Unger’s Living High & Letting Die, Ch. 2

Intuitively, we judge the Vintage Sedan case and the Envelope case differently. We think one agent acted quite wrongly and the other did not. For those that think these judgments are correct, there is a puzzle: What explains why the one is wrong and the other not? After you read these cases, try to think why you think one is wrong and the other not (assuming that’s what you think).

Unger instead thinks that one of these intuitive judgments is incorrect because both agents acted wrongly. The challenge for Unger, then, is to explain why we think that the person who doesn’t send off a check to UNICEF is not wrong when she in fact is wrong. What is Unger’s explanation?

In each of the sections from section 3 onwards in chapter two, Unger presents and then disputes one or more possible reasons for saying that the agent in the Vintage Sedan case acted wrongly but not the agent in the Envelope case. Do each of his arguments against these reasons satisfy you? Can you find any problems with his arguments?