It’s not logical absurdity though, which is where the conclusion is impossible. It’s a practical absurdity, in the sense that most people in real life would never actually do it, even though it’s possible, and even though some people in history probably have done it before. (Hell, Jesus advocated it - “sell everything you own and give it to the poor”, etc. A lot of people have probably done just that in history).
You’re thinking along the right track, but you’d be able to save more lives by staying alive, continuing to earn money and giving 95% of it to Africa than you could by sending that extra 5% to Africa as well and then starving to death. Hence the “calculation” would be that you should spend some money on bare essentials for yourself.
I’m not saying I agree with that reasoning, and I don’t think anyone who thinks about it would ever agree either. But the fact is, these sorts of utilitarian moral calculations are instinctively how we all think about morality, and the OP’s argument just takes that to its extreme conclusion, which is why it feels so hard to refute and so frustrating.
For me there is an obvious error in each example given so far, and that is that there is an implied argument that we should all put all of our time, money and efforts into the most important problem in the world and not deal with anything else - other than mere survival, I suppose - until that problem is solved. Finding a cure for cancer would probably benefit from additional funds and researchers, but only to a point. There are only so many people who can contribute to research at that level, and even if we threw so much money at them that they were living like rock stars the research takes time. In the meantime homeless people are living on the streets.
I think for this discussion to be useful at this point, you need to explicitly define what you mean by a logical fallacy.
That isn’t the implied argument. As I said, utilitarian “moral calculations” aren’t just a case of finding the problem that’s causing the most suffering in the world and only spending money on that. It involves working out how you can get the right “bang for the buck” from your money and time, and it involves taking into account what other people are doing. To give crude examples: If you can save two homeless people’s lives in the US by giving $100 to a homeless shelter but only one life in Darfur by sending it there, you should give it to the homeless shelter, even if more people are dying in Darfur. If cancer is a problem causing more suffering than the ebola virus, but lots of people are donating to cancer research and hardly anyone is donating to ebola research, then maybe you can promote human welfare better by donating to ebola research instead, even though it’s not causing as much suffering. And so on.
I’m not saying this is how we should think about morality, I’m saying it’s how most people actually do think about morality instinctively, at least to some extent. They just don’t follow the reasoning through to its extreme conclusion. But it’s not a fallacy to follow it to that conclusion. There’s no faulty assumptions and no faulty reasoning in doing so.
It’s a good example. But one situation in which individuals make a utilitarian decision does not prove that it is the basis of all our morality.
There are plenty of counter-examples. For example, anyone with children would be horrified by the notion that they should do nothing for their child before their child’s well-being is among the worst in the world.
Now you’ve (in a separate post) asserted that really our morality is utilitarian, we just don’t follow it through. But there are other interpretations.
The fact that you use the moral thing to do implies that there is only one moral choice. Which in this example, I’d agree with, but not in general.
Sometimes morality is defined as “what one should do”, which I think is misguided. It’s that line of thinking that seems to lead people into relativism and bizarre assertions, like that criminals believe their actions are virtuous (otherwise they wouldn’t be doing them).
I think it’s better to define moral simply as something like “an action intended to benefit others”.
I think this is close to the spirit of what the OP had in mind. I call it the ‘Mrs. Lincoln misdirect’ - overlooking something obviously wrong with something inconsequential. Whenever u try to bring up an important thing wrong with a plan or event, & someone asks, ‘well, aside from that, how about it’? Respond: ‘well, aside from ***that ***Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?’
I don’t agree with that either. I don’t think you can find a father that would sacrifice everything he had to save the life of his child to see that action as less moral than sending $100 to Darfur to save one life over there.
It isn’t: the moral calculation isn’t as simplistic as you’re assuming.
You’re right, the example of your children is one area in which most people clearly don’t think about morality in a utilitarian way. But that’s why the types of arguments the OP is talking about would never be used about children, because they wouldn’t be effective: I think we can all agree “you shouldn’t have spent that $100 treating your child’s illness, because it could have treated 50 children in Africa instead” is not a very convincing argument. It’s easy to dismiss, because it’s not how any of us actually think about morality. But in a lot of cases the types of argument the OP is talking about really do have a persuasive force that’s hard to refute. That’s why the OP is trying to work out what the problem is with them. “We shouldn’t be spending $1m on a parade for a football team when that money could have saved thousands of children’s lives in Africa” is hard to refute, isn’t it?
Why shouldn’t we have spent it on Africa instead? The answer is, we didn’t want to. The question isn’t a fallacy; we just don’t like admitting the answer, because it cuts against how we tend to think about morality.