By Jason Brennan
Apropos Matts recent post: Peter Singer argues we have stringent duties to give to charity. He relies upon a thought experiment:
One Drowning Child:
You come across a child drowning in a pool. You can save the child at some personal expense. Imagine youll have to jump in right away and thus ruin your iPhone.
Most people judge that they *must* save the child, even though this costs them, say, $500. If so, Singer asks, why not conclude that rather than buying the iPhone for $500 in the first place, you should just send $500 to save a childs life?
There are some practical objections to this.
[su_pullquote]Perhaps its not actually possible to save a childs life for $500, or there are various problems and moral hazards created by charity.[/su_pullquote]
But lets put these aside.
The central problem with Singers argument is that he thinks that once youre committed to saving one childs life, youre committed to the following principle:If you can save a life without sacrificing anything of moral significance, you ought to do so.
Photo Courtesy: www.visualhunt.comSinger claims this is a demanding moral principle. It would forbid you from buying most luxury goods, extra clothes, video games, tickets to opera, etc., and instead require you to donate most of your money to saving lives.
But the central problem with Singers thought experiment is that it is *not* analogous to the situation we find ourselves in. In Singers drowning child thought experiment, I save one life at some personal expense, and then move on with my life. I dont remain in perpetual service to others.
What Singer needs, for his thought experiment to be an actual analog of our current situation, is something like this:
Many Drowning Children:
Youre walking alone one day, when you come across millions of drowning children. The children you save will for the most part remain saved, though some might fall back in. However, no matter how many you save, there will always be more about to drown.You can spend your entire waking life pulling children out of pools.
Singers entire argument rests upon peoples moral intuitions in theOne Drowning Child. ButOne Drowning Child doesnt do the work he needs it to do, becauseOne Drowning Child isnt analogous to the situation Singer thinks we actually find ourselves in.
Instead, what Singer needs to do is determine what peoples moral intuitions are inMany Drowning Children.
[su_pullquote align=”right”]Even if you judge you must save the one child inOne Drowning Child, you might not judge that you must dedicate your life to, or even spend a huge amount of time on, saving children inMany Drowning Children.[/su_pullquote]
Note that I am not claiming that Singers conclusions are wrong, just that his argument for those conclusions doesnt succeed.
As an aside, its interesting that Singer spends much of his time trying to debunk the use of intuitions as data in moral philosophy, when one of his two most famous and important arguments relies heavily upon intuitions and casuistry.
This article was originally published on Bleeding Heart Libertarians.
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