After Kravinsky learned that many African-Americans have difficulty obtaining kidneys from family members, he sought out a hospital in Philadelphia that would allow him to donate one of his kidneys to a lower-income black person. According to Peter Singer, writing in The New York Times, Kravinsky justified the donation mathematically when speaking to Singer’s students, noting that the chances of dying as a result of the procedure would have been about 1 in 4,000. Kravinsky believed that, under the circumstances, “to withhold a kidney from someone who would otherwise die means valuing one’s own life at 4,000 times that of a stranger”, a ratio he termed “obscene.”
Professional logician he may be, but is his felsific calculus watertight?
Zen Kravinsky: Investor, utilitarian, organ donor, poet, polysemic, topoilogist, anthropologist, asian studies scholar, real estate mogal.
Professional logician he may be, but is his felsific calculus watertight?