Contribution and the Duty to Know
An appeal on Moral Responsibility
Ghislain Noorlander
10197850
Political Science
L.L. Ferracioli
E. Rossi
8651 words.
Abstract.
In this paper I argue for a duty to know whether and how agents of the affluent countries contribute to global poverty nowadays by investigating if they actually contribute and clarify the link to the duty to know. By defending the view that an agent is blameworthy for causing (acute) deprivations to another agent, even if the first agent was in a state of ignorance, I will follow Christian Barry’s examination of the contribution principle and the analyses of contribution by Thomas Pogge, Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen. Furthermore, I will discuss under which conditions we should know better and when it is moral permissible to be ignorant. Given the fact that a lot of information is available, I will argue that we have a duty to inform ourselves before we act. However, this duty cannot be seen as an obligation, for instance, imposed by the law. Like Jan Wieland (2014) writes: ‘’If we ought to inform ourselves, then we ought to inform ourselves for moral reasons, because if we do not (and we have no further excuses), then we are blameworthy if we fail to do the right thing’’ (p. 2).
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Introduction.
Knowledge is power. A famous saying, because it is actually true. However, it is impossible to gather all the information there is in de world and know everything in a lifetime. It is also questionable if a human being would like to know everything. Finally there may be no absolute truth. Nevertheless, this does not mean that we cannot try to know better in some cases. In particular, those cases that have a stranglehold on the world for centuries. Global poverty and the contribution to it, is one of those cases. Relating to the concept of knowledge, the question is then: Do we have a duty to know concerning the contribution to global poverty? In order to give an answer to the above, it is important to understand what exactly is meant by ‘global poverty’ and ‘the duty to know’ .
First, what does being poor means? The World Bank defines poverty as ‘’whether households or individuals have enough resources or abilities today to meet their needs; inequality in the distribution of income, consumption or other attributes across the population; and vulnerability, defined here as the probability or risk today of being in poverty, or falling deeper into poverty, in the future’’ (Coudouel, Hentschel & Wodon, 2002: 29). According to this definition, being poor does not just mean ‘not having enough food to eat’, poverty is rather a structural problem that seriously reduces the possibility of a bright future for those who live in these miserable situations. In order to measure this kind of poverty, an indicator has been described as people living on less than 1,25 dollar a day. Even though the number of the people living under this threshold has decreased from 1,908 million in 1990 to 1,215 million around our time, there are still a lot of people starving. Even if we augment the amount of 1,25 dollar to 2,50 dollar, the total world percentage that lives less than this latter amount is still very high: almost 50 percent. That means that probably over 3 billion people is living nowadays on less than 2,50 dollar a day (Shah, 2011). Another frightening statistic is the following: there are 2,2 billion children in the world, one billion of those children live in poverty as described above. According to UNICEF, around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries (mostly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa) are estimated to be underweight. As result, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty1 (UNICEF, 2014: 3-4).
1 This amount of dying children in the poorest countries in the world would even be higher if the children were
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Hitherto, mainly effects of global poverty on children worldwide has been discussed. More disturbing numbers about adults suffering and dying due to poverty could be given, but the picture is clear. Global poverty is probably the biggest and toughest problem mankind has to deal with. The biggest problem because it concerns the whole world. The toughest because poverty is a silent killer. Far from us (agents of the affluent countries, but also the wealthy people of the developing countries), many people die quietly. For decades agents of the rich world have tried to diminish the huge gap between the rich and the poor through development aid.2 Nevertheless, this aid has not always had the desired results. Moreover, most rich countries have given and are still giving development aid out of charity reasons, rather than from moral motives. Most citizens of the affluent countries also put the full responsibility on their government and institutions. It is true that governments can easily get more things done, because of their legitimacy and international influence. Nevertheless, individual citizens can do more than they expect in terms of global poverty. They have the moral obligation to take their responsibility and to remove their ignorance as much as possible in order to know better and prevent more or in any case reduce the contribution to global poverty nowadays.
