Moral Obligation To Help

Questions about Objectivism
1

I recently attended a philosophy class where the question was raised: If there is no cost to yourself, do you have a moral obligation to help strangers?

My initial reaction was that one has no obligation to help others (excluding those one values) regardless of the lack of cost for that help.

Later I started thinking and changed my opinion. My reasoning revolves around two premises.

The first is that one should be honest with others because one presumes that others are morally good (I believe I read this in OPAR, on the subsection on the virtue of honesty).

The second is that one should denounce any vice or morally corrupt person one comes in contact with. One should also praise any virtue or morally good person one finds. Failure to do the first amounts to sanction. Failure to do the second is similarly important. One is morally obligated to do both.

So my tenuous conclusion is that: based upon the presumption of goodness and the requirement that one rewards the good, one is obligated to help strangers when such help will not cost the helper anything.

I am still emotionally attached to my initial reaction, and would prefer to be wrong (it makes more “gut” sense to me).

I could be wrong about the two premises (there might not be a presumption of goodness or a moral obligation to reward the good, or the presumption of goodness could be weak enough to not require any obligation apaert from honesty).

This is an almost useless question because there are never any circumstances where one can benefit others with no cost to one’s self.

The answer to this question will just help pinpoint the reason why people are not required to help strangers (it could be that the fact that others’ existence is not enough to produce any moral obligation of help, or that there is no moral obligation because any help carries with it a cost).

The reason I am asking this is because the great majority (as far as I know, all) of Objectivism does not clash with either my emotions or reason, this question appears to do so, and I would like to reconcile them.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Edit: Just to clarifiy, I am asking the same question to you that was asked in my philosophy class. I also am asking if I misunderstood (or forgot, or misremembered) any part of the Objectivist philosophy.

2

I recently attended a philosophy class where the question was raised: If there is no cost to yourself, do you have a moral obligation to help strangers?

I have two comments. One is that I agree with your assessment that there cannot be a circumstance that requires nothing of you. At the very least, any circumstance will require some time, energy, and consideration. Second, in evaluating the the morality of an event, its details, as well as the perspective of the good deed doer would both be critical.

For example, your deadbeat brother asks to “borrow,” $5 which he will never repay. You can easily afford to give it to him but choose not to because enabling his irrationality is not ultimately helpful. Is it then immoral not to help and if so, by whose standard?

Or, say, walking by a construction site on a lazy afternoon, you see a worker pinned by a heavy piece of machinery. Only a lever must be pulled to free him. Perhaps you help him by spending a small amount of time to pull the lever. Or perhaps you don’t because you do not know how to operate the machine and could accidentally make it worse.

If you are able to help him and choose not to, then the implication would be that you place very little value on human life. If that is the case, it may be justified if you have had some particularly, and predominantly bad experiences with other humans, but probably not. In such a case, such disregard for the potential value of others would be indicative of a pretty sociopathic view.

3

Can you clarify what exactly is meant by “no cost to you”?

Money?

Calories?

aequalsa,

The example you gave doesn’t fall in line with the original poster’s premise anyway. $5 is five dollars. That is a cost. It violates the premise on its face.

If there is no cost to yourself, do you have a moral obligation to help strangers?

…

This is an almost useless question because there are never any circumstances where one can benefit others with no cost to one’s self.

Right. To answer the question you have to first accept a logical contradiction.

4

aequalsa,

The example you gave doesn’t fall in line with the original poster’s premise anyway. $5 is five dollars. That is a cost. It violates the premise on its face.

He stated and I agreed that it is not possible to have “no cost,” and instead answered the question from the perspective of an insignificant cost.

5

I recently attended a philosophy class where the question was raised: If there is no cost to yourself, do you have a moral obligation to help strangers?

I would say that yes, at zero or insignificant cost, you are morally obligated to help a stranger, and I believe that this position is consistent with my understanding of Objectivism.

All people have the potential to be rational value producers, and indeed almost all people are, to some extent. Very few in society produce nothing of objective value, and while almost all have mixed premises, almost all rely on reason to some extent (remember the characterization of the morality of death as impotent, and dependent on the morality of life; altruism can never be practiced consistently without resulting in imminent death).

Now, with a stranger, all of this value is potential, rather than actual; you don’t actually know the person. However, value is value. To avoid gaining a value with very little or no cost attached is just like any other failure on your part to adhere to your code of values; it is a moral failing.

As others have said, zero cost situations are not realistic, and in reality you must weigh the potential value you place in strangers against the costs imposed. Different people have different mindsets about how likely strangers are to be worthwhile people (Some are optimistic, others cynical), and there is room for rational disagreement over such a matter (to a certain degree; either naivete or misanthropy is irrational). Additionally, different people assess costs differently (although in general, anyone with well-developed feelings of self-worth and self-respect will take impositions on their own life seriously). Thus, in any realistic situation, evaluation of alternatives must be made.

