The Sea of Drowning Children and Social Proximity

Thomas Drake-Brockman (21150739)

In responding to the second question, regarding whether it is justiable to withhold aid or immigration rights from victims of famine, I will raise two objections to an argument by Peter Singer, who claims that we cannot withhold aid from these victims. Peter Singer, in coming to his conclusions in Famine, Auence, and Morality12 , extrapolates from an example to a general moral principal. I will contest that in doing so he fails to address the factors of distance and frequency sufciently, and that subsequently his principal is not as well supported as he claims. In particular the example that Singer gives is that if I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out.3 Singer is right to say that this is not a controversial example, and here I agree with him. It is with this example that singer justies his general principal: if it is in our
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Singer 1972 Henceforth will explicitly reference Singers article only when I quote directly. 3 Singer 1972, pp. 231

power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacricing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.4 In doing so Singer states that I do not think I need to say much in defense of the refusal to take proximity and distance into account., he goes on to expand The fact that a person is physically near to us, so that we have personal contact with him, ... does not show that we ought to help him rather than another who happens to be further away.5 This is one place where I dier with Singer, and I will argue that such disregard for proximity is a failing in his argument. I will also argue that Singer fails to suciently recognise the consequences of the fact that his general principal involves an almost limitless amount of suering whereas his specic example is something that we can reasonably expect to be a very rare occurrence, and that this dierence is morally important. In regards to my rst objection, what is critical here is that Singer appears to consider proximity and distance to be equivalent to whether or not somebody is physically near to us6 . In fact Singers reasoning here is entirely with reference to spatial proximity and geography, I do not intent to challenge this reasoning. What I suggest is that social proximity, which I will argue has a large impact on moral proximity, has been overlooked. Morality is a social construct that exists such that groups of people, societies, can exist together. As much as Singer may talk about the development of the world into a global village 7 , it is an undeniable fact that we interact with some people more frequently than others - these are people to whom we have
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Singer Singer 6 Singer 7 Singer

1972, 1972, 1972, 1972,

pp. pp. pp. pp.

231 232 232 232

greater social proximity. As morals exists such that we can interact socially it would appear that we must also be more morally local to those within social proximity, and thus our moral obligations to those who are more socially local to us are greater.8 This may not necessarily seem just, however it would seem to full the purpose of morality in supporting social interaction. As it happens, Singer does not simply provide an example where we are socially local to the victim. He goes further, he evokes paternal feelings by making his victim a child. Our children and famine suerers are not in the same social sphere9 , and our obligations are dierent in these social contexts. Singer could even be accused of making a fallacious appeal to emotion here. The example of the drowning child is not analogous to famine for these reasons. Thus it is wrong for Singer to extrapolate the obligation we have to the drowning child to famine victims. My second objection to Singers argument is that his example of the drowning child is a vanishingly rare occurrence, while famine is not.10 If there were as many drowning children in our local parks as there is famine in the world, and their predicament was as intractable as that of famine victims, I suggest that we would feel very dierently about our obligations to save the drowning children than we do in Singers example. To save even some insignicant proportion of the children would require that we devote our entire lives to this, and I claim that this is to ask too much and
Gomberg 2002, pp. 42 I consider a social sphere to be a set of people whom we consider to be a certain social distance from ourselves. For example we might have social spheres for immediate family, close friends, acquaintances, neighbours, citizens of the same country, and the entire human race. You may even consider non-humans to be part of some social spheres, however that is a dierent argument. 10 Zwolinski 2012
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that we are not morally obliged to do as such.11 It should be clear that the example of the sea of drowning children is dierent to the drowning child example, and that we have dierent moral obligations. It should be clear that the sea of drowning children example is a closer analogy to famine than the drowning child example. It is enough to demonstrate that these are dierent moral situations, and that therefore it is wrong to extrapolate our conclusions from one of these situations to the other. The onus is on Singer to demonstrate that this extrapolation from the drowning child example to famine is warranted, and I believe that he does not do this satisfactorily. In sum, I claim that Singer does not address the problems of proximity and frequency suciently. I have argued that the issues of moral proximity and how often we expect a moral situation to occur are factors worthy of greater consideration than Singer gives them, that they are factors that aect what can be reasonably expected of us and our moral obligations to others. I therefore suggest that Singers example is therefore not adequately similar to his general principal to justify the extrapolations Singer makes. Thus I contest that Singers conclusions are not as well substantiated as they may appear. Therefore, at least in reference to Singers argument, it is not so clear that we cannot justiably withhold aid from the victims from famine.

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Caplan 2012

References
Caplan, B 2012, What If the Stranger Is a Drowning Child?. 15 Feburary 2012. EconLog - Library of Economics and Liberty: Blog. Available from: <http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/02/singer vs the s.html> Gomberg, P 2002, The Fallacy Of Philanthropy, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 29-66 Singer, P 1972, Famine, Auence, and Morality, Philosophy and Public Appairs, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 229-243 Zwolinski, M 2012, What We Can Learn from Drowning Children. 16 Feburary 2012. Bleeding Heart Libertarians: Blog. Available from: <http://bleedinghear tlibertarians.com/2012/02/what-we-can-learn-from-drowning-children/>