My 100th Debate: A Duty to Rescue

Thanks once again to JBB for this debate! Just so she knows, response times are 48, instead of 72, hours. With that said, on to the debate! ----Supermodels are rarely noted for their intellectual acumen, but that doesn't mean that even they can't occasionally express a kernel of genius, a statement that brings to mind an essential truth about human beings. One example is the following quote from English model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley: "I'd like to think that I'm brave. That's a really wonderful personality trait to have. I would love to think I'm the type of person to go rescue someone." [1]Surely, we would all like to think of ourselves in such terms--brave, selfless; we want to be the best version of us. This impulse that Huntington-Whiteley hits upon is, to me, a fundamentally moral one. We all want to be good people, and we see bravery, selflessness, righteousness, and so on as ways in which we can be moral, good people--as ways that we can come to terms with our conscience. In other words, this model's desire to be the type of person who would rescue someone is not really any different than any person's desire to be good. We see the urge to rescue someone as a moral compulsion, and so we should discuss it in moral terms.The resolution asks us whether their ought to be a duty to rescue. I think that the intuitively clear answer, the one that Huntington-Whiteley's deceptively simple comment hits upon, is "yes." However, intuition alone rarely suffices in a debate; we must justify that intuition with logic. I think that there are two independent ways to go about doing just that. The first way is to examine the nature of actions themselves, and second is to examine the nature of the society in which we live.By examining "the nature of actions themselves," I am referencing the idea of analyzing two sets of actions--acts of commission and acts of omission--and questioning whether there is any substantive difference, from a moral standpoint, between them. On the face of it, there does appear to be some distinction to be drawn--it is different for me to trip someone (committing an action), than to let someone be tripped (omitting an action.) But, this semantic separating does not appear to hold up once subjected to scrutiny.Surely, letting someone trip and tripping someone both result in the same end, and so there is certainly no distinction there. So, if we took a utilitarian view, there is no moral difference between the two types. The only possible difference then is in the means. But in either act (tripping someone or letting someone trip) you still intend to effect the ultimate result and you still choose do something to bring about that end, so it seems like pointless equivocation to make the claim that the means employed are different enough that the two actions are not somehow morally equal. Perhaps to put things more plainly, and "to use a grim example, most would agree that a mother who intentionally starves her healthy child should not be dealt with...any differently than the mother who intentionally poisons her child. Surely, no one would argue that the first mother is less morally culpable simply because starvation is an act of omission." [2]In this particular instance, there is no substantive difference between commission and omission. Now, you may be wondering what impact this has on the resolutional issue of the duty to rescue. Let's say, in light of the foregoing arguments, that letting someone die is the same thing as murder. P1. People ought not do that which is morally wrongP2. Murder is morally wrongC1. People ought not to murder.P3. Letting people die is the same as murderC2. People ought not to let people die.Thus, by eliminating the false distinction between acts of commission and omission, we can posit that an affirmative obligation, or duty, to rescue those in peril exists. You could even substitute other moral wrongs into the proof (robbing, letting someone be robbed; beating, letting someone get beaten; etc.) and the proof would still be just as valid. This is one way to uphold the resolution.But there is also a second way we can affirm this topic, and that is to examine society and our roles within it. We can assume that a social contract, whether informal or formal, exists between a nation's people and its government. By social contract I mean a relationship between a government and its people whereby the former agrees to protect the latter and the latter agree to facilitate the former in its endeavors.Consider, we want the government to perform a variety of functions (P, X, and Q), which may be analogous to things like national defense, regulating businesses, responding to natural disasters, and so forth. P, X, and Q require things that the government itself doesn't have, and so we the people agree to give the government some of what we have so that it can perform those functions we deem valuable. P and X require money, and so we give money to the government via taxation. Q requires money as well, but it also requires manpower, and so, if we deem the cause important enough, we may allow the government to draft citizens to enable it to achieve Q. Essentially, we acknowledge that there is justified reciprocity between the government and the people. It is my contention that within this framework of reciprocity their ought also to be a duty to rescue. This "argument would recognize an obligation of citizens to perform actions necessary to enable the state to fulfill its duty to preserve the lives of its members. This...yields a general public duty to rescue parallel to the duty to prevent criminal violence outlined above. The state is bound to preserve the life of an endangered person, such as one who is drowning. Although the state generally fulfills this duty through its own officers, on some occasions an officer will not be present or will require assistance. In such situations, the state reasonably may impose an obligation on every citizen present to assist in preserving the life of a fellow citizen. Individuals have a natural duty to assist others in need." [3]We agree that part of a government's function is to protect the rights of others, and so we have a duty to assist the government in that function when the government is unable to do so and when it would not unduly jeopardize our own wellbeing. This is consistent with the social contract I described above, and shows that within this type of social framework there ought to be a duty to rescue.So, it seems as if Huntington-Whiteley's comment was spot on, and that even a model can be brilliant. Thus, I affirm.SOURCES1 - http://www.brainyquote.com...2 - http://www.qcc.cuny.edu...3 - Steven Heyman [Prof. Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology] “Foundations of the Duty to Rescue” Vanderbilt Law Review. Vol. 47, 1994