Frequent Rescues

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 6 explores a case in which opportunities to rescue nearby strangers arise very frequently. In this case, it seems one is not required to take every individual opportunity to help, even if one is required to take some. The chapter develops a view of requiring reasons and permitting reasons that explains this claim. According to this view, “lifetime” features can amplify (cost-based and autonomy-based) permitting reasons not to save strangers. The chapter then asks whether it can be permissible not to respond to a frequently occurring opportunity to help even when it would be wrong not to respond to an otherwise similar rarely occurring opportunity to help. It argues that, while frequency cannot itself make this kind of moral difference, considerations of cost and autonomy correlated with frequency can. Such considerations can make it permissible to rescue one near stranger rather than two distant strangers.