[Weatherlight]

I'm sleeping in my house in the middle of the night, and some kid decides to take an evening dip in the lake about 20 miles north of where I live and tragically drowns, I have no responsibility in that.

And if you knew this kid, who told you hir plan to sneak out and do that, you were aware that this lake is dangerous, yet you didn't warn the ignorant, naive child, nor alert the parents or anyone else, I would say you have some responsibility.

Intent does not change the outcome. Someone who buys meat because they hate vegetarians (think Maddox fans), because they know they shouldn't but like the taste, or because they just always have and do it thoughtlessly all have very different mindsets and intents but try explaining that to the animals that are slaughtered because of them.

It's just not possible to lay any blame on me for this. Am I wrong?

I think you mistake blame/guilttripping/whatever with moral choices. If you were choosing between seeing and looking away, or seeing and helping, then the choice with a higher likelihood of a better outcome would be helping. In that respect, it doesn't matter whether you're choosing to drown a child, choosing to stop someone who is drowning a child, or choosing to pull out a child who slipped.

Your entire argument really is that if I have the opportunity to prevent an injustice and fail to seize that opportunity, it's the same as committing it myself.

In terms of consequence.

you're going to have to be a mind reader and determine someone's intent

Determine intent for what purpose? I'm not going to judge you badly, as being evil, for thinking it's cool, nor for giving up if there's nothing you could do even if you tried, nor for being afraid that he has a weapon. Or even for being too lazy to get your mobile phone out of your pocket. I do judge the outcome as the child being drowned to death. Whatever the reason/s for someone in that position not acting, it would be good to address them as far as is possible. For example, if they had no way of contacting help, carrying a mobile phone can be great in many situations. If they did think it was cool, psychiatric help might change that. For things like feeling hopeless or afraid of weapons, I actually think it would benefit the world for people to receive basic training in self protection and be legally permitted to carry nonlethal weapons, but that's another topic. And the lazy person can be helped to be more motivated, better able to control behavior.

Does the 20% of his income that he donates to feed starving people go to pay for them to eat animals or animal products?

Probably not HI, anyway. In Animal Liberation he goes into some detail on how animal-based models for nutrition are illogical. The animals have to eat too, don't they? :P

PETA's list just deals with whether charities test on animals or not. If you're interested in alleviating human hunger, there's

Vegfam | Home ¦ Vegfam Charity
The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation
Food for Life Global - The world's largest vegan / vegetarian food relief

and, associated independent groups, THE FOOD NOT BOMBS MOVEMENT

his utilitarianism is very irritating, and his guilt-tripping is ridiculously overblown

How so?

he'd have to give up EVERYTHING.

So are you saying Bob should just protect his car?

Just change "specialer" to "not wrong" then it's the core of my belief. I see nothing wrong in the present world. Moral is culturally bounded idea, may be God don't care.

A moral subjectivist, eh? If they aren't specialer, what about dogs or houseflies, are they also created by God in his own image and nothing they think or do is wrong?

What sort of God do you believe in?

But then do we want to be personally bound to be moral?

Haha, I read Singer's Practical Ethics 2nd ed, and he deals with the question "Why be moral?" It is like the question "Why be logical?" but he tries to give selfish reasons for humans to want to be moral.

I just found out there was 41% difference in my morality score for that difference.

You wouldn't want to live morally, all else being equal?