However, in such a fictitious situation, where one of the alternatives is costless by design, a failure to help a stranger indicates either a failure to live up to one’s value system or a misanthropic view of humanity, either one of which is irrational and therefore immoral.

1 Like
6

He stated and I agreed that it is not possible to have “no cost,” and instead answered the question from the perspective of an insignificant cost.

At what point is a cost deemed objectively “insignificant”. My problem is with the premise of the question. It requires you to suspend reality and answer an impossible hypothetical. That’s all.

I would say that yes, at zero or insignificant cost, you are morally obligated to help a stranger, and I believe that this position is consistent with my understanding of Objectivism.

After we determine insignificant cost, do you think we should confirm (with certainty) that this stranger we are to help doesn’t happen to be a terrorist on his way to commit a heinous act of mass murder? (This is hypothetical, of course)

7

After we determine insignificant cost, do you think we should confirm (with certainty) that this stranger we are to help doesn’t happen to be a terrorist on his way to commit a heinous act of mass murder? (This is hypothetical, of course)

If you have reason to think he/she might be. It is my experience that an incredibly small percentage of the people you might run into on the street or whatever are actually terrorists (or sociopaths, or murderers, or w/e), so I would feel safe operating on the assumption that they are not when I have zero relevant information on the subject.

8

Thank you very much for the quick replies.

I now realize that my real question was incorrectly stated. The whole business of impossible hypothetical scenarios was how the question was posed to me, so I attempted to recreate the question in that form. My actual question is on the exact reason that there is no moral obligation to help others. Is there no obligation because such an obligation would incur costs on the helper. Or is there no obligation because the potential good of a stranger is of enough consideration to be honest in dealing with that stranger, but not enough to render aid.

Thank you very much Dante, I think you saw through the weird way I phrased the question. Your answer has cleared things up for me.

I understand that hypothetical scenarios are not very good ways of understanding moral problems. (I believe Rand answered hypothetical questions about emergencies by first discussing that morality is for living life and that emergencies could not be the norm or life could not exist.) At the time of posting that was the only way I had really thought of to phrase the question.

9

My actual question is on the exact reason that there is no moral obligation to help others. Is there no obligation because such an obligation would incur costs on the helper. Or is there no obligation because the potential good of a stranger is of enough consideration to be honest in dealing with that stranger, but not enough to render aid.

Oh, better question and easier to answer. Neither of those is correct. There is no obligation because the needs of someone else to not grant them a mortgage on your life.

It is important to distinguish that from whether or not helping someone at little cost to yourself is usually moral or not. It usually is because it is moral to find value in other people, but that depends on context, of course.

10

If you have reason to think he/she might be. It is my experience that an incredibly small percentage of the people you might run into on the street or whatever are actually terrorists (or sociopaths, or murderers, or w/e), so I would feel safe operating on the assumption that they are not when I have zero relevant information on the subject.

I don’t think you are saying that your moral judgments will ultimately be guided by statistical averages. Are you?

11

I don’t think you are saying that your moral judgments will ultimately be guided by statistical averages. Are you?

Not moral judgments of particular people once you have information about them that is specific to them. All I’m saying is that in the case where you have zero information particular to them, you still have to try to guess what their potential value to you might be.

You do this when making almost any decision. If I’m trying to decide whether to buy a book or not, I most likely have not already read the book, so I don’t have an exactly accurate idea of whether it will be worth the money. I might try to get more information by reading the back, looking up reviews, asking friends, etc but I’m always going to have to guess, to some extent, what value I would get from reading it. I can of course be wrong, but I must go on what I know. If I have good reason to think buying the book will further my life more than any other use for the money, then the moral choice is to purchase, even if it turns out to be a poor book.

In saving a stranger, it could always turn out that you’ve saved a mass murderer or a terrorist. On the other hand, if you don’t intervene it could always be the case that you’ve let a basically good person get hurt or die. There’s no way to eliminate error, and you have to make a decision. You make that decision based on what little information you have. You can usually do a little sizing up to try to gain more information (in a street mugging, is the victim a child, or a burly man with prison tattoos?), but ultimately you have to make a decision on limited information. If you rationally estimate that you could easily, with little cost, help someone who you think is likely a very worthy person, helping them is the moral choice, even if (against all odds) it turns out they’re worthless. If that happens, it is simply an error of knowledge stemming from the fact that you are not omniscient.

Does that answer your question?

12

Does that answer your question?

Yes, but I think it illustrates an error in how you are responding to the original poster’s question.

You said:

“I would say that yes, at zero or insignificant cost, you are morally obligated to help a stranger, and I believe that this position is consistent with my understanding of Objectivism.”

Using your analogy and description in the previous post, you are also “morally obligated” to buy a book you know nothing about. Or, said another way, it is immoral of you not to buy strange books.

The standard of value is your own life. Having little or no information about a possible action does not require you to become obligated to take that action. At best, you might be able to form an argument that one is obligated to attempt to learn more about the situation, now that they are aware of it.

