Hamilton 1

Aidan Hamilton
Betsy Natter
Design & Society
November 11th, 2014
Critiquing the methods used in the arguments of Narveson's and Jamieson's Essays
In Jamieson's essay, Duties to the Distant: Aid, Assistance, and Intervention in the
Developing World, he accepts Singer's claim that we are morally obligated to help those in need
as long as it will not cause significant harm to ourselves. He also postulates that ensuring our
giving is actually effective is of equal moral importance. (Jamieson) Now in the essay entitled Is
World Poverty a Moral Problem for the Wealthy? Jan Narveson argues that the wealthy are not
morally obligated to give money to the poor. He agrees that it is nice to give to those in need, but
it is not the duty of the wealthy to do so. However I personally believe that the conclusions
reached by these men to be utterly unsubstantiated. They make claims about the entire human
race without the evidence necessary to back up such grandiose claims.
There are two main issues with the methods they use to derive these questionable
conclusions. Firstly, they apply their conclusions to all of humanity; I will discuss why this is an
extreme issue. Secondly they argue as though ethics is an entirely abstract concept, as if ethics
was something intrinsic to the fabric of reality. Now we will consider the first issue.
In the essay Duties to the Distant: Aid, Assistance and Intervention in the Developing
World Jamieson writes , "In his classic article, Famine, Affluence, and Morality (Philosophy
and Public Affairs 1 (1972), pp. 229243), Peter Singer claimed that affluent people in the
developed world are morally obligated to transfer large amounts of resources to poor people in

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the developing world. For present purposes I will not call Singers argument into question."
(Jamieson, 151) This claim of Singer's, and by extension Jamieson's, is a claim that applies to all
of humanity. Everyone is morally obligated to transfer large amounts of resources to poor people
in the developing world according to Jamieson, regardless of what their own ethical system is.
Claiming something applies to everyone in ethics is a refusal to acknowledge that other equally
valid ethical systems exist. Even if you don't believe in their being multiple ethical systems that
are equally correct, there are still issues with these men's claim that their ideas are universal.
They simply haven't in their essays provided any evidence that their claims apply to all.
They may have provided some good examples to emphasis their points, as is the case in
Narveson's essay where he argues against the idea that people should be be rewarded monetarily
for their moral virtue, "Of course, if you remove the specifically moral resonance of the term
virtue so that, for example, we can speak of excellent basketball players as exhibiting a high
level of basketball-type virtue, then it will not be surprising that those interested in sports will be
ready to pay more to those with more virtue; but, alas, as we know, those persons might also
turn out to be scoundrels, drunks, misfits, rapists, thugs sad, but true. Occasionally such a
possessor of outstanding virtue of the one type winds up in jail or worse, but his high salary is
decidedly not bestowed upon him in recognition of his moral virtue nor should it be."
(Narveson, 400) This is an illustrative example for sure, and it does serve to help the reader
understand the thought process of Narveson, but it does nothing to prove his point. For you could
read his example from an entirely different perspective and reach a opposite conclusion, while
still being "right". For something to compromise a proof such that claims that apply to all of
humanity can be produced, it must be testable, ie. there can only be one right answer. As two

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people could view these ethical papers by Narveson and Jamieson and reach entirely separate
conclusions from them, and both be "right" they could not have written something that could be
considered a proof. No matter how many examples Narveson and Jamieson put into their paper it
would not compromise a universal proof, they would have only have proven their ideas for the
specific situations described. Even Einstein, who famously derived the ideas of special and
general relativity by doing thought experiments, essentially what these ethicists do to "prove"
their ideas, did not prove anything by the thought experiments. They simply helped to clarify his
thinking to himself and others. It was only after the mathematical framework for his theories was
put into place, a testable theory, was it possible for his ideas to be proven. Without this testable
theory he would not haven been able to prove anything .
But how can these ethicists prove their ideas then? Frankly they can't, not as they appear
to be treating the subject. These men argue in their essays as though ethics were an entirely
abstract subject, intrinsic to reality. But its not. Ethics is born out of how our brains are
hardwired and the environment we grew up in. Ethics is born out of the human brain, which
many people seem to forget is a physical entity, and the way it is structured directly relates to
how we think and feel. For instance, if spiders gained enough intelligence to hold a conversation
with they would have a very different ethical system, that would even differ in between members
of this super spider race; all because their brains woulds have a different physical structure than
ours would. Ethics comes from somewhere. Ethics is born from the thoughts and emotions we
have; these thoughts in turn are an abstraction of neurons sending electronic signals to one
another. If you are in the business of discussing ethics you must argue as though you are aware of
this fact. But Jamieson and Narveson do not.