Second, what is ignorance? This contested phenomenon has been discussed by scholars in terms of questions about moral responsibility. Kate Johnson (2014) describes ignorance as: ‘’a lack or gap of knowledge, information, or relevant beliefs’’ (p. 1). Ignorance puts more weight on our decisions then we ought to believe. It constructs what we know, what we do not know or more important, what we do not want to know. Hence, according to Johnson: ‘’the occurrence of ignorance and its impact on moral practice has largely been treated in classical and contemporary literature as an excusing condition for moral responsibility’’ (Ibidem). For one, there is in the real world no law or governments that requires sanctions for ignorance. In other words: one cannot be punished for wrongdoing while being ignorant. Generally, if an agent fails to possess knowledge or beliefs relevant to his acting, we tend to excuse him on the grounds that his ignorance (in some way) mitigates his responsibility for acting. So it is generally assumed that if we had known better, we wouldn’t have committed a wrongdoing (Sher, 2009: 55-59), but we would have done the right thing. Therefore
2 The Millennium Development Goals (United Nations) are the most ambitious attempt to reduce global
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questions about ignorance must concern moral questions. The problem with ignorance in our contemporary time is the fact that a lot of the information about the contribution to global poverty is just there. And in some cases we have to do research to obtain information. Nowadays we have a lot of access to a lot of information sources. The example of slavery in prawn trade, which I will refer as case 1, can illustrate this point. Recently a six-month Guardian investigation has shown that there exists a trace between prawn products sold by the United States and European retailers and violent slave labor. The investigation established that the Thailand-based Charoen Pokphand (CP) Foods, world's largest prawn farmer, have been buying fishmeal (to feed it to its farmed prawns) from several suppliers that operate, own or buy from fishing boats manned by slaves (Smithers, 2014). Therefore, the Marine Conservation Society, an adviser for consumers on fish to eat and fish to avoid on ethical grounds, urged consumers to try to find out by doing research, before buying, whether supermarkets were engaged with improvement projects in Thailand or the rest of south-east Asia. As a reaction to this investigation, a spokeswoman for the charity Compassion in World Farming also believes consumers should take the advice of the Environmental Justice Foundation, that means; ask retailers about their supply chain. Finally, the revelations of slavery in the prawn supply chain are a wake-up call for consumers, according to environmental campaigners and human rights groups (Ibidem). From now on, consumers should know better. The above is a clear example of the duty to know I will defend. In this case one can, for instance, argue that agents, who keep buying prawns from Charoen Pokphand Foods, even in a state of ignorance, are blameworthy for contributing to slavery (conditions). The information is just there and not informing yourself (assuming that you are not excused in any other way) is in this case purely a lack of moral responsibility. But when is someone to blame for causing harm while being ignorant and when can he or she be excused for the same? Concerning the issue of global poverty, someone would be blameworthy if he directly or indirectly contributed to it by acting in certain ways. However, the same situation becomes more disputable if we add the ‘ignorant’ part in it. Cause if someone’s (an agent) acting resulted in wrongdoing to other(s), while this agent had a lack of knowledge, information, or relevant beliefs, is this agent then still blameworthy? The following overall question may rise: Is agent A blameworthy for causing harm to agent B (C, D and so on), even if agent A was in a state of ignorance? I will argue that he is. By using causing harm, I mean contributing to global poverty. Furthermore I
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will argue in this paper that we have a duty to know whether and how we contribute to global poverty nowadays. In part II, I will investigate if we actually contribute to global poverty and clarify the link to our duty to know. Furthermore, In part III, I will discuss under which conditions we should know better and when it is morally permissible to be ignorant. In Part IV, I will deal with several objections against these same conditions. It must be clear that due to space constraints, I will only discuss a duty to know in relation to the contribution to global poverty, and I will not tackle other international questions where ignorance is also employed as an excusing condition. Also, it is important to notify that I will largely focus on the ‘why’ we should have a morally duty to know, not so much on the implementation of this duty to know (the ‘how’). Finally, in part V, I will conclude by briefly highlighting the main points of this paper.
Part II: Contribution.
When do we contribute to bad things that happen across the borders to other people? ‘’One widely held view is that we are responsible for addressing or preventing acute deprivations insofar as we have contributed to them or are contributing to bringing them about’’ (Barry, 2005: 210). This refers to the ‘contribution principle’. It is however far more difficult in the real world to examine this contribution principle, cause behavioral actions cannot always be determine as complete causality, especially when three or more agents are involved. Therefore I will follow Christian Barry’s argument when it comes to examine the contribution principle and address ‘’whether and to what extents different individual and collective agents (a person, a development bank, or a national government, and so on) have contributed to acute deprivations’’ (Idem, p. 211). In other words, whether and to what extents different individual and collective agents (a person, a development bank, or a national government, and so on) have contributed to global poverty. I will assume, like Barry, that:
‘’Agent A contributes to Agent B’s deprivation if and only if: (a) A’s conduct was causally relevant to it; (b) A’s conduct did not merely allow a causal sequence that had antecedently put B under threat of acute deprivation to play out, but rather initiated, facilitated, or sustained it’’ (2005: 211).
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In many theoretical cases it is not difficult to determine whether or not Agent A has contributed to Agent B’s deprivation. For instance, one can easily determine the contribution principle when the contribution from agent A to B was directly. However, this is far more difficult in real life cases. The case of contribution to global poverty is a case, where it is not always clear how acute deprivations are caused. How do (or not) the agents of the developed countries contribute to deprivations of the poorest countries in the world? According to Jan Wieland, ‘’it might well be that our clothing, coffee, smartphones, etc. are made by people who work in slavery-like conditions’’ (2014: 2) all over the world. Given the much information on the above, one might expect that we know these facts or that we are at least aware of these facts. One cannot simply deny that we have the news channels, the newspapers, the internet etc. to inform ourselves. Information is in our time is always there and everywhere, especially with the prosperous development of social media. This lead subsequently to a duty to know. But this ‘duty’ to inform ourselves is not and cannot be an obligation, for example, required by the law or any government. This is almost impracticable in the real world. It is rather quite simple; if we have a duty to inform ourselves, then we have to inform ourselves for moral reasons’ (Ibidem) or like Gideon Rosen describes it:
‘’We are under an array of standing obligations to inform ourselves about matters relevant to the moral permissibility of our conduct: to look around, to reflect, to seek advice, and so on’’ (2003: 63).
