>> Hi, welcome back. This week I want to talk about the moral distinctions that we make between different groups of people. And one way of making sense of these distinctions it's something popularized by the philosopher Peter Singer. We can talk about them in terms of moral circles. So your moral circle include the class of individuals, the class of entities that you have moral value, that you would want to help. That you wouldn't want to hurt. And Singer goes on to observe and this is an observation that was also made by Charles Darwin. That over history, the size of the moral circle has expanded. You can think of a really small moral circle that just includes yourself or one that just includes you and your family or just includes you and your family and friend or just you and your tribe. Or a larger community, perhaps including all people. Or perhaps including all sentient beings, people but also non-human animals like chimpanzees and dogs. And Singer says, following Darwin, that over history our circle's gotten bigger. We care about more and more people. Now, although I, I want to repeatedly comeback to the metaphor of circles, it's worth acknowledging from the start that this metaphor is to some extent incomplete. So for one thing, being in a circle or out of a circle, is an all or nothing matter. While our moral evaluations, our moral judgement, are more graded, so, So both my family members and far away strangers are in my moral circle, in that I wouldn't want to hurt them. But I give more and more weight to people close to me than those far away. And also some moral questions, involve some moral attitudes, involve different sized circles. So, there may not be a single circle, but many. So, for instance, if you asked the question, who am I obliged not to kill? Who shouldn't I kill? The answer is, like, just about everybody. Oh, at least all people. It's wrong to kill. But if the question is, who am I obliged to help, that's more narrow. I feel an obligation to help my family, my friends, my colleagues, maybe people I'll encounter personally, but I don't feel obliged to help all the humans in the world. So there's different things going on here. And so while I'll sometimes talk about circles, I'll also just talk about distinction, sort of a contrast that we naturally make as part of our moral psychology and the first contrast, the most elemental contrast I think, is between self and other. It's between the value you give to yourself versus the value you give to everybody else. And as a way to illustrate this, I want to show a clip from an episode of the TV series House. Wonderful TV series. In this episode this guy comes to the hospital and he had given away much of his money. He was a millionaire. He gave away much of his money to strangers. And then he came into the hospital and he was insisting that he donate one of his kidneys to somebody he doesn't even know. And so the medical team gets one of their members to go check on him and see if he's crazy. And the way she sees if he's crazy is by asking how much of a sacrifice he's willing to make. So here's the clip. >> Was that my wife? >> You're the guy, the kidney donor? >> There was a problem, but I'm going to try again. >> [NOISE] Did you give it to the same lady. >> She needs it. >> Okay. Never mind. >> Wait. What do you want. >> It's, It's nothing, it's just. [NOISE] I have polycystic kidney disease. And I need a transplant and they say I don't have much time. So when I heard that you were willing I just. I'm glad it's going to someone. >> I'll give it to you [MUSIC] >> You already promised it to someone else >> I have another one. Saving one life is good. Saving two is better. >> You give away two kidneys and you die. >> I could live on dialysis for years. >> Yes, and then you die. >> And then I could donate my other organs. Heart, lungs, I could save four or five more lives. [MUSIC] >> Yeah, Foreman's going to need a diagnostician. This guy is crazy. >> Some privileging of yourself over other people is universal. It's acceptable. And in fact to to reject it can be seen as madness. The idea of giving away your organs to save lives. Even to save multiple lives and killing yourself in the process isn't seen as sort of noble sacrifice, something we should all aspire to. Many people see this as, as, as in a TV show as, as crazy. We're expected to value ourselves over others. At the same time though, there are some limits. There are some cases where altruism is expected. Where kindness is expected. Where sacrifice is expected. And there are some cases where you would even be expected to do some suffering to save the lives of others. We saw an example of this earlier where we talked about Adam Smith. And, and Adam Smith's question, given that it would bother you so much more to lose your little finger than to hear of thousands of people dying. Would you sacrifice the lives of thousands in order to save your finger? And he concludes, human nature startles with horror at the tought. There's some sacrifices we would be expect to, to be made. There are some things we, we, ways in which we shouldn't privilege ourselves over others. But still, the distinction remains, and the distinction's a strong one. The second distinction I want us to consider is family. Now it's not me versus everybody else. It's me and my kin my close kin. My, my brothers and sisters, my children, versus everybody else. And this too has a moral pull on us. We see this to some extent acceptable. And to illustrate this, I will show another clip from the very same episode of House. >> > Is there someone you want me to call? >> > There's someone I would like to call. She's the same person who won't take my calls. My wife. I started to give away the money, I, I hope she'd want to do it with me. She didn't. I miss them. I have two little boys. Having a family doesn't exempt me from social responsibility. >> But family comes first. >> It shouldn't, I know it sounds weird but someone who's related to you, does that empirically make them more special, more deserving than anyone else? >> Yes, it, there's your responsibility. >> My boys have a roof over their heads. They're not starving. I pay court ordered child support and frankly it's more than they need. I love them more than anything I just, I can't justify buying video games and private schools when other people's children are starving. I hope one day they'll understand that. >> These are deep issues. I, I, you know, TV shows like House often address the deepest moral problems. These are problems that engage us. I could imagine that some people would have a bit of sympathy for his position. Just because they're related to me, does that make them more deserving? Is it right to shower my children with resources, private schools, computer games, fancy clothes, while other children go starving? On the other hand, there's a pull in the opposite direction. As the other doctor says, family comes first. And, and there's a sense in which that seems uncontroversial. If I treated my children as, in the same way that I treated strangers, you'd think that I was a monster. We're expected to priviledge our kin over others. But, there are limits to this. And, and there are hard problems. Suppose my brother commits a