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For instance, Jamieson's argument throughout his essay is at first appearance logically
sound, and the bulk of it is. But in accepting Singer's claims on strict morality in his essay, "In
this paper I have accepted Singers claim that we have a demanding and rigorous duty to aid the
distant poor." (Jamieson, 170) Jamieson also accepted all of Singers flawed logic. Such as this
leap of Singers Jamieson describes in his essay, "Singer demonstrates the urgency of our duty
with the following analogy. Suppose that I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child
drowning ... I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy,
but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing.6
For those of us who can afford concert tickets and restaurant meals, donating $200 to
OXFAM is equivalent to getting our clothes muddy. The fact that the child who would be saved
by our donation is distant or not personally known to us does not relieve us of the obligation to
act. What matters is that lives can effectively be saved simply by donating to organizations such
as OXFAM. The duty to transfer these resources is not a matter of charity or supererogatory
behavior, but of moral obligation. " (Jamieson, 152). Making the leap that donating 200$ to save
someones life and getting our clothes dirty to save the life of someone dying in front of you are
equivalent is not a logical leap at all. While Singer may have framed it so they seem similar
enough statements, its is not enough to consider them logically equivalent. What it is is simply a
belief that Singer has, and that Jamieson shares. This pseudo-logic stems from their emotions, a
by-product of the particular physical construct that their thought is being abstracted upon (and
that never everyone shares). Singer never acknowledges this, neither does Jamieson, it is treated
as though it is cold logical deduction. This treatment is evident from how Jamieson frames the
conclusion to his essay, "It is not enough to write checks in the hope that they will do some good;

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we must at least be sure that in doing so we will do no harm." (Jamieson, 170) Notice he does
not say I believe, or that if you are in a mind to accept Singer's claims then... No, he says we
must... , forgetting that his conclusions are founded on emotional leaps that are not universal. So
how can he justify his claim being one universal to mankind?
Narveson is no better in this regard, and perhaps can be considered worse, as he is far
more forceful in final conclusion in spite of no better evidence than Jamieson to back up his
grandiose claims. In his conclusion he states, "On my view which is the true one we are not
doing the worlds poor any injustices by not setting aside part of our paychecks to help them by
sending them stuff that they would, if the worlds set of institutional, political machinery were
only working properly, be making themselves." ( Narveson, 408) What appalling arrogance to
say such a thing as "On my view - which is the true one - ..." (Narveson, 408) without solid
evidence devoid of argument based on emotional beliefs to back it up. How can he make such a
statement when key arguments take the form of, "Why should there be thought to be more virtue
in doing something to raise the income of Mr. Abwela in Botswana from $10 to $20 for a few
months than in doing something to increase the level of knowledge in a fairly well-to-do student
from one devoid of insight into the metaphysics of Plato to one beginning at least to appreciate
the subject?" (Narveson, 404) How can this evidence be considered strong enough to back up
such a concluding statement when I personally don't even feel that there is similar virtue in these
two actions?
While these may seem like trivial faults with their essays, they are truly of extreme
consequence to the world. Numerous number of people have died because of differences in
ethical beliefs. Countless wars have been fought between nations over what boiled down to

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ethical differences. For the people who's profession it is to discuss ethics to continue the culture
of claiming their to be only one correct brand of ethics is disgusting. Far too many people have
caused harm to others believing that it was just, because they thought they were spreading the
one true brand of thought for a these ethicists to continue that culture.
I would like to conclude by stating that in no way am I vilifying the study of ethics itself.
I simply believe that these ethicists should take a different approach to discussing their ideas.
Treating their works as more of a guiding road for their readers, a way to communicate their
thought experiments and opinions on different topics without making the claim that their ideas
are necessarily right or wrong. It's simply how they view the subject, leaving it up to the reader
to decide if that is how they wish to think as well.

Citations
Jamieson, Dale. " DUTIES TO THE DISTANT: AID, ASSISTANCE, AND INTERVENTION
IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD." Journal of Ethics 9 (2005): 151-170. Print.
Narveson, Jan. " IS WORLD POVERTY A MORAL PROBLEM FOR THE WEALTHY?" The
Journal of Ethics 8 (2004): 397-408. Print.