Hence that we have to inform ourselves because if we do not (and we have no further excuses), then we are blameworthy if we fail to do the right thing (Wieland, 2014: 2). This can be illustrate by the following case3: if you feed meat to someone, you have to pay
attention to the expiry date because if you do not (and no one lies about it to you, or you are not excused in any other way), then you are blameworthy if you cause her harm. Paying attention (and informing yourself generally) is required for avoiding blame. In this case, which I will refer as case 2, you are blameworthy for causing harm, even if you were in a state of ignorance. However the caused harm in case 2 can be relatively small in comparison with our topic: poverty. One could argue that if the contribution results in higher deprivations, is it then more necessary to inform yourself, thereby justifying a duty know. I
3 This case is similar to the example Jan Willem Wieland gives in his paper ‘We should know better’ (2014)
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will discuss this point further on in part III. But first, by the following analysis of contribution by Thomas Pogge, Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, it will be illustrated how agents of the affluent countries have contributed and still are contributing to global poverty.
According to Pogge, we, agents of the affluent countries have gained our present levels of social, economic and cultural development by a process of humanitarians crimes as enslavement, colonialism and imperialism in the past. As result of these crimes, a legacy is left of great inequalities between the First World and the Third World (Pogge, 2007: 191). Pogge discuss that this injustice of morality could only exist by the causal role the wealthy citizens have played in it. Citizens of the rich countries are partly responsible for the extreme global poverty, because those same citizens of the affluent countries elected governments and institutions who have designed the current unfair global economic structure. Pogge argues that there are various treaties, conditions and conventions about trade, investments, labor standards and so on. All these treaties, conditions and conventions are set out in an regulated international economic system. There are many different ways how such rules can be shaped in particular to have more or less advantages for several affected parties such as the poor or the rich countries. The conclusion is that much of the great poverty would not have occurred, if these rules had been shaped to be more advantageous to the poor societies (Idem, p. 192). Furthermore, Pogge adds that rich countries and the elite in poor countries appropriates too much of the natural resources. This simply means that many affluent countries have exploited, now and then, the local citizens by using their natural resources only for their (the rich countries) own profit. Moreover, the elites in poor countries use the natural resources as their own properties (Ibidem). Instead of investing the profit in, for instance, education, infrastructure or wealth, they retain the money in their own pocket. Finally, Pogge tries to elaborate two different ways of looking at social reality by making a sharp distinction between institutional moral cosmopolitanism and interactional cosmopolitanism. He argues that when we primarily see social phenomena and problems as a result of the behavior between individuals and groups, we will tend to look at causally responsibility for the interactions that underlie. This can be described as an interactional perspective on our social and interactional analysis of the moral problems, that occurs. Though, when we tend not to see such phenomena as the result of interactions
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between individuals and groups, but as the operation of national or international structures, institutions, the economic system and the political system, then we are dealing with an institutional perspective and an institutional moral analysis (Pogge, 2002), as Pogge describes:
‘’If the global economic order plays a major role in the persistence of severe poverty worldwide and if our governments, acting in our name, are prominently involved in shaping and upholding this order, then the deprivation of the distant needy may well engage not merely positive duties to assist but also more stringent negative duties not to harm’’ (2007: 194).
If we take a closer look on the analysis of affluent agents’ contribution to worldwide poverty according to Pogge and assuming that he is right, it is important to discuss further the causes of the current persistence existence of severe poverty. He argues that this severe poverty is by no means exclusively domestic to the countries in which it occurs as other scholars, such as John Rawls, argue (Pogge, 2007: 191). To use an example of Pogge himself inherent on the above: suppose you are a teacher and there is a great difference between the grades of your students. It is easy to conclude that this difference is caused only by factors related to your students (domestic factors). But it is rather obvious to conclude that their results depend on other external (global) factors, such as your teaching, the environment, the influence of other students and so on (Pogge, 2004: 391). This example is a parallel of the relationship between the rich and the poor countries. The main point made by Pogge here is that poor countries are too dependent of the rich countries (independency construct by the historical cruelties of the wealthy countries). The opportunities of free trade the poor received from the rich countries do surely not come without cost. Poor countries must spend a lot of money on maintaining the intellectual property rights of the rich to acquire these opportunities of free trade. In order to do so, they (poor countries) have to deprive the access of their own populations to necessary goods, such as health care. This asymmetric relation in the current global economic system allows the rich countries and their companies to benefit through tariffs, export credits, huge subsidies and so on (Pogge, 2007).
