Effective altruism is built on the simple but unsettling idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good one can. In this course you will examine this idea's philosophical underpinnings; meet remarkable people who have restructured their lives in accordance with it; and think about how effective altruism can be put into practice in your own life. All the features of this course are available for free. It does not offer a certificate upon completion.
Ethics and Moral Saints
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Do curso por Princeton University
Effective Altruism
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Why Act Ethically?
In this last week, we circle back to some foundational questions in ethics. What is the relationship between rationality, self-interest and ethics? How demanding is morality, and why exactly should be try to live an ethical life? In this week you will also find the final essay assignment.
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Peter SingerIra W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics
University Center for Human Values
[BLANK_AUDIO].
Okay.
I want to look at the question raised in the readings by
Susan Wolf and others about what is actually required.
I'm going to come back to the question of self-interest and and ethics.
But I want first to ask this question of,
what is it in fact required by acting ethically.
Because I think the, the claim that to act fully ethically we have to be moral
saints and understanding moral saints as somebody that as Susan Wolf says.
Neither I, nor those about whom I care
most would want to be, that we should be glad
that we're not, is, presents a view of morality
that we may feel is, is not for us.
We may share Susan Wolf's idea, that that is to some extent a repugnant idea.
But it's, it's an interesting question to pose as to, to what
extent that is an ideal we should strive towards, and some of
the things that Wolf says about a moral saint are I think
a caricature of what we might see as living a good life.
Looking at some of the people that we have
actually met encountered in various ways in this course.
So Wolf says that the moral saint would have to be very, very nice,
you know, as if they wouldn't ever have a sharp tongue or anything like that.
Might be dull-witted, humorless or bland.
And wouldn't be involved in gourmet cooking or high fashion.
Well maybe the last of that is true to some extent
given that it depends a little bit what you mean by
these things, you might still be a good cook but if
gourmet cooking means that you're putting a huge amount of effort.
And perhaps significant amounts of money because you're
buying very special ingredients to providing a gourmet meal.
It might be that you feel that given the problems that the world has, that's not
the best priority for your time and and money as well, for your efforts.
And if high fashion also involves wearing
designer clothes looking out for the latest fashions.
Again I think, you know, there we can perhaps agree with Susan
Wolf that a truly ethical person would not regard those things as priorities.
Might take an interest in them to some extent, but they would not
be priorities that would occupy a lot of your time or your money.
So, I think the things in the lower paragraphs, you might agree with.
The things in the upper paragraph, I certainly think, we ought to challenge.
And it depends on what we actually mean by a moral saint.
So, perhaps, you might think of Gandhi for example.
Somebody who lived very simply very concerned about about the poor.
Was very devoted to the independence, the struggle for independence of India.
And was prepared really to make any kinds of sacrifices to do that
including the use of non-violence in the face of the British
colonial forces in India, which no doubt also carried significant risk.
Couldn't really predict what would be the result
of non-violent protests against an armed imperial power.
So that's one vision of a moral saint, but probably one which, very few of
us would have the chance to actually lead that role, even if we aspire to it.
Coming a little closer to our possibilities.
This is Paul Farmer the founder of Partners in Health.
An organization that began by providing health care for the
rural poor in Haiti and has now expanded world wide.
Paul Farmer was a Harvard medical school graduate and obviously
could've had a very comfortable medical career anywhere in the
United States, but instead, he chose to spend his time in Haiti.
He actually visited Haiti as a student, did an internship there, and decided he
couldn't let go, he couldn't just go back to the rest of his normal life.
It transformed him to having the goal of
improving health care for the rural poor everywhere.
So yes, that's someone more like, a modern saint perhaps.
but, cer, certainly not somebody who has no other life
at all, outside that, he has a family as well.
And then we've met some people who might, we,
we might regard as moral saints in this course.
Zell Kravinsky; who gave away most of his money as well as a kidney.
Alexander Berger who also donated a kidney and
is working for GiveWell, we saw on screen.
>> [COUGH].
>> And Julia Wise was here of course speaking to our class.
And although Julie and her partner have relatively modest incomes I mean certainly
about above the American median perhaps as, as partners, but, but not much really.
Around that area.
And are giving away almost half of it.
They could be considered saintly but I don't think you get the impression that
Julia is someone who is not interested in anything else except doing what
is right or certainly not, who is dull or humorless or bland.
If you read the Giving Gladly blog, I think you see that that's not
the case at all, that she gets a lot of enjoyment about what she's doing.
And does it with energy and enthusiasm, and
so I think, you know, perhaps you could say
this, she's not a moral saint, she probably
would not herself claim to be a moral saint.
But she's certainly someone who's living a highly ethical life, and who
is enjoying it, and being a well-rounded person at the same time.
So maybe we want to have a sense of moral sainthood, which
is not so extreme as that which Susan Wolf wants.
