1.

Peter Singer’s Argument

In the essay ​Famine​,​ Affluence and Morality​,​ ​Peter Singer argues an altruistic and universal
stand of moral obligation: affluent countries are morally obligated to give basic aids to
undeveloped countries. His argument can be constructed as following: 1) suffering and death by
starvation and a lack of basic medical care are bad. 2) if it is in out power to prevent something bad
from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought,
morally, to prevent the bad thing from happening. 3) It is in our power to prevent suffering and
death caused by starvation without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance (for
example, by giving money to relief organizations up to the point of marginal utility).
Singer himself tends to P1's point of view and believes that everyone needs to do this. The
dilemma is: It’s hard to live up to this modern ideal and at the same moment we ought to prevent
suffering and death caused by starvation. Following these three premises, we all have to give
money in order to prevent suffering and death up to the point of marginal utility. If Singer's
argument is valid, any unnecessary expenditure is incorrect. It seems that the conclusion is not
valid for some reason.

2. Timmerman’s response
Timmerman responds that Singer's argument is too radical, and he reconstructs it as
following: 1) Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care are bad. 2) If it is our
power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything near as important, it
is wrong not to do so. 3) the same principle as Singer's. 4) if you do not donate to aid agencies,
you are doing something wrong.
For Timmerman, Singer's second argument is false. As moral libertarians claim: we have
no positive moral duties to help others - rather we only have duties not to harm others. Timmerman
reject Singer's second argument by proposing counterexamples against it. It isn’t always the case
that we cat wrongly if we don't help someone we could help, without sacrificing something of equal
moral worth.

3. Possible response
This does not mean that we need to accept Singer's moral obligations. Singer's argument
implies sacrificing all entertainment and material resources, leaving only enough to survive. In
reality, Singer requires each of us to consider whether our actions can have a more important
meaning than helping the famine or the affected people before doing everything. We can glimpse
one or two from the following example: Suppose I am hesitant to buy a pack of chips or a cup of
coffee. According to Singer’s theory, these money is used for pure pleasure, and is used to save
hunger. The refugees are quite worthless compared to the refugees, so we should donate all the
money we used to enjoy to the refugees. Of course, this is very unrealistic. If we have a little
understanding of modernity, we can generally find that people's lives in modern society are
composed of work and leisure, and leisure is achieved by different types of purchase and
socialization. Therefore, I am very refusing to think that a lot of people will think that the importance
of self-satisfaction is greater than the salvation of human life, because in a world of commercial
advertising, there are no such “tragedies” of human life as they have been hidden behind TV
screens or the billboards. When we can not see when it happened, nothing actually happened.
Although Singer did not give a concrete answer in the article, we may wish to answer this
question from the perspective of utilitarianism. Let us recall the two definitions of utilitarianism,
equality and integrity. From a utilitarian point of view, everyone's "welfare" has the same value,
then utilitarianism will require us to achieve the collective "welfare" to the greatest extent. However,
it is worth noting that if we can statistically conclude that some people's sacrifices (ie, in poverty)
can bring the greatest degree of “welfare” to society, then utilitarians will not hesitate to support
everything. The behavior of consumerism and the importance of maintaining the status quo.
At this point, we have realized that changing the morality of people in a certain business
environment is one of the few ways to change the status quo from a deep level. However, as the
moral obligations stated by Singer, our selfish nature makes us to do very little. Even so, Singer
claims that if everyone is to sacrifice their most insignificant resources, most of the problems in
society will be solved. I only hope that everyone will be aware of their responsibilities after reading
this article. "Individualism" is by no means a beacon of our "free" life. If we can't accomplish the
obligation , we can at least spread this idea, and only thinking can drive everyone's actions in
society.
Finally, I hope everyone can realize that an individualistic society is not perfect, and the
concept of consumption brought about by business also has a dangerous side. If the morality
brought about by modernity will eventually be destroyed, can we seek answers from ourselves?