Individuals Have A Moral Obligation To Assist People In Need

From the start, there are a few points of interest to which I'd like to direct your attention. In his brief response, DP left much of my commentary unaddressed. The untended areas include not only his first two contentions, but also the very weighing standards, quality of life and security, which he established at the beginning of the round. I think that these comments are particularly important because they call into question the legitimacy of the respective weighing mechanisms. Quality of life remains a dubious goal in virtue of the vague conception of well-being laid out in the first round. Security, on the other hand, remains suspect for two reasons:First, Maslow's hierarchy suggests that there is more to consider than pure security. I gave a couple of examples which include economic flourishing and a reasonable guarantee of personal health. While on the subject of Maslow, I want to briefly address a concern voiced by DP:"Note that my opponent used an improper source for his/her evidence/source. wikipedia is not trustworthy because it can easily be edited."My immediate response is that, should one simply Google "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs", one will find similar articles with pyramidal charts similar, if not identical, to the chart on the Wikipedia page. To substitute for my allegedly suspect source, I offer three supplementary citations. [3][4][5] To avoid being sidetracked into an argument concerning the legitimacy and reliability of Wikipedia, I'll just endeavor to move on to the next spot of interest.Second with respect to the inadequacy of security as a weighing standard, keep in mind the possible world I proposed in which you have a preponderance of hypersecure states which at the same neglect other quality of life metrics, e.g. infrastructure and education.Reconsider also the primary objection made to his first two contentions: the bare facts about high casualties in underdeveloped countries or the necessity of mutual aid to the continuation of our species notwithstanding, the hidden premise and value judgment, which asserts a moral obligation, cannot, by virtue of being the subject of this discussion, be accepted at face value.With these responses fresh in our minds, let us move on and consider DP's remaining arguments.First, he asserts that my comments regarding his third contention are inapplicable due to the irrelevance of arithmetic to questions of moral obligations; however, I'm afraid DP has misunderstood my thought experiment. The experiment posits a world in which we introduce basic arithmetic to a sentient species lacking experience with mathematical operations. Although they put forward a marvelous effort to comprehend these operations, they arrive at a strong consensus that 2 + 2 is 5. While we understand that this is patently false, the strength of their consensus leads them to refuse to entertain dissent. Presumably, we would not claim that the laws of mathematics are anything other than what they are as a result of this other species' consensus on the matter. Similarly, one cannot demonstrate that we possess an obligation to the needy by mere appeal to a consensus. The experiment, as you see, is intended to suggest that a consensus, even if the result of a sincere effort, can be quite misguided. In this case, it may be that the consensus on this moral obligation is misguided. As such, using this consensus, i.e. this aggregation of beliefs, as a justificatory tool leads to error.Second, DP again brings to the table this notion that our survival as a species depends on accepting this obligation. As I've noted prior, an immediate objection is that there must be a distinction between beneficial behavior patterns and the truth-value of the underlying proposition(s). Reconsider the world I posited in which all individuals live a conflict-minimal world by virtue of being united under a single religion. That conformity clearly yields desirable outcomes does not demonstrate that the content of the unifying religious doctrine is true. Similarly, it may benefit us to pattern our behavior after the supposed obligation to beneficence. Whether this is true or not, however, the question of whether we actually do possess such an obligation remains unanswered. In leaving this objection unaddressed, I think that his case, while perhaps factually accurate, fails to aim at the correct target.Additionally, the only new justification offered is an appeal to a joint intuition that 1) human life is valuable, and 2) when possible, human life and well-being ought to be supported. Though my previous criticisms about the distinction between truth-value and benefit-value of propositions applies here, I think it might be prudent to note also that intuitive appeals are equally unsatisfactory. There are several reasons to think so, including not only the inconsistency of intuition (both within a single individual and between a number of individuals), but also intuition's lack of explanatory power. In terms of justificatory ability, appealing to intuition is similar to making a bare assertion or arguing based on what one's feelings about a particular situation are. Overall, I'm left with the impression that a more rigorous justification is in order.In closing, I must say that, while I remain skeptical of the ontological grounding of this obligation, I am also hopeful that my commentary will be more thoroughly addressed in the following rounds.[3] http://www.edpsycinteractive.org...[4] http://www.businessballs.com...[5] http://psychology.about.com...