I think that in the Jackie case it just seems totally obvious that Jackie should not be a magician. It seems obvious that one should sacrifice their career goals to save many lives. A few thought experiments to buttress this.
1) Suppose Jackie was on her way to get a dream magician job and came across drowning children who she could save. It seems she'd be required to save it. If we accept Singer's reasoning, there's not a difference between the two cases (proximity, for example, doesn't matter).
2) The following principle given by Singer is plausible: one should prevent very bad things from happening if they can do so without sacrificing anything of comparable moral value. But a nice job is not of comparative value with multiple lives.
3) If we're scalar utilitarians, we don't think that there are firm obligations. Thus, Jackie wouldn't be obligated to do it--she'd just have far stronger reasons to do it and be morally better if she does it. But that just seems plausible; of course Jackie has more reason to save multiple lives than to get a cushy magician job.
4) When we imagine it from the perspective of the victim, the non-demanding morality seems horrifyingly callous. Compare: morality requires you to give up your career to save multiple lives to morality requires you die along with your entire family, 6 friends, and 9 other people so that Jackie can achieve her aspirations to be a magician. The only reason utilitarianism seems to demanding is that is places demands on the wealthy and affluent few--but we'd expect the richest .1% globally to face significant moral demands if they can save literally hundreds of lives.
Not believing there are firm obligations might escape this but would result in a bullet bite in other cases. After all, it does seem like you're obligated to not rape. Not merely that it's better if you don't. It also doesn't seem as accurate to say I have more reason to, for example, kill myself to save 5 people compared to saying that it would be *super* virtuous if I did so.
I do like your objection to demandingness objection here though... even if I do ultimately think it's wrong for other reasons but I won't go into that now.
I think in the unlucky Lisa case, it's still plausible that one should spend at least a lot of time saving children--certainly until it starts to impose upon them significant financial costs. It additionally seems like whether one should save a child doesn't depend on how many previous children there are saved.
I'm inclined to think that there are obligations, but they're determined by our concepts and are not what matters. But I don't think rejecting the fundamental importance of obligations is very counterintuitive--lots of thick moral concepts like this don't exist but are close to things that do exist, so they can sound hard to deny but not actually be.
I agree that “it's still plausible that one should spend at least a lot of time saving children--certainly until it starts to impose upon them significant financial costs”
I think that in the Jackie case it just seems totally obvious that Jackie should not be a magician. It seems obvious that one should sacrifice their career goals to save many lives. A few thought experiments to buttress this.
1) Suppose Jackie was on her way to get a dream magician job and came across drowning children who she could save. It seems she'd be required to save it. If we accept Singer's reasoning, there's not a difference between the two cases (proximity, for example, doesn't matter).
2) The following principle given by Singer is plausible: one should prevent very bad things from happening if they can do so without sacrificing anything of comparable moral value. But a nice job is not of comparative value with multiple lives.
3) If we're scalar utilitarians, we don't think that there are firm obligations. Thus, Jackie wouldn't be obligated to do it--she'd just have far stronger reasons to do it and be morally better if she does it. But that just seems plausible; of course Jackie has more reason to save multiple lives than to get a cushy magician job.
4) When we imagine it from the perspective of the victim, the non-demanding morality seems horrifyingly callous. Compare: morality requires you to give up your career to save multiple lives to morality requires you die along with your entire family, 6 friends, and 9 other people so that Jackie can achieve her aspirations to be a magician. The only reason utilitarianism seems to demanding is that is places demands on the wealthy and affluent few--but we'd expect the richest .1% globally to face significant moral demands if they can save literally hundreds of lives.
I don't think Singer's reasoning follows: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24671242
Not believing there are firm obligations might escape this but would result in a bullet bite in other cases. After all, it does seem like you're obligated to not rape. Not merely that it's better if you don't. It also doesn't seem as accurate to say I have more reason to, for example, kill myself to save 5 people compared to saying that it would be *super* virtuous if I did so.
I do like your objection to demandingness objection here though... even if I do ultimately think it's wrong for other reasons but I won't go into that now.
I think in the unlucky Lisa case, it's still plausible that one should spend at least a lot of time saving children--certainly until it starts to impose upon them significant financial costs. It additionally seems like whether one should save a child doesn't depend on how many previous children there are saved.
I'm inclined to think that there are obligations, but they're determined by our concepts and are not what matters. But I don't think rejecting the fundamental importance of obligations is very counterintuitive--lots of thick moral concepts like this don't exist but are close to things that do exist, so they can sound hard to deny but not actually be.
I agree that “it's still plausible that one should spend at least a lot of time saving children--certainly until it starts to impose upon them significant financial costs”