People and charitable causes are importantly different things

A blog post by Theron Pummer, cross-posted from the Practical Ethics blog at his request.

Like Prot – the lovable character played by Kevin Spacey in the underrated movie K-PAX – you’re an intelligent benevolent extraterrestrial who has just been beamed to Earth. Sadly, unlike Prot, you have no return ticket. The good news for you is that just moments after hopping off of your beam of light, you found a briefcase stuffed with $3 million. Being benevolent, and having concern for the inhabitants of Earth, you decide to give nearly all of this money to charity. Being completely new to the planet, however, you do not yet have any special concern for anyone here – no friends, no loved ones. Having this equal concern for everyone, you want simply to do the most good possible, and so you decide to give this money to the most cost-effective charities you can find.

Exit science fiction scenario.

One important difference between each of us and this Prot-agonist is that we do have friends and loved ones; we have rich shared histories with them, we care deeply about them, and, crucially, the level of concern we have for them is not on a par with the general concern we have for strangers. If your fiancé were drowning in a lake to your north, and ten strangers were drowning in a lake to your south, and you could either rescue the one to your north or instead the ten to your south (but not all eleven!), you’d probably head north. Whether this constitutes morally good behavior on your part is a matter of controversy among contemporary ethical theorists. But let’s assume the commonsense view that it’s not wrong of you to save your fiancé over the ten others. This degree of special partial concern is, we’ll suppose, justified.

Tragedy strikes: after several long months of battling, your fiancé dies of cancer. You are absolutely devastated. But, quite admirably, you remain the kindhearted person you always were, and – inspired by some recent social media spotlights on philanthropy and fundraising – you decide to give a substantial portion of your income to charity. You could focus your donations on a wide variety of causes: heart disease, AIDS, cancer, tuberculosis, malaria, schistosomiasis, and so on. Having recently lost someone to cancer, and owing to our tendency to “take action and give for deeply personal reasons,” you browse the internet for the best cancer charities you can find, and eventually settle on one. Before pressing “enter” on its payment page, you have another thought: Hold on, what exactly is the connection between my fiancé and this particular cause?

It occurs to you that your fiancé is not among the beneficiaries of the charity (and not only because they’re no longer living). Indeed, those you’d be helping, whether your money went towards fighting AIDS, cancer, or malaria, would all be complete strangers to you. We granted that the special concern you had for your fiancé would justify you in placing significantly more importance on their life and well-being than that of strangers, but would this same special concern for your (now deceased) fiancé justify you in placing significantly more importance on the lives and well-being of strangers afflicted with cancer than that of strangers afflicted with heart disease, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, or schistosomiasis? Suppose you could prevent one stranger from dying of cancer, or instead prevent ten – or one hundred – from dying of malaria. Shouldn’t you help the greater number in this case? The bond between you and the stranger dying of cancer doesn’t seem sufficiently strong to outweigh something as morally heavy as ninety-nine lives. And this is no outlandish scenario: charities combating malaria are likely to be hundreds of times more cost-effective than most other charities. (Though focusing on particular cancer treatments in the developing world can also be highly cost-effective.)

You continue to ruminate: fighting cancer is a meaningful way of honoring my late fiancé, and this is what justifies me in especially favoring cancer charities. I am not sure this will cut the moral mustard. This latest thought questionably presupposes that the relevant group to which your fiancé belongs is “people with cancer” rather than “people who have suffered from a crippling illness” or simply “people who have suffered.” Without some such questionable presupposition, it would be at least as plausible to claim that reducing unnecessary death and suffering appropriately honors, and sincerely expresses your love for, your late fiancé (and you should then in turn be open to the possibility that you could do much more toward realizing this italicized aim by giving to a malaria charity than a cancer one). On reflection, it often seems bizarre to invest much special emotional, personal, or moral significance in the very particular way in which someone is harmed. Holding constant the amount of harm done, does it really matter whether the cause is cancer, malaria, or oncoming traffic?

If you do give to a malaria charity as a symbolic expression of concern for your loved one, simply as someone who has suffered, it may not be immediately obvious to those around you that this is part of your reason for giving – whereas it might be if you gave to a cancer charity (given that someone close to you was a victim of cancer). But this shouldn’t dictate where you donate, and anyway you can always explain yourself!

Special concern for your fiancé may justify your prioritizing them over others, but it does not entail a special reason or justification for you to focus your donations on cancer charities. At least, if there is a connection between these two types of special partiality, it is not obvious what it is. Other authors have also cautioned against projecting moral properties of persons onto causes: the plausible claim that all people are equally morally important is not be confused with the very implausible claim that all causes are equally morally important. Moreover, it is not the case that being fair to all people translates into giving equally to all charities, or determining where to give on the basis of a coin toss (or several). The general lesson: people and charitable causes are importantly different things. If we can remember this at the right times, we’ll be better able to give using our heads, in addition to our hearts.