[fretelöo]

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If, as is the case with babies, that not-helping implies certain death, yes, I have to confess that the difference between the two escapes me.

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The most obvious difference is one requires action and one doesn't. I notice later you make the extension that it makes one a murderer not to help another survive. Are private ciizens murdering people in the third world by not donating all the disposable income to those with no food? Under this defintion, I could think of dozens of ways that you, me, and everyone on this board is a murderer. I find this to be absurd. Murder to me requires action or intervention.

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Let's just say, that that 3rd World argument mixes ethics and action theory. It's two different things to analyze something as an action of yours (even if that action simply consists of willingly/knowingly refraining from helping) and the moral evaluation of that action, taking into account possible alternatives blablabla.
I was/am too lazy to really get into the mud and try to get those two different, but in this particular Africa-Problem intererelated, parts of the problem together.

Also, on a more general note, inconvenient results aren't in themselves good arguments. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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...rinse yourself from any guilt and responsibility.

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What 'responsibility' do I have in the first place?

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The responsibility of looking after a fellow human being.

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But in this scenario 'good reason' is subjective. What may be a good reason to one is not a good reason to another. I don't feel comfortable forcing my subjective values of what is good on others, and I don't feel comfortable having others force them on me.

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Good reason is ALWAYS subjective. That's why it's "merely" good reason and not strict anayltical necessity.
"Not feeling comfortable imposing my subjecitve values" and therefore refraining from doing it is just an easy way out. You are morally obliged to do so anyway regardless of what you feel easy about or not - says Kant, say most ethicists that endorse some sort of objective moral values.