MacAskills Strong Claim - Essay Example

 MacAskill’s Strong claim In his argument, MacAskill talks in favour of two claims, the weak claim and the strong claim. In the weak claim he claims that it is ethically preferable to pursue philanthropy through a higher earning but morally innocuous career than to pursue a career in the charity sector where one will be really compelled to give part of his or her earnings to charity and in this case he talked of four cases to support his claim, which involves uncertainty, discrepancy, fungibility and replaceability arguments. The four arguments not only show how one can make a difference through philanthropy than through charity and through these arguments we find that really one can make a difference which is much more great. Here he gives an example of Sophie, a graduate from a great university who has landed two jobs one from a charity and one from a philanthropy firm; she has to make a wise decision on the kind of work to take which is also considered morally acceptable in the society. In this claim there is typically no strong non consequentialists morals against pursuing a morally innocuous career. The rating of morally innocuous career in terms of ethical prefferability should be determined almost entirely by how great a difference one can make (William, 2013). The second claim which he favoured is the strong claim which involves the preferability of one to pursue philanthropy through a higher paid and morally controversial career than to pursue philanthropy through a lower paid morally innocuous career. In this strong claim he argued by giving some conditions in which the harm based or the integrity based reasons against pursuing a career that is typically morally controversial do not apply. In his arguments, MacAskill gave several views to support his argument for example the common sense view of ethical career which is largely defined by paradimn. MacAskill talks about a career in charity sector as central paradigm which includes the public sector and the private sector career choices. The argument is generally based on the charity sector as compared to the paradigm ethical careers, reasons why charity work is viewed as the most ethical career choice. This is therefore justified by the positive effect one has on the world and the community by pursuing such a career and also if the career can make a difference and if it can make the world a better place when it is pursued (William, 2013). Morally controversial careers can sometimes be very lucrative than morally innocuous career but very few people will wish to pursue such a career making their wages to be greatly high. These morally controversial careers differs from reprehensible careers and they includes careers such as working for a company involved in the arms industry, working for petrochemical company, some careers within the finance sector like the ones involved in the speculating on wheat thereby increasing price volatility and disrupting the livelihood of the global poor. Also there is the reprehensible career which includes working as a hit man, drug dealer or a child trafficker and the non-consequentialists tend to reason typically much stronger against this reprehensible career and for this reason they are considered typically illegal whereas the morally controversial careers are not. On pure consequentialists grounds it is most unlikely that a moral sensitive individual could actually bring themselves to pursue such a career and by doing so could impair their ability to influence others to also pursue philanthropy as a vocation and indeed risks sullying the whole idea. Two other non-consequentialist reasons against pursuing philanthropy through morally controversial careers are also considered; victim- cantered which is based on the idea that some careers involve harming others like a person who is working in a biochemical company which emits CO2 to the environment which thereby harms the general population; also there is the agent- cantered which is based on the idea that some careers a violation of the workers integrity as in the case of a person who get a job in a company dealing in the manufacture of chemical weapons. Under these two circumstances the reasons do not hold and therefore the two conditions are sufficiently common that strong claim is well supported (William, 2013). In harm based reasoning, MacAskill argues that one might think that the pursuit of philanthropy through a morally controversial career is analogous to the classic Transplant counterexample to consequentialism, in which one considers whether it is permissible to kill one person in order to transplant her organs and save the lives of five other people. In this case one has to act against the interest of one person to save five and this is not permissible by both the common sense view and the in consequentialism because of the harm inflicted on one person a morally controversial (William, 2013). He also argues that pursuing philanthropy through a morally controversial career is not like the Transplant case, this is generally because these lucrative but morally controversial careers are so competitive and for this reason so many people wants the jobs than there are the jobs and therefore if one decides not to pursue these careers then someone else will pursue on their behalf. In this case he gives an example where Sophies got this lucrative job to work in petrochemical company, the company emits a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere which greatly harms the general population, so would the fact that she would be working in that company which harms others through producing CO2 be the reason against her pursuing the career. This doesn’t because Sophie may have the necessary skills to reduce the amount of the harmful gases produced and for this reason she will be able to greatly save the general world’s population from the CO2 gases since its production shall have been reduced. Also if Sophie does not take the job someone else will take the job and he or she will not be able to reduce the amount of CO2 produced hence much CO2 produced in the environment harming most of the generation. Therefore, it would be perverse to claim that it is ethically preferable for Sophie to choose a morally innocuous career instead, if it is substantially less lucrative. The harm-based reason we are considering was a reason against morally controversial careers because of the effects of such careers on the worst off people in the world (William, 2013). But, if we were to ask those worst-off people what is in their interest for Sophie to do, and if they were sufficiently well-informed, then every one of them would ask for Sophie to take the job in the petrochemical industry. This consideration means that, in those cases in which one can ensure that one does no less harm that the person who would have been in one’s shoes, philanthropy through a morally controversial career is not analogous to the Transplant case. The trolley case involves where one has the option to switch the tracks of a runaway train, redirecting the threat from one train and saving five people who would have been run over by running over and killing one person. In this case it seems clear that it is ethically preferable to kill one to save five and this gives one a reason that overweighs the fact that you act to change who is harmed. The tactical bombing case involves a case in which can end a war early before many people are injured by destroying an ammunition factory thereby killing some civilians as an unintended side effect though the harm is small, the benefits are great. The two cases when related to the career we find that one should choose a career whose advantages to the general society overweighs the disadvantages and there will be a great service to humanity (William, 2013). MacAskill argues that it is better for one to be a hit man who is not considered morally right but pays more than going for a career which is morally controversial but less paid. When one takes a career of being a hit man he will cube doing a lot of service to the society in than he may be used to stop someone trying to bomb a particular place which may be lead to loss of lives. In this case people will prefer hit men because they shall prevented most children from being orphans, men without their wives and vice versa and also he or she shall have saved the country a good deal. Hit men also are paid a lot and therefore they will be able to contribute more to charity compared to morally controversial careers that get paid less and very little to contribute (William, 2013). References MacAskill, William. Replaceability, Career Choice, and Making a Difference. UK: Oxford University, 2013. Read More