Why Do We Disagree about our Obligations to the Poor?

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (1):121-136 (2019)
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Abstract

People disagree about whether individuals in rich countries like the United States have an obligation to aid the world’s poorest people. A tempting thought is that this disagreement comes down to a non-moral matter. I argue that we should be suspicious of this view. Drawing on psychological evidence, I show that we should be more pessimistic about our ability to attribute the disagreement to a difference in factual beliefs.

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Peter Seipel
University of South Carolina

Citations of this work

Suspiciously Convenient Belief.Neil Levy - 2020 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (5):899-913.
Famine, affluence, and philosophers’ biases.Peter Seipel - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (10):2907-2926.
Save (a Small Proportion of) the Children.Peter Seipel - 2022 - Erkenntnis 89 (2):607-624.

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References found in this work

On Virtue Ethics.Rosalind Hursthouse - 1999 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Practical Ethics.Peter Singer - 1979 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Susan J. Armstrong & Richard George Botzler.
Famine, Affluence, and Morality.Peter Singer - 1972 - Oxford University Press USA.
Moral realism: a defence.Russ Shafer-Landau - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Famine, affluence, and morality.Peter Singer - 1972 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (3):229-243.

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