How Much for the Child?

Christian Barry*, Gerhard Øverland

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    12 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    In this paper we explore what sacrifices you are morally required to make to save a child who is about to die in front of you. It has been argued that you would have very demanding duties to save such a child (or any adult who is in similar circumstance through no fault of their own, for that matter), and some examples have been presented to make this claim seem intuitively correct. Against this, we argue that you do not in general have a moral requirement to bear more than moderate cost to save even a child who is just in front of you. Moreover, we explain why you have a much more demanding moral requirement in certain cases by appealing to the notions of undue risk and cost sharing.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)189-204
    Number of pages16
    JournalEthical Theory and Moral Practice
    Volume16
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Feb 2013

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