I conceded at the outset that most of us believe that in letting people die we are not behaving as badly as if we were to kill them. I think I have given good reasons for concluding that this belief is false. Yet giving reasons is often not enough, even in philosophy. For if an intuition is strong enough, we may continue to rely on it and assume that something is wrong with the arguments opposing it, even though we are not sure exactly what is wrong. It is a familiar remark: 'X is more certain than any argument that might be given against it'. So in addition to the arguments, we need some account of why people have the allegedly mistaken intuition and why it is so persistent. Why do people believe so firmly that killing is so much worse than letting die, both in fictitious cases such as [Richard] Trammell's, and in the famine relief cases in the real world? In some ways the explanation of this is best left to the psychologists; the distinctly philosophical job is accomplished when the intuition is shown to be false. However, I shall hazard a hypothesis, since it shows how our intuitions can be explained without assuming that they are perceptions of the truth.
Human beings are to some degree altruistic, but they are also to a great degree selfish, and their attitudes on matters of conduct are largely determined by what is in their own interests, and what is in the interests of the few other people they especially care about. In terms of both the costs and the benefits, it is to their own advantage for people in the affluent countries to regard killing as worse than letting die. First, the costs of never killing anyone are not great: we can live very well without ever killing. But the cost of not allowing people to die, when we could save them, would be very great. For any one of us to take seriously a duty to save the starving would require that we give up our affluent life-styles; money could no longer be spent on luxuries while others starve. On the other side, we have much more to gain from a strict prohibition on killing than from a like prohibition on letting die. Since we are not in danger of starving, we will not suffer if people do not regard feeding the hungry as so important; but we would be threatened if people did not regard killing as very, very bad. So, both the costs and the benefits encourage us, selfishly, to view killing as worse than letting die. It is to our own advantage to believe this, and so we do.
(James Rachels, "Killing and Starving to Death," Philosophy 54 [April 1979]: 159-71, at 171 [italics in original; brackets added])
Note from KBJ: These are remarkable paragraphs. Most people (I suspect you're one of them) believe that, other things being equal, killing is worse than letting die. Rachels thinks that letting die is just as bad as killing. Rachels thinks he has reason on his side, so, since his opponents can't be brought to see this (the dolts!), he imputes bad motives to them. They're selfish! What Rachels doesn't realize is that two can play this stupid game. Here goes: Rachels's belief is patently false, so why does he hold it? He's envious! Rachels hates it that some people have more wealth than he does. He wants them to feel guilty about this in order to motivate them to give it away, so he makes it seem as though letting people die (for lack of resources) is just as bad as killing them. As for why Rachels is so envious, and why he takes such delight in imputing selfishness to the affluent, "the explanation . . . is best left to the psychologists."
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 