Of Those Who Die From Avoidable, Poverty-related

If A Being Suffers There Can Be No Moral Justification For Refusing To Take That Suffering Into Consideration. No Matter What The Nature Of The Being, The Principle Of Equality Requires That Its Suffering Be Counted Equally With The Like Suffering - Insofar As Rough Comparisons Can Be Made - Of Any Other Being. So The Limit Of Sentience Is The Only Defensible Boundary Of Concern For The Interests Of Others. To Mark This Boundary By Some Other Characteristic Like Intelligence Or Rationality Would Be To Mark It In An Arbitrary Manner. Why Not Choose Some Other Characteristic, Like Skin Color?

Sometimes Animals May Suffer More Because Of Their More Limited Understanding. If, For Instance, We Are Taking Prisoners In Wartime We Can Explain To Them That Although They Must Submit To Capture, Search, And Confinement, They Will Not Otherwise Be Harmed And Will Be Set Free At The Conclusion Of Hostilities. If We Capture Wild Animals, However, We Cannot Explain That We Are Not Threatening Their Lives. A Wild Animal Cannot Distinguish An Attempt To Overpower And Confine From An Attempt To Kill; The One Causes As Much Terror As The Other.

The Core Of Ethics Runs Deep In Our Species And Is Common To Human Beings Everywhere. It Survives The Most Appalling Hardships And The Most Ruthless Attempts To Deprive Human Beings Of Their Humanity. Nevertheless, Some People Resist The Idea That His Core Has A Biological Basis Which We Have Inherited From Our Pre-human Ancestors.

If It Is In Our Power To Prevent Something Bad From Happening, Without Thereby Sacrificing Anything Of Comparable Moral Importance, We Ought, Morally, To Do It.

All The Particular Moral Judgments We Intuitively Make Are Likely To Derive From Discarded Religious Systems, From Warped Views Of Sex And Bodily Functions, Or From Customs Necessary For The Survival Of The Group In Social And Economic Circumstances That Now Lie In The Distant Past.