The Evil Rule

A philosopher’s primary asset is reason; the rational exercise of the intellect upon a question of knowledge. While there are no doubt hundreds of dissenting views on this, it has always been my position that emotions are an obstacle in the employment of reason. Like Descartes’ ‘evil demon,’ emotions often tempt me to act on or to believe the irrational, so I am constantly on guard against their falsehood. However, on occasions when I am confronted by true evil; such as Peter Singer’s principle which states, “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it,” (aptly coined the greater moral evil rule by John Arthur); my emotions cannot be so easily cast aside, and I must instead allow them to stoke my reasoning mind until the idea is dismissed beyond dispute. In this vein, I will attack Singer’s Evil Rule as quickly and ruthlessly as I can so that I may then discuss the more interesting and reasonable arguments of Prof. Arthur.

In “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Singer claims that the moral valuations of a reasoning body can be quantified economically, that people mustn’t help those in need who are near to us before helping those across the globe if their suffering is greater, that one must believe that every person on earth is equally morally obligated to relieve suffering but must act as though no other people are attempting to do so—in short, that nothing may lessen “our obligation to mitigate or prevent” any evil, pestilence, or discomfort across the globe until we are all living in equal squalor. If this principle isn’t sufficiently abhorrent, Singer concludes his argument by stating that were we to accept this ‘m...

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...pite the objections I have to the specifics, Arthur’s statement about an ideal more code is so good and so exhaustive that I must include it verbatim. From eight pages of his “Entitlements and the Ideal Moral Code,” I have extracted the following lines:

Singer, Watson, and other such supporters of Socialism and Marxism, often accuse capitalists, atheists, and other such rational beings of believing that individuals have no duty to their fellows. In fact, I do recognize a duty to the victims of famine, and other such humans in need: that as an individual, I ought to and will help those in need to such an extent as I am capable without infringing my efforts to maximize the welfare of myself, my family, my community, and my country such that those who choose to aid you are in the best possible position to do so. In this way, the welfare of the world will be maximized.