Singer Cullity

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response to Singer. Cullity argues that Singer’s conclusion, that we ought to help others in need so long as this does not cause any significant damage to ourselves, is severely demanding as it is essentially arguing that we are morally obligated to help everybody in the world. The only way in which we would be able to justify not helping somebody who needed our help would be if doing so would put the person helping at significant risk. Cullity argues in his paper that Singer’s argument is asking too much of people when it claims that donating to aid agencies is a moral obligation and that not to do so would be immoral. His main way of doing so is by rejecting the Severe Demand. The Severe Demand according to Cullity can be defined as: I should continue to contribute to aid agencies until either: a) There are no longer any lives to be saved by those agencies. b) Contributing more money would itself harm me enough to excuse my failing to save any single life directly at that cost. Cullity argues the conclusion that we should always help others who are in need as long as doing so does not cause significant harm to yourself is too demanding, it seems as though mostly all sources of personal fulfilment would be morally impermissible if the demand to donate to aid agencies were to be fully carried out. If, for example, I wanted to do anything with my free time that involved what could be considered unnecessary spending then this would be considered immoral because theoretically the money you would spend on yourself could have been spent on donating to an aid agency which could use the money to save a child’s life. It is for this reason that Cullity argues in his paper that the Severe Demand can be rejected from an appropriately impart... ... middle of paper ... ... morally obligatory, the way in which Singer suggests people go about doing so is simply too demanding. People cannot realistically be expected to continue donating to charity up until the point where their lives would be put at risk significantly. Cullity instead concludes that we should donate to charity until either there are no longer any more lives to be saved or until “your overall sacrifice, in regards to those non-altruistically-focused goods that can be impartially defended as permissible, is significant enough to make it justifiable for you to refuse to save a life directly at that cost.” He says that it is true to say that this conclusion demands more from us than most people find acceptable, but that its demands are moderate, not severe. I believe Cullity’s version of Miller’s argument is successfully less demanding which can only stand in its favour.

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