And regard this as a desirable ideal to promote, because it
is something that's possible for many people to live and to
sustain, and not to go into some sort of burnout or
feel that you failed because you're not absolutely perfect in every respect.
So let's draw this to a conclusion by looking at this
large question of about what meaning life can have.
And that's a question which, people sometimes
say, well what's the meaning of life?
And that question can be asked in different ways.
In one, from one sense, people may think that,
what you're really asking about is all of life.
What is the meaning of the fact that there is life, at all?
All of the living beings that exist on our planet, or perhaps people
just think of all of the human beings who exist on our planet.
What is the meaning of that?
But that's a question which certainly does have a pre-supposition.
That is, that in some sense there is some meaning to all of that life.
And usually, that goes along with the idea that it
was created, and it was created by a being with purposes.
And if that's so then of course you could say, well, the meaning of
life is let's say, to live in accordance with the will of the creator.
So you can answer that general question in that way, but
it's difficult to answer if you don't hold that kind of view.
Because then you might well say, well life just occurred.
Life evolved, developed, out of non living molecules
that could engage in chemical reactions that led them to replicate.
Led DNA to be produced, led therefore to other patterns of evolution.
And so we're just here.
And in that sense, there's no overall meaning to it.
There's no overriding meaning of that kind.
So that would be a secular view, which would deny that the
question what is the meaning of life, is one that can be answered.
On the other hand, we can say, what meaning can we give to our lives?
We can think about our ultimate ends.
And that's a different question, and a question that
we can certainly discuss and have different views on it.
So, as I've been saying, one answer to that might be the meaning we can give
to our lives is to find happiness for ourselves and for those we care about.
And we can find meaning in our lives that way.
We could also say, we can find meaning in our lives,
by making the world a better place, by living an ethical life.
Those are certainly things that we can say
about knowing that, through our lives, we've done
what we can to make the biggest possible
positive difference to the world as a whole.
And if that's so, then there's that question that I asked
before and didn't quite complete discussing about, can we get a harmony
between our own happiness and the happiness of those we care about,
and making the world a better place or living an ethical life.
Or do we have to choose?
So I'm, for me the meaning of life is, the meaning
of my life is one or the other of those differences.
Well, I'm going to wind up with this quote
from somebody who is a good friend of mine.
Who worked in the animal movement was not sure if I've
mentioned him at one stage in the class earlier but Henry Spira
was the person who, I guess if you pick up a bottle
of cosmetics and you see on it not, not tested on animals.
It's primarily Henry who you can thank for that change.
He started a campaign back in about 1980 against
Revlon, because of the tests it was doing on rabbits.
It was putting its cosmetics into the eyes of rabbits to
see whether it was going to cause damage to our eyes.
And Henry started a campaign.
Not to say, you can't do this immediately, because he realized that they
were not going to release products that could be harmful to human eyes.
But rather to say, put a small percentage of your revenues towards developing
an alternative, so you don't have to blind rabbits to make your cosmetics safe.
So, it took some years.
He didn't just stop at Revlon.
When Revlon agreed to do that, after getting a lot of very bad publicity.
He went to Avon and Bristol Myers and a
number of others and they all put into a fund
and they did develop alternatives, so that cosmetics by
and large can be tested without inflicting suffering on animals.
And I interviewed Henry towards the end of his life.
He knew that he was dying.
He had cancer.
And I wanted to make a little video of him, which you can find online.
It's called Henry Spira, One Man's Way.
I mean it's just called Henry One Man's Way, I think.
And but this is a quote which is in also put
in a essay, so he was looking back on his life.
This is the life satisfaction question I suppose, but he was asking it with a
long perspective as he knew that he was coming to the end of his life.
And he said he wanted to feel that his
life amounted to more than just consuming products and
generating garbage, which is, a picture of what a
lot of people's lives in a consumer society are like.
One likes to look back and think that one's done the
best one can to make this a better place for others.
Not a sense of duty.
So it's not, it's not this idea that it's something imposed on us from outside.
But it's rather, for Henry it was what he wanted to do.
What he wanted to do, and he feels best when he's doing it well.
And like I say, I knew Henry for many years.
And until he was really ill he, I'd say he got up every morning with energy and zest.
To think about how he could advance the goals that he was working for.
Which to say in the later stage of his life were about animals.
Although he did, I should say do a lot of other
things earlier on before he became aware of the needs of animals.
He marched in the Civil Rights Movements in the
American South in the late 50s and early 60s.
He worked for he worked for against corrupt unions in the
National Maritime Union, because he was a merchant seaman for some years.
So I think he, he did things like that for his whole life.
And was able to look back on his life towards the
end of it with a great deal of, of peace and satisfaction.
And I think that's something that we could all hope
to do when we reach that stage of our life.
So let me wind up at that point.
I think we're pretty much out of time anyway.
I thank you very much for your attention, your participation in
the course, and I hope you've got something out of it yourselves.
Thank you.
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