Philosophy for Us
Part One · The Inner Life · Series 1

What You Owe a Stranger (Singer)

I scrolled past the dying kid and bought the shoes.

7 episodes ↓ 21 sources ↓ Ethics

The question

You're walking to work past the ornamental pond in the park, in the good shoes — the ones that cost more than you'll admit. There's a child face-down in the water. No one else around. You know, without deciding to know it, that you're going in. The shoes are gone, the suit is gone, you'll be late and shaking, and not one cell in you hesitates — of course you go in.

Last night a different child died. Same age. Of something a few of those dollars would have stopped, somewhere you'll never go. You knew it was happening. You bought the shoes.

And here's the part that won't sit still: you don't actually feel like a murderer. You feel like a normal person. So either your conscience is broken — or it knows something the pond doesn't.

What you practise

"Yes, but that's different." Most of us say something like it when an argument about strangers gets uncomfortable, and then we change the subject. Here you do the harder thing. You take an argument you cannot answer and will not live by, find the exact step in it you refuse, say plainly why, and count what the refusal costs you. You also learn to tell a real reason from a comfortable one. "I'd rather not" is not a reason, and neither is "nobody else does it". Nobody here hands you a verdict. By the end you can give your own, and defend it to someone who decided the other way.

The episodes

Each episode builds on the one before, and the finale hands the question back to you sharper, not settled.

  1. 01

    Of course you go in

    A child is drowning in a shallow pond, and a passer-by in expensive shoes wades in without a moment's deliberation. This first episode examines that one undisputed case, tests the four best reasons a reasonable person might give for not going in, and draws out the principle behind the rescue — a principle which, as stated, says nothing at all about distance.

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  2. 02

    The bill arrives

    Peter Singer's 1972 paper "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" takes the pond principle exactly as stated, with no exception for distance, and applies it to a child dying far away of something a small sum would prevent. Followed honestly, the rule demands not a donation but nearly everything, and the episode sets out the size of that demand and the three commitments it places in tension — the principle itself, an ordinary life, and a good opinion of oneself.

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  3. 03

    Does distance make a difference?

    The five differences commonly felt between the pond and the famine — distance, the missing face, the sheer numbers, whose responsibility it is, and uncertainty about whether help works — are tested one at a time, by the same method used earlier on the price of the shoes. None survives as a bare feeling, though two argued versions are noted and left standing for later episodes.

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  4. 04

    That's not too demanding — it's a reductio

    The demandingness objection holds that a rule requiring us to give until we are nearly destitute has, by that very fact, given evidence against itself. This episode states the objection in its strongest form, gives Singer's reply its full weight, and examines three attempts — by Brad Hooker, Liam Murphy and Garrett Cullity — to draw a principled line short of everything, together with the question each attempt still leaves open.

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  5. 05

    Some of this life is mine

    Two objections that concede Singer's argument and dispute its authority over the whole of a person. Samuel Scheffler argues that morality grants a permission to give one's own projects and attachments more than their impartial weight; Kant holds that the duty to help others is genuine but wide, leaving the occasions to our choice. Both grant something real, and neither says where "mine" stops.

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  6. 06

    Distance, numbers, and the web of intuition

    Distance returns, this time as an argument rather than a feeling. Frances Kamm's carefully constructed cases suggest that nearness may do some genuine moral work, and the care ethics of Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings holds that morality begins with the particular person in front of you rather than with an impartial survey of the world. The episode also traces where the impartial view came from — from the equal worth of every soul, through Sidgwick's point of view of the universe, to Singer's expanding circle — and weighs the cost carried by each tradition.

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  7. 07

    Which premise will you pay to deny?

    The final episode sets the five available positions side by side — four accounts of where Singer's principle fails, and a fifth, that Singer was right, examined through the recent history of the Effective Altruism movement — with the cost of each stated plainly. No verdict is offered. The question handed back is which premise of the argument one is prepared to deny, and at what cost.

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Thinkers

The thinkers and traditions this series draws on:

Care ethicsSidgwickThe Stoic ancestry

Related series

Your turn

You could give a kidney to a stranger. You have two and only need one. The operation is free, the chance of dying from it is about one in three thousand, and you would be back on your feet in a few weeks. Somebody on the waiting list will die this year for want of one. There is no distance here, no doubt about whether it would help, and nobody else is going to do it instead of you.

Most people say no. If you would too:

  1. Which part of the case do you reject? That the cost to you is small? That you owe a stranger anything? That you are allowed to keep your own body and your own life for yourself?
  2. A ruined pair of shoes would not get you out of saving the child in the pond. What makes a few weeks and a small risk different, and is that a reason, or just more to lose?
  3. If some of your life is yours to keep, where does that stop? Say what it would not cover.

A good answer names the one step you refuse, says why, and puts a price on refusing it. "That's different" is not an answer, and neither is "almost nobody does it". And it has to survive the walk home: if you accept the argument and then carry on exactly as before, the answer has to say why that is allowed.

Sources

Written by AI under human direction. This is the reading the series was built from. checked against source means the passage was found in the cited work and a second, independent model checked the episode's use of it; supports in part means that check judged the use a little stronger than the passage alone establishes; passage located means a reader found the passage but it has not had the second check. Unmarked entries are background reading.

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