Dr Julian Koplin1, Ms Tessa Holzman1
1Monash University, , Australia
Biography:
Bios to come
Abstract:
It is possible to improve somebody's situation by providing options that they rationally prefer to the status quo, but that fall below what they are morally entitled to. Some impoverished people might rightly prefer to sell a kidney than remain impoverished. Others might prefer to utilise voluntary assisted dying programs than continue suffering from conditions for which treatment is unaffordable. Such options are beneficial. They are also unfair, insofar as genuine concern for the poor requires us to do more for the impoverished than to let them sell body parts or experience a comfortable death.
It is difficult to determine what role concern for the poor should play in debates regarding beneficial but unfair options. On the one hand, it seems perverse to offer unfair options out of concern for the poor where such concern should commit us to offering better options instead. On the other hand, it also seems perverse to block beneficial options due to concern for the wellbeing of the impoverished, since doing so only renders them worse off. On a hypothetical third hand (that we imagine reaching out from the centre of one’s chest), ignoring how such options affect the wellbeing of the poor seemingly neglects a morally significant consideration.
Having described this trilemma, we propose a solution: concern for the wellbeing of the poor should justify blocking beneficial but unfair options only in (perhaps rather rare) cases that these options would seriously undermine attempts to improve the situation of the poor by better means.