Peter Singer’s notorious article ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’ is now over fifty years old, and yet it continues to exert influence in contemporary moral discourse. In it Singer argues that the way most people in affluent Western nations act in relation to global aid is unjustifiable. His argument boils down to the following:
Premise 1: Suffering caused by lack of food, shelter and medical aid is bad.
Premise 2: If you can prevent suffering without sacrificing something of comparable moral significance, you out to do so.
Premise 3: We can prevent suffering caused by lack of food, shelter and medical aid without sacrificing something of comparable moral significance.
Conclusion: Therefore, we ought to do so.
Singer takes the first premise as naturally agreeable to his intended audience, and frames it as an ultimatum: if you do not agree with this premise then don’t bother reading any further.
To support the second premise, Singer gives an argument from analogy in the form of his famous Pond example. He finds it intuitively obvious that you should save a drowning child if it is within your power to do so, even if it means ruining some of your material possessions. This is the case regardless of your relation to the child, or the responses of others around you. He then draws an analogy identifying the child with the global poor, and you with people of affluent nations, concluding that any time it is within your power to prevent suffering without sacrificing something of comparable moral significance, you ought to do so. Singer defends this analogy against two objections he foresees regarding distance and number of possible saviours.
Although Singer assumes, without comment, the obviousness of the third premise, he does provide a response to some possible objections that giving away large sums of money is the best method of preventing this kind of suffering. By defending a specific example of a method to prevent suffering, he is of course providing evidence of the existence of such a method.
Unfortunately, the analogy between international aid and Singer’s Pond example remains unconvincing. The chief objection I raise here—and use to motivate a repaired version of Pond—is that Singer’s Pond does not capture the reasons for global poverty. A combination of historical Western imperialism and colonialism, self-interested foreign intervention in the economies of developing nations, and global consumer capitalism has lead to the development of a privileged class of affluent Westerners and an oppressed class of global poor.
A modified version of Pond which repairs the analogy might look like this:
You have just finished a hard day at work at the Pond Dumpers Corporation, whose motto is ‘dumping children in ponds to make your life more comfortable.’ You know that Pond Dumpers Corp. contribute to a lot of suffering in the world, but that’s just the way the world is, and besides, what are you as an individual going to do about it? These thoughts are in your mind as you are walking through a park on the way home and you come across a child drowning in a pond. What ought you do?
Providing this context to Pond demonstrates your complicity, as an affluent person, in the existence of the global poor. Perhaps you still feel that you ought to save the child from drowning, yet I would argue that you also ought to suspend your role in causing children to be thrown in ponds in the first place (perhaps by quitting your job at Pond Dumpers Corp.) This stands in analogy to the personal and collective action required to dismantle the systems which cause people such suffering at present.
This modified Pond example strengthens Singer’s argument for the conclusion that we ought to prevent suffering when it is within our power and we can do so without comparable sacrifice. Singer’s point still stands that this would mean a drastic change in the way we live, although it will most likely take a different form as a result of this argument. Individual financial contribution (even to the extent Singer recommends in his strong version of the argument) will no longer be sufficient action of the part of the affluent; they must reduce and ultimately cease their participation in practices which contribute to the suffering of people.
Singer might respond to this modification by saying that making the argument’s second premise contingent on a particular economic view opens up more possibilities for objection. However, it is not clear to me that the amount of people who are convinced by Pond, yet unconvinced by modified Pond outweighs those who are convinced by modified Pond but unconvinced by Pond. Yes, there are new possible objections made available by modified Pond, but one central objection to Pond is now resolved.
Singer, Peter. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 1, no. 3, 1972, pp. 229-243.