Precis of Living High and Letting Die

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Review: Précis of Living High and Letting Die Author(s): Peter Unger Reviewed work(s): Living High and Letting Die by Peter Unger Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 59, No. 1, (Mar., 1999), pp. 173-175 Published by: International Phenomenological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2653465 Accessed: 05/04/2008 02:10 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ips. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LIX, No. 1, March 1999

Precis of Living .Highand Letting Die* PETERUNGER

New York University

Because this Symposium's commentatorsso clearly indicate so much of the central content of my Living High and Letting Die, I'll provide only a skeletal Precis of the book. Reducing redundancy,this also will allow more space to develop this content, in response to questions from critics, so as to clarify what's in the book and, perhaps,its potential for helping us appreciateboth moralityitself and morally centralfacts of our currentsituation.' After presentingcentralfacts about easily preventablechildhood death in most of the poorest places in the world, Chapter 1 observes that, intuitively, we judge leniently the conductof those who never do anythingtowardlessening such suffering and loss, not even when confrontinga vividly informative Envelope from the likes of UNICEF. It's noted that, in contrast with such lax judgment of such fatally unhelpful behavior, when responding to the fatally unhelpful conduct in Peter Singer's case of a child on the verge of drowning in a nearby Shallow Pond, our intuitive moral assessment is very severe. How best to accountfor this greatdisparityin our intuitivebehavioral judgments? On the dominant approachof Preservationism,it's held that, as with almost all moral responses to cases, these divergent reactions reflect an importantfeatureof our good Basic MoralValues and, perhapsat just a short remove, of morality itself. On the contrastingLiberationismfeatured in the book, our intuitions on very many cases, both hypothetical and even actual, do nothing towardreflectingthese Values, as they're producedby powerfully DistortionalMental Tendencies that preventus from respondingin line with the Values. And, in the morally most meaningfulrespects, the conduct in the Envelope is at least as bad as that in the Shallow Pond. By contrast with fatally unhelpful conduct that's still so widespread, Chapter1 then discusses our intuitive moraljudgment of the total conduct of folks, mainly merely hypothetical people, who behave in morally wanting ways that, by now, humanity has progressed beyond. Mainly, the focus is *

Oxford University Press, 1996. In writing these replies, I've been helped by judicious thoughts from Thomas Pogge, well beyond what's in his incisive published commentary.I'm thankfulalso to David Barnett for helpful comments. BOOK SYMPOSIUM 173

slaveholding behavior:If we assume that, in a few generally advanced societies today, there are "extremelybenevolent"slaveholderswhose conduct is, in other matters,morally exemplary,the intuitivejudgment is that their total conduct is quite shabby. By contrast, with such long-ago less benevolent slaveholdersas Washingtonand Jefferson,the intuitivejudgment is that their total conduct was rathergood. Why is there this disparity?Only after a DistortionalMental Tendency is hypothesizeddo we see a satisfactoryexplanation. Chapter2 offers a detailed examinationof what seem the most promising differences between the Envelope and the Vintage Sedan, a case more "surprisingly"eliciting a strictjudgment of unhelpful conduct than does the Shallow Pond, in an attempt to see whether, as Preservationism holds, there's a morally crucial difference between such cases. But, as it turns out, the difference most productiveof such divergentresponses can't carrymuch moral weight: By contrast with the Envelope, in the Sedan and the Pond there's someone whose dire need is highly conspicuous to the agent, and to us judges of her behavior. For more about the book's longest chapter, we may see BradHooker'sadmirablylucid comments. To keep mattersinteresting,in Chapter3 we expand our canvass, examining cases where, in the furtheranceof lessening serious loss to folks, the agent takes a lot from the wealthy, and engages in other sorts of generally objectionablebehavior, like lying, though she doesn't go so far as to impose truly serious losses on others. Now, with the Yacht, it appearsmorally good for you to take a billionaire's ship to save a nearby drowning person's life, even if that means damage to the extent of millions beyond what insurance will cover; with the Account, in contrast,it seems wrong to funnel a million from his huge accountto a UNICEF accountso thatthousandsfewer children die in the near future.Why the difference? First, as with the Envelope, with the Account there's nothing to break the grip of our fallacious futility thinking, which has it seem that the saving done means no more than removing just a drop of misery from a whole ocean of suffering. So, second, it then seems that there's no strong moral reason to contributeone's wealth to the cause, much less someone else's. But, third, with the Yacht there's a dire need that's highly conspicuous, enough to breakthe grip of futility thinking, as with the Pond and the Sedan. So, fourth,it then rightly seems that there is strongreason. In Chapter4, our canvass is extended still further,as we examine cases where, for the agent to engage in effectively saving some folks, she must bring serious losses to others, as with the loss of life or limb. With the Trolley, it seems good to switch a runaway tram from a track where it's set to kill six onto a track where one will be killed. With the Foot, it seems bad forcibly to take one guy's left foot to make a life-saving antidote for sixty, which can be gotten only from a foots-worthof that one, no matterhow con174

PETERUNGER

spicuously needy the sixty may be. Why that difference? Mainly, it's this: With the Foot, we Projectively Separatethe needy sixty from the one whose loss can save them; far from falling prey to that DistortionalTendency, with the Trolley we Projectively Groupeveryone together and, thus, nothing prevents us from respondingin line with the Values. To evidence this explanation, I introducea new techniqueto moral psychology and philosophy:Comparing our responses to two-option cases with our responses to "aptlyinclusive" several-optioncases. For more aboutthis chapter,see Singer's informative comments. In chapter 5, there's the book's main case for how very strong is the influence of Projective Separatingon our moral responses to so many cases. For encounterswith especially strikinginstances of such Separating,a devil of a figure is introduced, one Dr. Strangemind,who's as powerful as he's nutty. This short chapteris the most entertaining,and I won't risk spoiling anyone's fun by detailingit here. Chapter6 concernsthe costs of leading a morallydecent life for well-to-do folks, like us, in what's actually our currentsituation. At least twice over, I argue that, by any ordinarystandard,the costs are enormous.First, there's an argument that proceeds mainly by way of a consideration of cases. Then, there's one that proceeds largely through what I call Principles of Ethical Integrity.Thoughthey also treatmaterialfeaturedin otherchapters,the lively comments from Thomas Pogge, and from Fred Feldman, addressthese Principles and the costly conclusions variouslydrawnin this chapter. Finally, and perhaps inadvisably, in chapter7 there's offered a complex contextualist account of many moral judgments. If this semantic account is on track, as well it might be, then there might not be any real conflict between the harshjudgment of the Envelope's conduct offered in the bulk of the book, where very demandingcontexts prevail, and, on the other side, the lax judgments offered in everyday life, where much less demandingcontexts prevail. While such a modest reconciliationmay take a bit of the sting out of my main moral contentions, it is not, I now think, a part of the book on which folks should much focus.

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