Abstract

Moral extremists argue for highly demanding duties of beneficence on the ground that accepting a more moderate position commits us to denying the common-sense moral intuition elicited by easy rescue cases. I argue that a moderate duty of beneficence is consistent with this intuition in light of what I call aggregationism, the view that the large aggregate cost of performing many low-cost acts of beneficence is relevant to what moral agents may do in cases where they face multiple low-cost occasions to rescue. After demonstrating how the debate between moderates and extremists turns on the truth of aggregationism, I defend aggregationism against the challenge that it is inconsistent with respecting the separateness of persons.