It is well known that many developing countries are ruled by corrupt and incompetent governments and institutions. However, like the example of the teacher and the performances of his students, their governs abilities
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(domestic factors), often at disadvantages of the interests and desires of their own population, crucially depends on outside (global) factors. Global factors that are constructed by the governments and institutions of the First World. It depends, for instance, on loans and debts. When bad rulers of the poor countries need money to obtain their power, by buying weapons for example, they can count on certain affluent countries. By giving loans the well-off countries support their banks and secure their resource imports. But they also contribute to the staying power of oppressive governments and the incentives toward coup attempts and civil wars. Generally, corruption, vicious leadership and civil wars in the developing countries are not entirely domestic formed, but greatly strengthened by the existing international system and the extreme inequalities between the rich and the poor
(Ibidem). Another
phenomenon, related to global poverty is globalization. This process of the world becoming ‘one global village’ through the prosperous development of information sources, infrastructure and trade, has played and still plays a huge role in the contribution to global poverty. Globalization is often defined as a game of winners and losers. And during this game, the winners keep on winning and the losers keep on losing. Or in other words, the gap between the benefits of the winners and the losers becomes bigger.
Therefore, according to Joseph Stiglitz, the rich countries have appropriate globalization, by using institutions as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO) to act in the interests of all countries. However, these institutions represent rather the commercial and financial interests of the affluent countries than the economic interest of the poor countries. The governments of the rich countries and the IMF have encouraged developing countries to open their borders for international trade. But at the same time they continued to protect their own farmers and textile workers from the cheap products that poor countries produce (Stiglitz, 2002). It is a paradoxical decision, on the one hand, rich countries promise a fair chance in the free international market, simultaneously they develop policies that favor them in this same ‘free’ international market. Here Stiglitz shares his thoughts with Pogge. Stiglitz admits that globalization has helped more than hundreds of millions of people. These people have had the opportunity to reach higher standards of living, beyond what everybody thought was almost impossible. Especially those people in the wealthy countries, but also those in developing countries (Stiglitz, 2002: 4-5), such as the Asian Tigers (South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong
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Kong). During the past decade, since 1990, however, something has gone terribly wrong. The number of people being poor (living on less than 2,50 dollars a day), has increased to more than three billion. And even relatively successful parts of the developing world, such as Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, have fallen into unparalleled setbacks (Idem, p. 248), Stiglitz states:
‘’Globalization today is not working for many of the world’s poor. It is not working for much of the environment. It is not working for the stability of the global economy’’ (2002: 214).
Finally, Amartya Sen also provides an analysis of globalization in his paper ‘How to judge
globalism?’ (2002). Sen actually does not see globalization strictly as a bad process, created
by the well-off agents. He argues that globalization is an process the whole world can profit from. Even if globalization represents Western influence, it belongs to the everyone (Sen, 2002: 2-3). Consequently, although Sen does not see globalization purely as a Western idea, he admits that globalism is determined by Western institutional arrangements. The inequity in the overall balance of these institutional arrangements produces then very unequal sharing of the benefits of globalization (Idem, p. 8). So, according to Sen, the injustices (around global poverty) that arise in the world are characterized by the institutional arrangements, mainly formed by the affluent states. Other scholars have argued that globalization is not unfair to the poor, cause they profit too. However Sen argues that the question should not just be whether the poor also profit from globalization, but whether they receive a fair share and a fair opportunity. Therefore, Sen concludes that ‘’there is an urgent need for reforming institutional arrangements in order to overcome both the errors of omission and those of commission that tend to give the poor across the world such limited opportunities’’ (Ibidem). The earlier definition of contribution I used in this paper from Barry’s analysis of the contribution principle is that ‘’Agent A contributes to Agent B’s deprivation if and only if: (a) A’s conduct was causally relevant to it; (b) A’s conduct did not merely allow a causal sequence that had antecedently put B under threat of acute deprivation to play out, but rather initiated, facilitated, or sustained it’’ (Barry, 2005: 211). The above examination of contribution to global poverty by Pogge, Stiglitz and Sen has shown that we, agents of the affluent countries (countries, institutions, citizens, banks and so on) have contributed and still are contributing to global poverty. So, although it may be
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true that according to the contribution principle, well-off agents would lack moral reasons to address acute deprivations, there should be crucial evidence to the fact that they have not contributed to them. Yet, the latter is false, since there is crucial evidence that affluent agents of the wealthy countries have contributed to acute deprivation whether through unfair economic systems, by developing the policies of international commercial institutions in their own favor or via other resources (Barry, 2005: 225), like described by Pogge, Stiglitz and Sen.
Part III: Conditions.
