Slote: Partiality and Morality

Michael Slote offers an alternative to Peter Singer’s principle which can be summarized as the following: an act is morally wrong if it exhibits a lack of fully-developed empathy, and it’s permissible otherwise. This can be simplified even further: an act is morally wrong if a person with fully-developed empathy wouldn’t take the same course of action (assuming a binary decision). Slote’s principle seems simple, but it is complicated by the inclusion of the words “fully-developed empathy”. To completely understand Slote’s principle one must define what exactly fully-developed empathy entails. In his essay “Famine Affluence and Empathy”, Slote states that “fully-developed empathy” refers to the upper limit of a normal human’s sense of empathy, a standard which most humans don’t ever reach. He asserts that partiality is an essential part of human empathy; he argues that “...an ethics based on empathy yields a partialist, rather than an impartialist, understanding of morality” (554). What he means by this, is that even if we fully develop our sense of empathy, natural human bias will still play a role in our decision-making. This bias affects our sense of morality to the extent that it will sometimes cause a person to make an immoral decision. The limitations of human psychology prevent one from being able to make impartial decisions in situations in which they are personally invested, such as when they have to decide between saving the life of a person they know or that of a total stranger.
I disagree with Slote’s principle, because it justifies valuing certain people over others, and doesn’t respect the moral equality of all humans. The first step in refuting Slote is providing an example in which Slote’s principle would tell us that an action is morally right, when it is in fact morally wrong. Imagine the following situation: Jim and his best friend work as guards in a prison. Some inmates started a fire and Jim’s friend got locked in a cell in the maximum security wing where the worst prisoners are held. Jim runs into the room to save him, and then realizes there are two inmates stuck in the cell next to his friend. The fire is growing, and he only has time to open one cell. Who should Jim save?
For the purposes of this example, we can assume that Jim is a normal man who has fully developed his sense of empathy. In this situation, our decision-maker is affected by the notion of moral partiality, which Slote believes exists in every human, including those with fully-developed empathy. The idea of partiality leads us to believe that Jim’s attachment to his friend would cause him to save his friend rather than the two inmates. This goes along with most people’s considered judgements regarding this situation, as the majority of people would also choose to save their friend over two unknown criminals. But, to fully justify Slote’s principle, an independent rationale that accords with our considered judgements must be provided.
Slote’s argument is as follows. Firstly, it assumes that we don’t believe in the notion of moral equality for all humans, since the acceptance of moral partiality means that we do not value all humans equally. Slote goes on to justify why it is morally correct for us to value the lives of certain people over the lives of others, but his justification for partiality is circular: it is okay for us to value certain people more than others, because they are more valuable to us. This is not a moral justification, rather it is more of an explanation of why we make decisions in the way we do. The real justification extends past our valuation of other people, but this premise is at best implied in Slote’s writing. If someone is important to us, we feel an obligation to take care of them. By extension, we feel bad when we are unable to properly care for them. Taking this into account, we feel worse failing to save someone we know compared with failing to save a random stranger. Now that an argument has been pieced together, it is possible to form an implicit independent rationale on Slote’s behalf. The implicit independent rationale behind this principle is as follows: it is morally right to prioritize saving those we know over those we don’t since it also preserves our own psychological well-being.
This independent rationale doesn’t accept the moral equality of all humans, and allows one to justify valuing one person’s life over that of another. However, one of the most basic moral intuitions is that all human lives are equally valuable and by extension, saving the greatest number human lives is the morally correct decision in a situation in which we are given the choice between saving two groups of people. Though your friend may be more important to you on a personal level, their life is less valuable than the lives of two other people. Slote tries to give a moral theory, but Slote’s ideas don’t accord with the basic principle of moral equality. Slote argues for self-preservation (maintaining well-being) rather than the preservation of morality.
According to Slote’s principle, saving the inmates is considered morally wrong, since it was not the course of action taken by the person with fully-developed empathy. We cannot assume that, just by virtue of taking a different course of action than someone with fully-developed empathy, that an act is morally wrong. Human empathy is limited by partiality, so even a person with fully-developed empathy will make biased decisions. However, the existence of this limitation doesn’t morally justify a biased decision. No human, even one who has realized their total empathetic potential, can be expected to make morally correct decisions all the time. However, Slote’s principle presupposes that an average human has the potential to reach a level of empathy at which they will make the morally correct decision in every situation. The inherent biases present in every person will cause even the most empathetic person to eventually make a decision that is morally wrong.
Now that I have explained why Jim’s choice to save his friend is morally wrong, I must illustrate why choosing to save the convicts is morally right. This decision is the option which respects the moral equality of all humans. As a species, we are born with many different strengths and talents, but these are not what gives a human worth as an individual. One wouldn’t say that a person is “better” than another person, merely because they are stronger, smarter, or faster. The rationale behind the idea of moral equality is as follows: all human lives are equally valuable since we share a common humanity. By a common humanity, I mean a common sense of empathy, a sense of compassion that we share for the other members of our species. Our sense of morality agrees with this rationale as we are inclined to value all members of the human race equally, not necessarily in terms of abilities or contribution, but in terms of equal worth as beings. This notion of moral equality is supported by the sentiments that many hold towards the physically handicapped and mentally ill; we don’t consider these people any less valuable as human beings, and we choose to hold them in the same regard as any other person. So, according to this principle every human life is equally valuable, regardless of the character or abilities of the human in question. By this logic, when one is made to choose between saving two groups of people they are morally obligated to save the group with more people, since this group is more valuable because it contains a greater number of human beings. Taking this into account, we can now say that it is morally right for Jim to save the two inmates over his friend, because two lives are always more valuable than one. Slote’s principle is true most of the time, but even a fully-empathetic person will make an immoral decision from time to time.