PHIL 002 Lecture 2: PHIL 002 Lecture Notes_ World Hunger (2)

• School: UC Riverside
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 002
• Professor: Joshua M. Wood

Document Summary

I begin with the assumption that suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care are bad (231). The unrestricted moral principle (big sacrifice): if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally to do it (231) The restricted moral principle (small sacrifice): if it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it (231) An application of this [restricted] principle would be as follows: if i am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, i ought to wade in and pull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is [morally] insignificant (231) The restricted moral principle is certainly less morally demanding than the unrestricted moral principle.