Before I will deal with part III, let me briefly summarize what I have discussed so far. I started with the question: Is agent A blameworthy for causing harm to agent B (C, D and so on), even if agent A was in a state of ignorance? First, I investigated if we, agents of the affluent countries actually do contribute to global poverty nowadays. I used then the examination of Barry’s contribution principle and assuming scholars as Pogge, Stiglitz and Sen are right about our contribution to global poverty, I followed their analysis in order to demonstrate that we (again agents of the affluent countries) have contributed and are in fact still contributing to global poverty. But now the question arises if we are blameworthy for this contribution if we do not know if our actions lead to this same contribution. In other words: are we still blameworthy if we act in a state of ignorance? I will first illustrate the latter with an example, which I shall refer as case 3: suppose agent A supports organization B, who gives development aid to several poor countries. Assuming that his money is spend well by organization B, agent A gives every month a standard amount of his salary to organization B. In fact, organization B is a criminal organization and retains every euro to themselves. Nobody, in the poor countries (where the money is supposed to be) ever sees the support of agent A. As a result of this unfortunate circumstances, they are harmed. Although agent A is in fact having the right intention here by supporting the poor through development aid and does not know that his money is transferred to some maleficent organization (and no one has lied about it or agent A is in no other way excused), one might argue that still, he is blameworthy for contributing to global poverty. Not by directly contributing to it, cause agent A’s conduct did not merely allow a causal sequence that had antecedently put B under threat of acute deprivation to play out, but rather initiated, facilitated, or sustained it. Agent A clearly should have informed himself better, then he would obviously have done the right
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thing. I will now discuss under which circumstances (conditions) we should know better and when we are excused for acting while being ignorant. However these conditions wherein an agent should and have a duty to know are not so clear as one might expect. Still, I will try to delineate these conditions when it is morally permissible not to know and when it is not. On what could these conditions depend? We may think of four main concepts: a blocker, the threshold, stakes and salience. I will discuss these concepts, starting with a blocker, and apply them later in real life cases to explain my argument.
First, I will use Alexander Guerrero’s terminology of a blocker. What is a blocker? ‘’A blocker is a piece of evidence, x is a blocker of an action y if x undermines the proposition that y is permissible’’ (Guerrero, 2007: 73). Guerrero tries to illustrate this definition with the following example: ‘’evidence that there is someone in the abandoned house is a blocker for demolishing it’’ (Ibidem). To gather such blockers is to inform yourself, and to get rid of your ignorance (Wieland, 2014: 3). The question should be then: when are you blameworthy for not gathering enough blockers to inform yourself? Let us think about case 2 again, the example of feeding meat to someone else: suppose you feed meat to someone while the date has expired and you did not pay attention. Are you to be blamed for not paying attention? That depends on further details of the case (Idem, p: 4). Were blockers available to you? Were the costs for you low? Did you believe there was a lot at stake and hence that you should pay attention? Or did you have to find the information by coincidence? These are the four main factors on which blameworthiness for not gathering blockers should depend on.4 So, evidence that can lead to a blocker or blockers for an
action, can be seen as a first condition: you have a duty to know when the evidence is there and available to you. Second, how to determine the threshold? Here threshold must be understand as a line determining the limits of acting. We may look again at the earlier discussed case 3, where agent A supports organization B, who gives development aid to several poor countries. In reality organization B is a bad organization and they retain all the money to themselves. Assuming agent A is having the right intention, agent A is ignorant of this fact (no one has lied about it or agent A is in no other way excused) and continues sending a certain amount of his salary each month to the same
4 I need to add that this first condition, availability, is mainly meant for the common person. It is obvious that
scholars and other academics are more informed (easier access to information resources) in comparison with the average citizen.
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organization. I have argued that agent A is blameworthy for not directly contributing to global poverty, but rather initiating, facilitating, or sustaining it. But what are actually the boundaries for informing oneself? How far do they reach? When have you done enough to inform yourself? In other words, what is the threshold for knowing better and removing your ignorance? This threshold depends on the cost you might make to inform yourself. Regarding case 3, you might have to do research on the organization, before sending each month a certain amount, especially when the evidence is there. Finding out that this organization is not legit, should be a blocker for transferring money to it. Assuming that you could do the research at home behind your computer desk, without leaving the country you live in, it is then morally required to know what this organization is about. However, if informing yourself about this organization brings higher cost5 with it, then you can actually afford, then you are morally excused from the duty to know. For instance, if you have to leave your country, only to gather information about this maleficent organization, you should not give aid. This can be interpreted as the principle of ‘Don’t know, Don’t act’. The latter refers to the principle of ‘Don’t know, Don’t kill’, discuss by Guerrero. He argues that ‘’whenever one acts in a morally reckless way, knowing that one doesn’t know whether what one does kills something with significant moral status, one does something morally blameworthy’’ (Guerrero, 2007: 96). So, when the costs to inform yourself are not higher then you can actually afford, can be seen as a second condition: you have a duty to know when you can afford the resources you need to do your research.
