A famous philosophical thought experiment goes like this: on your way to work one day you see a toddler about to drown in a shallow pool. If you go to save her, you will not be risking your life, but you will get your nice clothes wet. Are you obligated to save her, if, at that moment no one else can? Obviously, very few would deny this. But that is not the end. The question is, why are we not equally obligated to save children from dying in Africa if we could do so without inconveniencing ourselves? There are charities that do just that, such as Unicef, etc. Why are we not equally obligated to give to charity to prevent children from dying in other countries? What’s different about the two cases? Peter Singer, the philosopher who created this thought experiment, argued there is no relevant difference, and therefore we should be equally obligated.
Not saving a nearby child from drowning when you could is wrong. It feels wrong, and people are likely to agree that anyone who did this ought to be shunned or punished. Not giving to charities when you could, lacks this gravity. It might be thought heartless not to give to any charity, but no one would say it merits punishment. And punishment is relevant here because people are punished for violating moral rules.
Morality is the part of ethics concerned with prohibitions and requirements, the part that requires enforcement and punishment. We do not want children in our community to die. So if a child dies when it could have been easily saved by an adult witness, who refrained from saving her because he didn’t want to get his clothes wet, we would agree that person abdicated their responsibility, and, at the least, shun that person.
Good and evil are mutually exclusive kinds. Harms are often identifiable physical events that lead to bad outcomes. It’s famously rather difficult to define what “good” is. It seems that there’s a lot of good things we could do, but it’s hard to know beforehand what will be the specific good things that come out of what we do. Giving a stranger directions, giving food to the food bank, caring for a sick person - other than a handful of obvious actions like that, it’s hard to know what really comes from all our good intentions. But it’s very different with evils. Everyone agrees that we ought to avoid harming others, killing others, stealing from, and deceiving others, and that violating these rules merits punishment. The presence of prohibitions and punishments is a tell. We want to avoid evil at all cost, so we maintain a strict system of regulation to do just that, it’s called “Morality”. This we can do by all agreeing to follow what amounts to a short list of prohibitions and requirements.
It’s better to see evil as a kind of black and white thing. We need to prioritize preventing it. We need to keep simple what we want to avoid, and have a handful of rules that everyone is aware of, prohibiting actions that lead to harm. Generally speaking, watching a child drown, when you alone could have saved them, is going to lead to bad outcomes. We know this ahead of time. Avoiding evils needs to be prioritized because of the imminent consequences.
The good side of the ledger is nothing like the above description. Good comes from inside us, we just need to encourage it, it doesn’t require rigid rules. On the road to good we can be encouraged to do certain kinds of helpful things and discouraged from making life hard for others. Life is full of our mistakes, so we act and try to learn from our mistakes. Most of the time we do what we think is right, and we take feedback when we’ve done something wrong. This is the domain of ethics where we choose to follow ideals, and correct our transgressions when possible.
Ethics, while it includes morality within its scope, is more about carrots than sticks. Most of the time we hope what we do will lead to good but we often don’t know what the future consequences of our actions will be. There are many ways to do good and have a good life. To some extent we have to let go and trust that adults have the wherewithal to figure this out on their own, even if that is not always true.
Why not inform people that there are children starving in Africa who could be saved by our giving money to particular charities? That’s the domain of ethics. We can encourage and discourage actions in order to guide people. Obviously, Peter Singer realizes this, because he doesn’t argue that we ought to be impelled to give to these charities. He is trying to convince us through argument. But his argument is subtly misleading. He is arguing that because we feel obligated to help save a drowning child we should feel equally obligated to save children in Africa from starving, since the effect of our acting in either case results in saving children’s lives.
Helping to save people’s lives from starvation in a faraway country is an ethical choice not an obligation. I’m sure that Peter Singer would agree. The problem lies in Singer making no distinction between Ethics and Morality. Singer equates morality with ethics, so he is blind to the difference between a moral system that has publicly known prohibitions and requirements and ethical systems that compete amongst themselves for influence through persuasive ideologies. Following Utilitarianism is an ethical choice, just as becoming a Christian. We ought to be able to choose rather than be forced into any ethical system. If it was an obligation, then ethics would be unviable, as, in fact Peter Singer shows, by insisting that we should take all of the excess money we have and give it to suitable charities. That is not morality, that is a certain kind of ethical life, one where we try to maximize the number of children saved globally. It would be unviable for it to be a requirement for everyone.
Singer does not seem to respect the common intuition that when, in some circumstances, we ought to help our neighbours, it does not follow that we ought to help people in distant lands. The fact is we are not obligated. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t help people in other places. It just means that we are under no moral obligation to do so, and no one will think we merit punishment if we don’t. We may be criticized by people like Peter Singer, we may be encouraged to give to charity, but we shouldn’t be required to do it.
But we are responsible for acting morally in our particular neck-of-the-woods. And being participants in a moral system is essential because it’s not a choice to opt out of morality. If you do, you are liable to be arrested, shunned or banished. If you stand in the middle of fifth avenue, in New York City and shoot someone, then you will be put in jail. But, if you stand on a soap box and loudly reject Utilitarianism or Christianity, and publicly announce that henceforth you will refrain from giving to any charity, you might lose friends, but you have not violated any moral rules.
Ethics is about ideals: living the good life, being virtuous, helping others, facilitating the best in people. Morality is about avoiding imminent harm. You cannot opt out of the moral system the way you can opt out of practicing Christianity. You can make up your own ethical system if you want, but you can’t make up your own moral system. If you reject common morality, you will be considered an outlaw and treated accordingly. And this is necessary because the moral system will break down when enough people are allowed to violate it with impunity. When that happens, society itself breaks down. Hence the necessity of punishment in the moral system.
There are no societies without morality but there are Christian societies, Buddhist societies, Pagan societies, multi-cultural societies, etc. There is no one ethical system; one that always works; or one that everyone everywhere is required to adhere to. But there is one human moral system in the sense that in every society there will be publicly known prohibitions and requirements, and most people will agree that violating moral rules merits punishment. The content of these rules will vary from place to place and time to time, but the basic structure of the moral system is the same. Morality is always about avoiding harm and it always requires enforcement. In contrast there is much more variance in ethical systems, they can be about following the golden rule, maximizing the general welfare, honouring our ancestors, earning good karma, or following the eightfold path. Whatever they are, you should be able to choose whether or not to follow them.
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