murder and I know he commits a murder. Should I turn him in? If he were a stranger, I'd report him to the police. How far does my obligation to him go? Should I turn him in? Should I perjure myself to protect him from going to prison? Should I kill a witness so that he gets away? Suppose my child needed an organ, a kidney, a, a, a heart in order to live, should I break the law in order to procure this. Certainly we would agree I should sacrifice to give my kid this missing organ. If I said oh, I'd rather not pay so that my child gets a transplant, because I want to spend the money on my fancy vacations, you wouldn't think very much of me. But what if I went to other extreme, and I paid somebody to kill another child and steal that child's organ to give it to my child? That seems too much. So there is a certain, our moral intuition say, there is a certain balance here that has to be met. Now, we've talked about a very small moral circle, the self versus everybody else, and, and a slightly bigger one, the family. The closed kin versus everybody else. And to some extent, the moral weight we give to these, or at least the fact that we, that we, that our emotions are so biased to favor ourselves and our family is a Darwinian no brainner. It follows from how natural selection works. No animal could evolve that didn't care about itself or its kin. It's by doing so that animals survive. So these two distinctions, though important and we'll return to them, don't pose any interesting puzzles from a standpoint of biology or psychology, they're kind of what you would expect. But then there are other cases that are more interesting. So the third moral circle that we can consider is the group that one belongs to. And one way to illustrate this is with the, the story of the good Samaritan, from the gospels in the New Testament. So, the story of the good Samaritan begins. It's actually a lawyer story. It's, it's, there's this long, you know, lawyer joke, because the lawyer is this obnoxious guy who keeps pressing Christ on issues. And he starts by saying, you know, how should I get eternal life? And, and Christ says, love thy neighbor. And the lawyer shoots back right away. Who's my neighbor? And in response, there's a story. And the story is, there is, there is a guy, he's traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. He's mugged. He's stripped of all of his clothes and everything he has, and he's by the side of a road, unconscious and naked. A priest walks by, sees him, and keeps walking. A Levite walks by, sees him, and keeps walking. But then the Samaritan comes by, and the Samaritan sees him, and he, he comes over to him, and he binds his wounds, he cares for him. He takes him to an inn where he could get shelter and care. He leaves money, so that he'll be taken care of. And so, so Christ tells the story and says, and asks, who is neighbor to this man? And the lawyer responds, he who showed mercy on him. And then Christ concludes, go in thou, do likewise. Now, Jeremy Waldron, the philosopher and legal scholar, has a wonderful discussion of this, and he points out that at the time the story was being told, people hated the Samaritans. They were a despised minority. He suggests that the reason why the lawyer didn't just say, a Samaritan helped him, is because the lawyer couldn't bear to say the word Samaritan. It's, they were that despised. So part of the moral of the story is that, that we should blur the distinctions between groups. That, that regardless of what group you come from, you should help other groups. Now if you think about this, if a group defines a moral circle, then, we, there are many moral circles corresponding to the different groups that we belong to. And I have, and I've listed some, some groups that people belong to. Some of the groups we belong to are involuntary, established by kinship or proximity or accidents of biology. Some are by choice. Some are, the, the final group is, is a, a student of Moralities of Everyday Life, this course. You are a member of a group. You could be distinguished from people who don't take this course, who aren't watching these videos. Some groups are more significant than others. This may not be, well be the most significant group of your life. But it is a group nonetheless. And, and we'll talk about how the psychology of being a member of a group has moral consequences. The fourth and final circle, or the fourth and final distinction I want to talk about, is proximity. And to illustrate this, I could go back to an example that was, we talked about before from Peter Singer which is that, if you saw a girl drowning in a pond, if you walked by and saw her drowning in a pond, you would certainly come save her. You would certainly reach in and pull her out. But if the girl was drowning in a pond in Africa, in a faraway land, you don't feel so inclined to save her. To put it in more practical terms, at any point, just about any of us has the resources to help people in far away lands. Yet we don't do it. And psychologically, it feels very different. If I let the girl drown, and I walk by, I would feel guilty for the rest of my life. But, I don't give money to charity. If, if I buy some fancy shoes or a fancy computer instead of sending money to charity, I don't really feel guilty at all. If I knew you walked past the girl in the pond, I would consider you a monster. But if I heard you bought yourself some nice shoes, that's just what one would expect. This distinction carries a lot of intuitive weight, in fact Jeremy Waldren in his discussion of The Good Samaritan story, notes that the story assumes the moral validity of proximity. So notice, the story isn't saying you should go around the world and help everybody. You should help all humans. Rather the story puts a lot of emphasis on the fact that as these men went by, they saw the person on the side of the road. And the assumption was, well, when you see them, you're close to them. It's like the girl in the pond, and now you have to act. But if you didn't see that person, you wouldn't have the same moral responsibility. So, these are the sorts of issues we're going to be talking about this week. In the next three lectures, I'm going to talk about the moral psychology of groups. I'll start off with a very brief lecture talking about the sort of moral questions. About discriminating on the basis of group. And then I will turn to two different ways of thinking of groups. As coalitions and in terms of stereotypes. Then, I want to talk a little bit about, an issue we've been talking about through out this course. How we think about, and how we deal with strangers. What's the rule of proximity? And, here, I want to get into the very interesting issue of research and experimental economics, or behavioral economics. And then, I want to talk a little bit about some developmental work that, it tells us something about how children think about groups. And in the final lecture I want to go back to the original question about expanding the moral circle. Ask yourselves how we can expand the moral circle to include more and more things and then ask yourselves, is it really as simple as that, is this the right thing to do. And those are the questions we want to deal with this week. [MUSIC]