Third, it is important to think about the stakes, cause what is the difference in informing yourself before you act when there is a lot at stake and when there is not so much at stake? I argue that in both situations you should have a duty to know, but there is a slightly difference between the situations in terms of the urgency regarding the duty to inform yourself. In fact, the stakes are quite simple; when the wrongdoing harms (a lot of people), the stakes of a certain action causing that wrongdoing are high (Wieland, 2014: 6). To illustrate the latter, again case 1, where a Guardian investigation has proved that there exists a trace between prawn products sold by the United States and European retailers and violent slave labor and that The Thailand-based Charoen Pokphand (CP) Foods, world's largest prawn farmer, have been buying fishmeal, that has been produced by suppliers operating from fishing boats manned by slaves (Smithers, 2014). As a result of this
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fact, The Marine Conservation Society advises consumers encouraged consumers to try to know, before buying. In this case the stakes are straightforward: the stakes of buying the prawns are high, because they are made in slavery-like conditions. Case 1 is a good example off high negative moral stakes. The contrary would be high positive moral stakes: a certain action benefits a lot of people (Wieland, 2014: 6). I will be focusing on high negative moral stakes, cause I discuss the blameworthiness of certain actions in relation to global poverty. Furthermore, the stakes are meant to be objective; it is about causing factual harm in the outside world and not about the harm you believe to cause. The stakes can also be understood as things being gained or lost, but not as things being risked. Stakes include the kind of obligations that are altered when the moral stakes are higher. These obligations become then urgent. Finally, stakes depend on costs; one can imagine that normally the costs will be higher if there is a lot at stake. But this might not always be the case. In certain cases, the costs to inform yourself could be low, just because there is a lot at stake or vice versa6. So, when there is something at stake, depending on your acting, can be seen as a third condition: the conclusion is that you have morally a more urged duty to inform yourself when the stakes are high. Fourth, what about salience? I will illustrate this concept through the following examples (case 4 and case 5): imagine you have been on vacation for a long time and you return satisfied to your home. Then there lies in the corner an envelope for you with the text: ‘Open, before you enter’. You are in no way obliged to open this letter. It is simply not morally required to do so. So you do not and while you open the front door of your house, it explodes entirely. It turns out later that there were some people in your house. It also turns out that the envelope, if you had opened, read: ‘’Do not open the door, cause if you do, your house will explode and people will die in it. Just call for help. Anonymous’’7. Or, imagine another situation (case 5), you work at a company and
you are on your way to your office. Meanwhile a kidnapper has hijacked the company and is now holding a victim in your workplace. The kidnapper says he will shoot the victim if someone enters the office. Ignorant of this fact (and no one has told you or lied about it to
6 This is related to the first condition: availability. For instance, when the stakes are high (like the case of
contribution to global poverty), the information is just there and available. That means that to inform yourself, you might use recourses you can actually afford.
7 This case was discussed during Jan Willem Wieland seminar on responsibility and the epistemic dimension at
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you), you enter your office and the kidnapper shoots the victim8. Still, one can argue here that you are blameless in this case for the harm that has been done. In fact, you contributed to it, however you were not morally required to gather the information. In the first example (case 4), the envelope is the most important (salient) piece of evidence to inform yourself before opening the door. In the second example (case 5) you have to find information about the kidnapper holding someone in your office by accident (if no one tells you of lies about it). If we do not take this salience problem into an account, it might be problematic to defend why it should be morally required to gather information by coincidence. You are therefore blameless, if you have not to find the evidence by coincidence (even when it is the salient evidence) to inform yourself. The latter can be seen as a fourth condition: you have a duty to know when you do not have to find the evidence to inform yourself by accident.
Part IV: Objections.
Before I tackle down objections against the conditions, as discussed above, I will first briefly deal with an objection against the moral significance of contribution. Gerhard Overland states: ‘If it is true that contribution should carry no weight when assessing our duty to assist people in severe need if we can do so at little cost, we have reason to suspect that it is redundant to know whether or not we have in fact contributed to the need of the global poor when assessing our duty to address global poverty’ (2005: 299).
