Arguing for assistance-based responsibilities: are intuitions enough?
Laura Valentini
LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library
Abstract:
Millions of people in our world are in need of assistance: from the global poor, to refugees, from the victims of natural disasters, to those of violent crimes. What are our responsibilities towards them? Christian Barry and Gerhard Øverland’s answer is plausible and straightforward: we have enforceable duties to assist others in need whenever we can do so ‘at relatively moderate cost to ourselves, and others’. Barry and Øverland defend this answer on the ground that it best fits our intuitions in a variety of hypothetical rescue scenarios. I argue that, although Barry and Øverland’s view is intuitively appealing, appeal to intuitive cases is insufficient to vindicate it satisfactorily. Intuitive cases alone do not allow us to establish: (i) what costs count as moderate and (ii) whether assistance-based responsibilities are, in fact, enforceable. These considerations suggest that Barry and Øverland’s defence of their preferred answer to the assistance question may be incomplete.
Keywords: assistance; justice; easy rescue; intuitions; reflective equilibrium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9 pages
Date: 2019-03-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Published in Ethics and Global Politics, 6, March, 2019, 12(1), pp. 24 - 32. ISSN: 1654-4951
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:100147
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