Consequentialism

The Singer Project:  

1. Go to https://live.givedirectly.org/ and make your phone background one of the pictures of a GiveDirectly recipient.

2. As you spend money throughout the week, write a note to that person explaining why you need to make that purchase instead of giving them money. You can keep these notes on your phone and either copy them into your journal or just print and paste screenshots.

3. At the end of the week, write a 1-2 page reflection in your journal. Engage with the readings, and discuss the moral reasons for your spending and how you balance your own interests against other people’s interests.  

Evidence 

·      Screenshot of your phone background or a note from JMF verifying the background.

·      Spending log with notes to recipient.

·      1-2 page reflection that engages with the readings and classes from week 2.

Choose one category of beings that you ordinarily notice very little or toward whom you have relatively weak moral concern. This might include elderly strangers, young children, people experiencing homelessness, sanitation workers, immigrants, people with severe disabilities, farm animals, wild animals, future people, or others. For three days, try to place members of that group at the center of your moral attention. Spend time observing, interacting, reading first-person accounts, volunteering, changing your purchasing decisions, or otherwise making their interests salient in your daily life. Reflect on whether your moral concern genuinely expanded or whether your attention simply shifted. Did other obligations become less important? Did your emotional responses change before your judgments did?

Evidence: Keep a daily journal with photos and links and observations, documenting at least one interaction or observation each day.

Try to avoid moral mistakes by going vegan for the week. Is it worth it? Additionally, try to minimize all the other small ways that you could potentially diminish total wellbeing. What did this involve? What were the psychological costs of paying attention to small risks and small effects? Is demandingness a valid objection to a moral theory? Should you count your own suffering as equally as significant as others?  

Evidence: Pictures of at least 10 vegan meals that you ate this week, and any other photographic evidence of your moral scrupulosity.

Choose an action that contributes to a threshold-based outcome (e.g., joining a petition, donating to a matching campaign, participating in a boycott, attending a meeting, voting, contributing to a group purchase, or helping with a collective project.) Before acting, determine whether your contribution is likely to be the one that crosses the threshold. Then participate anyway. Next, find other people who participated and ask them about their reasons. Reflect on whether it mattered that your contribution probably was not pivotal. Would the project succeed if everyone reasoned as you did? Does a tiny chance of being influential provide enough reason, or does the reason come from somewhere else?

Evidence: Include documentation of the collective effort, your contribution, conversations with other participants, and any available information about the threshold or total participation.

Check out the website 80,000 hours, then think about the lessons from Parfit’s discussion of moral mathematics. Then search for jobs that you are qualified to do or graduate programs that you would be qualified to apply for. Make a table with four columns and 16 rows. In the first column, make a list of 15 post-graduation plans. In the second column, write down the name of a company/position that is currently searching for that job. In the third column, rank each potential job on a scale of 1-15 in terms of how ethical you think it is/how much good you think it would do for the world. In the fourth column, rank each potential path on a scale of 1-15 in terms of how much you would want to do it. Choose the job that you find most appealing, all things considered, and write a brief cover letter for that job. In your response, explain your rankings and the considerations that made you choose the job you did. 

 Evidence:  Include a printout or screenshot of your spreadsheet and cover letter. 

Ask someone to present you with a series of six requests for help, beginning with something very easy and becoming gradually more costly. (e.g. going from "send a nice text" to "spend the weekend cleaning my apartment and applying for jobs on my behalf" The requests should not require your partner to manufacture a crisis or impose serious costs for the assignment. For each request, mark the point at which you believe helping becomes admirable but no longer required. Then do as many of the requests as you want to. Explain how you drew the line for requirement, praise, and what you would do. 

Evidence: Include the six requests, confirmation from your partner, your judgment about each one, and your explanation of the transition from required to optional.