I argue that it is essential to know whether or not we have in fact contributed to global poverty, cause contribution is relevant with regard to certain aspects, such as questions of blame. Blameworthiness depends on contribution. How can an agent otherwise be blamed for problems he or she has not contributed, or is not contributing, to bring them about? And in knowing whether or not we have contributed, lies the crux of moral responsibility. Without examination whether we contributed or not, one can hardly defend a duty to know. It is true that Overland examination of the moral significance of contribution focus more on the duty to assist people in severe need, but it is necessary to point out here that in order to defend a duty to know, the moral significance of contribution does certainly matter. A first objection against the duty to know might rely on the availability of information. One can argue that the availability of information is
8 This case was also discussed during Jan Willem Wieland seminar on responsibility and the epistemic
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not always clear for the common person. The argument for this view is that although we have much information resources at our disposal, we are still dependent on other (influent) persons. Also, a lot information about things that matter can be incomplete, other parts can be retained by governments, institutions, international organization and so on. The point made here is that not all the information the common person has access to, is transparent. How then can we expect to know as much as possible? A rebuttal to this objection would be that it is true that not all the information is available or transparent, but most of the information, about our contribution to global poverty, is. Many scholars have written about it. It is well known what global poverty is and what the main causes are for this vicious phenomenon. In my view, it is then a lack of moral responsibility9 not to remove your ignorance. And even if not all the information about our contribution to poverty is transparent, is it still no reason to do nothing at all. There are a lot of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s), where the common person could lobby for more transparency of relevant information.10 The question is, in the end, not so much about the availability of information, but about the willingness of the common person to fully use the availability of information that is already there. A second objection could be about the costs. What is holding people back to know better, when the information is just there? One might argue that informing yourself not only costs a lot of money (because not all information is easily available, according to the common person), but also a lot of effort and time. And following from that; why spend a lot of money, effort or time, when you expect that the results will be disappointing. Let us think about case 3 again, where agent A supports organization B, who gives development aid to several poor countries. In reality organization B is a bad organization and they retain all the money to themselves. Assuming agent A is having the right intention, agent A is ignorant of this fact (no one has lied about it or agent A is no other way excused) and continues sending a certain amount of his salary each month to the same organization. Let us change this case a bit; imagine agent A does not want to support organization B, who gives development aid to several poor countries, because he believes that his money will not be well spent. In reality organization B is a fair organization, who fully use the donations for the development of the poor countries.
9 When no one lies about it to you, or you are not excused in any other way.
10 I agree that trying to achieve such things (transparency of information) on your own, can be very difficult, but
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Agent A, ignorant of this fact, decides not to give. Again, what is holding agent A back not to investigate whether this organization is legit or not? What is holding agent A back from removing his ignorance and taking his moral responsibility? This example shows that a duty to know also works the other way around. Having the right intention(s), but causing wrongdoing does not excuse you from a duty to know and having false believes and doing nothing at all, does not excuse as well. On the other hand, if informing yourself about such matters as our contribution to global poverty, takes more costs then you can afford, like leaving your country to do research abroad, you are excused.11 What about an objection against the third condition? I think we can all agree that when it comes to global poverty, we know what is at stake: a lot. We are aware of the horrible consequences of poverty. One third objection can be about the condition of stakes. The reasoning could be that there is already a lot at stake, so what can I achieve as one person? I better remain in a state of ignorance or ignore the things I already know. Moreover, others will act. The following example can clarify the latter; image six people and one kid are standing by a lake. Suddenly the kid falls into the water and he cannot swim. The incident is clear, but who is going to save the child? If everybody thinks the other will act, the kid will drown. This example is similar with the idea of ‘what can I achieve as one person and others will act’ But still, this clearly does not remove your moral responsibility from a duty to know. The problem with the idea of what can I achieve as one person if so much harm already is been done, is that a lot of persons agree on this idea and that at the end, nothing is done at all. However, this not excuses you from informing yourself about your contribution to poverty nowadays. If we take blameworthiness into an account, high stakes cases are essential. Therefore, the importance as a general or widespread excusing condition of believing that you possibly cannot achieve anything, because the stakes are already high would be minimal, given how few people can actually claim non-culpable on moral ignorance in high-stakes cases (Guerrero, 2007: 95), such as the contribution to global poverty. In low-stakes cases, one might argue that there is not much at stake, so why inform myself? The wrongdoing that I initiate, facilitate or sustain, is low. But even in low-stakes cases you have a duty to know, because a duty to know eventually strives to minimize the wrongdoing, caused by acting from ignorance. One last objection might be about the condition of salience. One can argue that a lot of information about contribution to
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global poverty has to be found by accident or coincidence. The latter is simply not always true. Let us think about case 1 again, where a Guardian investigation has proved that there exists a trace between prawn products sold by the United States and European retailers and violent slave labor and The Thailand-based Charoen Pokphand (CP) Foods have been buying fishmeal, that has been produced by suppliers operating from fishing boats manned by slaves (Smithers, 2014). This case is a clear example of the information just being there, no accident, no coincidence. In this case one does not have to research by himself, the research has already been done. Imagine now that agent A, ignorant of this fact, still buys the prawns. The verdict: agent A is blameworthy for contribution to poverty (slavery conditions); Why? first, the information is available (on the internet, the newspaper, social media and so on), second, the costs for informing her of himself are low for agent A (agent A does not have to do research by him or herself), third, the stakes of buying the prawns are high, because they are made in slavery-like conditions and fourth, the information does not have to be found by accident. In other words: in this case agent A complies with the four conditions and (let us assume that agent A is not excused in any other way and no one has lied about the information) is therefore blameworthy for initiating, facilitating or sustaining the slavery like conditions, wherein the prawns are produced.
