennium Development Goals as a practical application of this framework, acknowledging both significant progress and ongoing challenges, and responds to the common criticism that consequentialism demands too much of individuals.
Poverty in developing countries is a significant moral issue. In terms of moral frameworks, a universal form of consequentialism most accurately assesses the justice or injustice of such poverty and of global situations of similar scope. Specifically, universal consequentialism with an emphasis on equal consideration — the belief that "benefits to one person matter just as much as similar benefits to any other person" — is most appropriate for global situational assessment (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006).
Consequentialism is a system of morality that judges the rightness or wrongness of an act solely by its consequences. As a concept, it forms the backbone of classic utilitarianism, which holds that an act is morally right if and only if it maximizes the good — that is, if and only if the total amount of good for all minus the total amount of bad for all is greater than this net amount for any incompatible act available to the agent on that occasion (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006).
Consequentialism is further divided into several sub-categories, including the following:
Actual Consequentialism: The rightness or wrongness of an act depends on its actual consequences, as opposed to its perceived or anticipated consequences.
Direct Consequentialism: The morality or immorality of an act depends on the consequences of that particular act, rather than on consequences of all acts of a similar nature.
Evaluative Consequentialism: Rightness or wrongness is based on the values of the consequences of an act.
Hedonism: An act is right if it results in pleasure and wrong if it results in pain.
Maximizing Consequentialism: An act is right only if it brings about the best possible consequences, as opposed to merely better or satisfactory consequences.
Aggregative Consequentialism: Determines best consequences by evaluating consequences in parts.
Total Consequentialism: An act is right or wrong based on the total net benefits or deficits for all persons involved.
Universal Consequentialism: "Moral rightness depends on the consequences for all people or sentient beings (as opposed to only the individual agent, present people, or any other limited group)."
Equal Consideration: "In determining moral rightness, benefits to one person matter just as much as similar benefits to any other person (= all who count equally)."
Agent-neutrality: The assessment of consequences depends on the actual good or bad nature of those consequences, independent of the agent's own perception of good or bad (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006).
While several of these sub-categories could be applied to the assessment of global situations, universal consequentialism with an emphasis on equal consideration is the most direct route to fairly assessing the justice or injustice of global situations.
Classic utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer applies these concepts to famine in Bangladesh in his paper "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" (1972). Singer begins by putting forth two assumptions: (a) death by starvation is bad, and (b) if a person or group of persons can prevent something bad from happening without causing something equally bad to happen, they ought to do what they can to prevent it. For example, if a person happens upon a child drowning in a lake, that person ought to wade out and save the child. While the person's clothes will become wet and he might be late for some engagement, such inconveniences are not comparable to the tragedy of a child's death.
Singer goes on to assert that neither distance from the child nor the number of people in a position to help negate the moral duty of any one person to act. Regarding distance, Singer invokes equal consideration, saying:
"The fact that a person is physically near to us, so that we have personal contact with him, may make it more likely that we shall assist him, but this does not show that we ought to help him rather than another who happens to be further away. If we accept any principle of impartiality, universalizability, equality, or whatever, we cannot discriminate against someone merely because he is far away from us (or we are far away from him)." (Singer, 1972)
In other words, all who count, count equally — be it a neighbor's drowning child or a starving Bengali refugee. Regarding the number of people similarly placed to help, Singer says that while "one feels less guilty about doing nothing if one can point to others, similarly placed, who have also done nothing… this can make no real difference to our moral obligations" (Singer, 1972).
In classic utilitarian fashion, Singer further asserts that it is the moral duty of every affluent individual to give as much as they can to those less fortunate — such as Bengali refugees — up to the point at which giving more would reduce the donor to a similar state as those they seek to help. This threshold is termed reducing oneself to the level of "marginal utility" (Singer, 1972). This is, however, a severe and — in my opinion — unrealistic expectation that, if put into practice, would reduce the entire population to near-slum conditions. The fundamental problem is that there are simply not enough resources — food, clothing, and money — to be distributed equally while still allowing anyone to live comfortably. Moreover, if everyone gave away their money to impoverished people in underdeveloped countries, the global economy would slow so dramatically as to place the entire population at risk of starvation. While Singer does not necessarily agree with this assessment, he nonetheless acknowledges the possibility of such economic repercussions, saying:
"It might be the case that if we gave away, say, 40% of our Gross National Product, we would slow down the economy so much that in absolute terms we would be giving less than if we gave 25% of the much larger GNP that we would have if we limited our contribution to this smaller percentage." (Singer, 1972)
"UN Goals as practical consequentialist application"
"UN Millennium Goals successes and ongoing failures"
"Rebuttal of 'too demanding' objection to consequentialism"
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