Topics Ethics

Question Although I feel sympathetic when I see charities fundraising for homeless shelters in the UK, or for facilities for deaf children (two recent ads chosen as examples), I still feel a utilitarian drive to put my donations towards rehydration kits where every small amount can save a life. Surely saving lots of lives is better than the work done by the earlier mentioned charities, and others of that kind?

Accepted:
December 5, 2013

Comments

It's an interesting question. One way to put it: are we obliged to put all our charitable resources where they will do the most good? Or can we donate to causes that are intrinsically worthy, even though we'd get more bang for the buck by giving everything something else?

I'm reluctant to say that utilitarianism requires putting all our resources into the "biggest bang basket," though even if it does, there are some considerable imponderables here. We may save more lives directly if we put all our resources into rehydration kits. But there may be indirect benefits from other kinds of giving. For example: even though we may save more people initially by spending on rehydration kits, if we give no money to medical research, the long-term consequences might end up being worse than if we'd spread our charitable resources around. The utilitarian calculation, in other words, isn't as clear as it might seem. Also, whether "fairness" is quite the right term, there's something unsettling in the prospect that a homeless person in the UK should get no charitable support because there are people even worse off.

We could add to this list: could it really be right that I should take all the money I give to my local symphony and give it to rehydration efforts, for example? If everyone did that, there would be no symphony? Obviously we can multiply examples like this endlessly.

To repeat: I'm not sure that utilitarianism forces such a conclusion on us. If it did, however, we'd have an obvious next question: is utilitarianism (or any other moral theory with this implication) really the best account of our obligations? Whatever the ultimate answer to that question, I'd suggest that it isn't just obvious.