Finally, I want to recall Alexander Guerrero’s principle Don’t Know, Don’t Kill (DKDK) one more time. So, DKDK implies that it is not morally permissible for someone to kill an organism or to have it killed (if the person does not know the moral significance moral status of that organism), only if she believes that there is something of substantial moral significance to do otherwise (2007: 78-79). Related to this principle I used the principle Don’t Know, Don’t Act (DKDA), which implies that if informing yourself about your contribution to poverty brings higher costs with it, then you can actually afford, you are then morally excused from acting. For instance, if you have to leave your country, only to gather information about the organization you are giving aid money to, you should not give aid. This interpreted principle DKDA is an argument against an objection of the form: some information is almost impossible to gather for the common person. So, if and only if gathering information is almost impossible, is it better not to act, then act and justifying afterwards that you could not have known better. Actually, you can always know better.
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Conclusion
.Do we have a duty to know concerning our contribution to global poverty? Global poverty is probably the biggest and toughest problem mankind has to deal with. Over 3 billion people are living nowadays on less than 2,50 dollar a day, among them, thousands of children do not survive. Assuming that Thomas Pogge’s, Joseph Stiglitz’ and Amartya Sen’s analyses of contribution to global poverty are correct, I argued in this paper that we have a duty to know concerning our contribution to global poverty. Like Gideon Rosen describes it: ‘’We are under an array of standing obligations to inform ourselves about matters relevant to the moral permissibility of our conduct: to look around, to reflect, to seek advice, and so on’’ (2003: 63). The problem with ignorance in our contemporary time is the fact that the information is often just there. In cases where it is not, we can obtain information by doing some research. Ignorance puts more weight on our decisions then we ought to believe. It constructs what we know, what we do not know or more important, what we do not want to know. Therefore the appearance of ignorance has largely been treated by scholars as excusing condition for moral responsibility (Johnson, 2014: 1). It is generally assumed that if we had known better, we wouldn’t have committed a wrongdoing (Sher, 2009: 55-59), but we would have done the right thing.
To examine the contribution to global poverty I used Christian Barry’s analysis of the contribution principle that ‘’Agent A contributes to Agent B’s deprivation if and only if: (a) A’s conduct was causally relevant to it; (b) A’s conduct did not merely allow a causal sequence that had antecedently put B under threat of acute deprivation to play out, but rather initiated, facilitated, or sustained it’’ (Barry, 2005: 211). Subsequently analyses of contribution to global poverty by mainly Pogge, Stiglitz and Sen have shown that we, agents of the affluent countries (countries, institutions, citizens, banks and so on) have contributed and still are contributing to global poverty. Since there is crucial evidence that affluent agents of the wealthy countries have contributed to acute deprivation whether through unfair economic systems, by developing the policies of international commercial institutions in their own favor or via other resources, like described by Pogge, Stiglitz and Sen, well-off agents should not lack moral reasons to address acute deprivations, cause there is no crucial evidence to the fact that they have not contributed to them (Idem,
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knowing you do, are two different issues. For instance, if it is clear that you have contributed to some wrongdoing, and you are aware of this fact, the blame lies upon you. I argued that agent A is blameworthy for causing harm to agent B (C, D and so on), even if agent A was in a state of ignorance. I developed then four conditions under which this blameworthy could depend on. In other words; when should we know better and when it is morally permissible to be ignorant. The conclusion is that you have a duty to know when the evidence is there and available to you (1), when you have not to spent higher costs to inform yourself then you can actually afford (2), when something is at stake, you have morally a more urgent duty to know when the stakes are higher (3) and lastly, you have a duty to know when you do not have to find the evidence to inform yourself by accident (4).
Finally, to defend a principle like the duty to know, the moral significance of contribution does matter. Similar to Alexander Guerrero’s principle of Don’t Know, Don’t Kill, which generally implies that you should not kill an organism, if you do not know the moral significance of that same organism (2007: 78-79), the principle Don’t Know, Don’t Act implies that if informing yourself about your contribution to poverty is almost impossible, you are morally excused from the duty to know and you should not act. The duty to know is eventually about blameworthiness, but I honestly believe that defending this principle is in particular about reducing wrongdoing, improving outcomes and ameliorating justice.
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References
Barry, C. (2005). “Applying the Contribution Principle,” Metaphilosophy 36, pp. 210–27.
Coudouel, A., Hentschel, J.S. and Quentin T. Wodon (2002) Poverty Measurement and Analysis, PRSP Sourcebook, World Bank, Washington D.C.
Guerrero, A. A. (2007). Don’t Know, Don’t Kill: Moral Ignorance, Culpability, and Caution. Philosophical Studies 136: 59-97.
Johnson, K. (2014). Passive and Active Ignorance, Bellarmine University: pp. 1-11.
Øverland, G. (2005) “Poverty and the Moral Significance of Contribution” Journal of Moral Philosophy 2, pp. 299-315.
Pogge, Thomas (2002). World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms. Cambridge: Polity.
Pogge, Thomas (2004). ‘The First United Nations Development Goal: a cause for celebration’, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, vol. 5(3), pp. 337-397.
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Rebecca Smithers (2014), Slavery in prawn trade: consumers urged to check source of seafood. Marine
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Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/11/slavery-prawn-shoppers-boycott-unethical-seafood-greenpeace, last consulted on 16 June 2014.
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