A Puzzle about the Demands of Morality

Two thought experiments are provided which elicit whatappear to be opposing judgments about the demands of morality.One Unger-inspired thought experiment suggests that a personmust give up four decades of earnings just to save a singlelife. The other evokes the contrary intuition that onedoesn't have to labor forty years without compensation inorder to prevent the death of an individual. However,considerations of consistency do not demand that weabandon one of our intuitive responses. This is becausethere is a morally significant difference between thetwo burdens that the people suffer in the respectivethought experiments. The difference is a result of humanpsychology being such that it is easier to bear theaftermath of an event that renders one's earlier effortsfutile than it is to suffer identical efforts goingunrewarded in the future. A conclusion that can bedrawn from this temporal asymmetry is that while moralityis not quite as demanding as Unger and many consequentialistsmaintain, it is much more demanding than many of their opponents realize.