Whether and where to give
Abstract
Effective altruists recommend that we give large sums to charity, but by far their more central message is that we give effectively, i.e., to whatever charities would do the most good per dollar donated. In this paper, I’ll assume that it’s not wrong not to give bigger, but will explore to what extent it may well nonetheless be wrong not to give better. The main claim I’ll argue for here is that in many cases it would be wrong of you to give a sum of money to charities that do less good than others you could have given to instead, even if it would not have been wrong of you not to give the money to any charity at all. I assume that all the charities under discussion here do positive good overall, do not cause harm, do not infringe rights, etc. What makes my main claim here particularly interesting is that it is inconsistent with what appears to be a fairly common assumption in the ethics of giving, according to which if it is not wrong of you to keep some sum money for yourself, then it is likewise not wrong of you to donate it to any particular charity you choose. Roughly: if it’s up to you whether to donate the money, it’s also up to you where to donate the money. I challenge this common assumption.
Citation
Pummer , T G 2016 , ' Whether and where to give ' , Philosophy and Public Affairs , vol. 44 , no. 1 , pp. 77-95 . https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12065
Publication
Philosophy and Public Affairs
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0048-3915Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/papa.12065
Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.