What makes an action right · Quiz question 32/35
The Drowning Child (Famine, Affluence, and Morality)
$100 could save a faraway child's sight. Is donating it instead of eating out optional — or a duty? Peter Singer's drowning child argument and its critics.
You could spend $100 on dinner out tonight — or donate it to pay for surgery that saves a child's sight in a faraway country.
Donating instead of eating out is a moral duty.
Peter Singer made this argument in his 1972 paper "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." If you saw a child drowning in a shallow pond, everyone agrees you should wade in and save them, even if it ruins your clothes. Singer argued that if you can prevent a death far away at a similar cost, distance makes no moral difference — so you should.
Singer's key premise is simple: "If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it." Accept that, and cutting nonessential spending like eating out to prevent blindness or death abroad isn't charity — it's a duty. Singer said the traditional line between charity and duty has to go.
The argument became the philosophical seed of the effective altruism movement. It has plenty of critics. Philosophers like Bernard Williams saw it as "overdemanding," crushing people's personal projects and relationships. Others say saving the child in front of you and donating to fight structural poverty differ in certainty of impact, division of responsibility, and the role of institutions.
Distance and nationality don't matter morally. If you can prevent suffering without big sacrifice, you must.
Key names: Peter Singer, Peter UngerFollow that principle and you'd have to give up every comfort. Morality has to leave room for personal life and relationships.
Key names: Bernard Williams, Susan WolfPoverty is a problem for just institutions more than individual goodwill. Your duty is to support fair institutions.
Key names: The John Rawls tradition, Thomas Pogge