But again, since we can’t even test the question with a concrete no-cost or insignificant cost scenario that could be objectively agreed to, I think the premise (original one) is flawed.

13

Oh, better question and easier to answer. Neither of those is correct. There is no obligation because the needs of someone else to not grant them a mortgage on your life.

It is important to distinguish that from whether or not helping someone at little cost to yourself is usually moral or not. It usually is because it is moral to find value in other people, but that depends on context, of course.

I understand that needs do not grant rights. However, “mortgage on life” may be interpreted differently. Obviously there should be no legal requirement that one helps another (even, say, someone you love dearly). As I understand it, One has an obligation to help loved ones. If one values someone else, then that one has certain moral obligations to the loved one. This does not mean that the loved one can collect on any “mortgage” on the lover’s life (indeed to attempt such a claim would most likely invalidate their love).

I guess my response is that one can have an obligation to help another one without mortgaging one’s life out.

14

Using your analogy and description in the previous post, you are also “morally obligated” to buy a book you know nothing about. Or, said another way, it is immoral of you not to buy strange books.

The standard of value is your own life. Having little or no information about a possible action does not require you to become obligated to take that action. At best, you might be able to form an argument that one is obligated to attempt to learn more about the situation, now that they are aware of it.

Buying implies cost. Also simply taking it for free and reading it implies space and time cost. However, if you were able to costlessly gain a potential value, whatever the value, you should, whether a book or a person’s well-being.

The point is not that you should take any action you know little about. The little you know about it is crucial. If the little you know about it indicates that it will probably gain you a value at little cost, you should. The little that I know about random strangers is that the vast majority of them don’t deserve to get mugged or hurt. The average stranger holds value to me, unless and until he/she forfeits it.

Books are an imperfect analogy when you extend it to here, because the average book sucks. I would not assume the average book to have a positive value for me.

I do see what you’re saying about getting more information, though. Assuming that is possible in the situation, I would say that that is a viable moral alternative to acting for a potential value.

15

I understand that needs do not grant rights. However, “mortgage on life” may be interpreted differently. Obviously there should be no legal requirement that one helps another (even, say, someone you love dearly). As I understand it, One has an obligation to help loved ones. If one values someone else, then that one has certain moral obligations to the loved one. This does not mean that the loved one can collect on any “mortgage” on the lover’s life (indeed to attempt such a claim would most likely invalidate their love).

I guess my response is that one can have an obligation to help another one without mortgaging one’s life out.

Then it’s not an obligation, as I understand the term.

You are not required to act in any way for another persons interest. You might choose to act in the interests of someone you love; or chose to be held legally to an obligation, like marriage or a business partnership, but this is not the same as being required to.

16

You might choose to act in the interests of someone you love

Thanks, this comment especially helped. I thought one was morally obligated to act in the interests of a loved one. I guess my knowledge was in error.. I’m going to need to read OPAR again.

Edit: By “interests of a loved one” I did not mean for their sake. I meant you are morally obligated to act to gain and/or keep a loved one as a loved one, which would include acting in the loved one’s interests.

17

I too, am taking a philosophy class, and I have recently read about Singer and his “Obligation to Assist” argument

It goes like this

Premise 1 = If we can prevent something bad from happening without losing something of comparable significance, we should do it

Premise 2 = Absolute poverty is bad

Premise 3 = We (in the United States) can prevent some poverty without losing something of comparable significance

Conclusion = We should prevent absolute povery

I do not necessarily have a problem with his line of argument, except for the notion that it’s our “obligation”, and his use of the word “Sacrifice”. There’s no reason not to donate something of minor significance to a person who, through no fault of his own, couldn’t get his foot through the door.

If you would rather keep your shoes and suit clean than save a drowning child, would that be a moral mediocrity on your part?

18

… …Premise 2 = Absolute poverty is bad

Premise 3 = We (in the United States) can prevent some poverty without losing something of comparable significance

… …

If you would rather keep your shoes and suit clean than save a drowning child, would that be a moral mediocrity on your part?

Those two examples – “absolute” poverty and drowning – are very different. IRL it is usually not worth giving a dime to the first.

19

Premise 1 = If we can prevent something bad from happening without losing something of comparable significance, we should do it

Premise 2 = Absolute poverty is bad

Premise 3 = We (in the United States) can prevent some poverty without losing something of comparable significance

As none of these premises are axiomatic, they must be proven before any conclusion can be supported.

I think #2 is pretty easy to prove. I think even #1 would probably be pretty easy to prove. #3, however - that’s going to be a reeeeallll sticker…

20

Premise 1 = If we can prevent something bad from happening without losing something of comparable significance, we should do it

Premise 2 = Absolute poverty is bad

Premise 3 = We (in the United States) can prevent some poverty without losing something of comparable significance

Conclusion = We should prevent absolute poverty

To formulate this argument properly it must be made explicit what subjects all of the value judgments are referring to. Bad for whom, cost to whom, etc.