I suspect the social intuition of when we consider someone obligated has at least a little to do with the level of personal sacrifice required.
As in, you are almost always obligated to be good if it the personal cost to you is nothing,and you are almost never obligated to be good if it costs you a great deal. (Which is why you are obligated to save a drowning child but you are a hero if you save the same child from a dangerous burning building.)
If Singer says we’re “obligated” to be effective altruists, he’s trying to transfer the social norm we have for being obligated to save drowning children because the personal cost is very slight, over to being obligated to, say, buy mosquito nets, because the personal cost is very slight.
(personal morality, divorced from social ideas of what is an obligation, of course, might widely differ)
That’s also combined with whether the person is culpable. (You’re obligated to clean up your mess, but you’re extra good if you clean up someone elses.)
I think the survey of EAs from the start of the year picked up a few hundred non-consequentialists. It had a high %age of consequentialists, but emphasized this figure shouldn’t be taken as covering all EAs out there.
I’m curious about the implicit framework where some things are obligatory and some things are choices.
I suspect the social intuition of when we consider someone obligated has at least a little to do with the level of personal sacrifice required.
As in, you are almost always obligated to be good if it the personal cost to you is nothing,and you are almost never obligated to be good if it costs you a great deal. (Which is why you are obligated to save a drowning child but you are a hero if you save the same child from a dangerous burning building.)
If Singer says we’re “obligated” to be effective altruists, he’s trying to transfer the social norm we have for being obligated to save drowning children because the personal cost is very slight, over to being obligated to, say, buy mosquito nets, because the personal cost is very slight.
(personal morality, divorced from social ideas of what is an obligation, of course, might widely differ)
That’s also combined with whether the person is culpable. (You’re obligated to clean up your mess, but you’re extra good if you clean up someone elses.)
Isn’t that a common distinction among philosophers? I recall that there’s a technical name for it.
Yeah, and among common intuitions I think. But I thought EAs were mostly consequentialists, so the intended role of obligations is not obvious to me.
I think the survey of EAs from the start of the year picked up a few hundred non-consequentialists. It had a high %age of consequentialists, but emphasized this figure shouldn’t be taken as covering all EAs out there.
Philosophers call good acts that aren’t obligations ‘supererogatory’.