Peter Singer is perhaps the most famous currently-living philosopher. His views are vast, with implications in bioethics to universal poverty. Perhaps one of his most famous works is the Drowning Child thought experiment, in his 1972 book Famine, Affluence and Morality. The argument offers a very convincing reason for why we should live a more austere lifestyle, and instead donate a sizable portion of our income to charity.

Here is Singer’s basic argument: On your way to work, you pass a small pond. Children sometimes play in the pond, which is only about knee-deep. The weather’s cool, though, and it’s early, so you are surprised to see a child splashing about in the pond. As you get closer, you see that it is a very young child, just a toddler, who is flailing about, unable to stay upright or walk out of the pond. You look for the parents or babysitter, but there is no one else around. The child is unable to keep her head above the water for more than a few seconds at a time. If you don’t wade in and pull her out, she seems likely to drown. Wading in is easy and safe, but you will ruin the new shoes you bought only a few days ago, and get your suit wet and muddy. By the time you hand the child over to someone responsible for her, and change your clothes, you’ll be late for work. What should you do?

Now, we would think that anyone who did not immediately wade in to the pond in order to the save the dying child supremely evil. They could insist: “I didn’t want to spend the time and money to buy a new suit/shoes,” and we would still think them to be a horrible person. Yet, Singer thinks that we all act in a way reminiscent of the man who doesn’t save the drowning child in fear of damaging his suit. It is undeniable that around the world are countless children suffering. They may not be drowning in ponds, but they are out there, suffering from disease, war, and famine among other things.

Crucial to this argument is the fact that we spend an exorbitant amount of money on what Singer would call morally neutral actions. This is like buying ourselves a new pair of clothes when the old ones we have are perfectly fine or buying a cup of coffee instead of making it at home. No one is free from this truth—we are all segments of the capitalist machine—not that that is necessarily a bad thing. It is just how our economy circulates, how we are raised and how we will continue to act for the foreseeable future. But Singer thinks this way of life is evil. The drowning baby may not be directly in front of us, but we are constantly giving it a watery grave instead of saving it when we spend our money on morally trivial actions. We spend the 5 dollars to buy ourselves coffee, whereas the 5 dollars could instead save a starving child. We would all agree that the man who says he wouldn’t save the drowning child in fear of damaging his suit if morally reprehensible. But how about the society that buy themselves an exorbitantly priced cup of coffee instead of helping the infant suffering from malaria? In the same way that we would be obligated to help the drowning child, we are obligated to forego trivial purchases and instead use the money to save others. We should continue to do this, Singer continues, until if we donate more, we are hurting own welfare significantly.

Singer’s thought experiment is so controversial because it takes a core human assumption and twists it back at us. I’d like to spend the rest of this article discussing core objections to Singer’s argument and examining the core reason we say failing to save a drowning child is controversial yet buying a cup of coffee is not. One critiquing this thought experiment will not try to justify letting the child drown. Instead, these objections will attempt to establish a substantive difference between the drowning child and every actions.

Objection 1: Immediate Issue vs Ongoing Challenge. We can assume that children do not normally wander into ponds without knowing how to swim. If this is true, critics would say that this is a difference. Let me explain. Singer mentions that the money would be better served helping a child suffering from war, famine, or malaria. However, one could object that a couple dollars will do nothing to solve these international issues. 5 dollars designated for morning coffee isn’t going to make a dent in global issues, it will do so very little to solve the root of the issue that it is practically negligible. This is basically a collective action problem, and not a meaningful objection. Just because the problem continues does not mean that the people suffering from it should not be cared for. Imagine a doctor who refused a patient suffering from cancer just because cancer is still uncured: they would be lambasted. So just because these issues will continue does not mean those suffering from them currently should be ignored. If one is really concerned about this, they could donate to scientific institutions/ peace organizations doing research in order to eradicate disease/war. Yet I don’t think I would be naïve to assume that the common person is less inclined to do this.

Objection 2: Proximity. Whereas the child is right in front of us, struggling for air, the suffering people our agencies will support are miles away. We will not see them and therefore their struggles are less humane to us. Proximity encompasses a whole variety of objections against Singer. The first is that whereas we are the only person who can help the drowning baby, we are but one citizen in a global community that—in Singerland—should all donate a percent of their fungible income in order to combat global poverty. Therefore, our specific contribution matters much less. This is just a version of the well documented bystander effect, or a psychological phenomenon where individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present. Consider a man who has passed out from hunger and is surrounded by a group of people. You would think that each one of them would rush in to help him, to offer him money, to give him food. Yet this is precisely the opposite of the phenomenon. As the crowd grows, responsibility diffuses, and the exact individual is less likely to help. All of them are silently thinking in their heads “there are so many other people hear…one of the other’s will help this man.” This is the core of the problem. Everyone thinks this, so in reality, nothing is done. But when it is just you and a drowning child, with no one around, the weight of the responsibility falls on you to save the child, which is what makes Singer’s thought experiment so powerful. But this bystander phenomenon does not justify our inability to act, it merely provides an explanation for it. If the man passed out from hunger in the street dies, yes, the blame is distributed among every individual in the crowd, yet, they are all in the wrong. So, this “global community” objection is illogical. Our psychology makes us feel less at blame, but that does not excuse our inaction.

Another objection commonly brought up is the fact that the child drowning in the pool is in our direct responsibility, whereas starving children in Africa are somehow out of our moral responsibility. This means that we have more of a relationship with the drowning child, more of a responsibility to help it then starving children. But even Singer, in 1972, addressed this problem: donations and relief organizations have made it so it is possible to help anyone around the world. Proximity, or distance to the person that is suffering, is no longer a limiting faction of help. If we choose to, we can send our money around the world so that it benefits people in Africa, Asia, of the Middle East. A valid concern, however, is the fear that your money is not going to the right people, i.e, a large portion of it is claimed as an overhead fee. Non-profits, run off money donated to them, need a way to stay afloat, so a sizable portion of your money will not, in fact be going to people who are being helped. While this is a valid concern, I think Singer would still dismiss it. Even if some small amount of your money is lost, the action and intent behind donating is still there. One could also argue that you have a greater obligation to help the drowning baby because they are your compatriot, whereas starving people around the world are not your countrymen. Yet I think this is a weak (and callous) argument as well, as it doesn’t matter what ethnicity a drowning baby is: you would morally reprehensible if you failed to save it regardless.

Objection 3: It is undeniable that we should reserve some of our money that, if we were to donate it, it would have a trivial effect on our lives. Singer’s argument makes that point at least. Just like on the off chance that we see a drowning child in a pool, we would wade in, sacrificing a very little amount of time and money to help them. But I think the main issue with Singer’s ideology is that it demands too much from us. The philosopher Travis Timmerman proposed an alternative, more realistic thought experiment compared that illustrates the discrepancy many see between the drowning child thought experiment and real life. I will paraphrase it here.

Unlucky Lisa receives a call from her 24-hour bank warning her that hackers have broken into her account and are withdrawing $200 every five minutes until she arrives in person to freeze the account. Because of a loophole, the bank has no obligation to reimburse any of her losses. Worse still, if her account becomes overdrawn, the bank will claim whatever assets are necessary to repay the debt caused by the hackers. Luckily, Lisa works right across the street from the bank and can get there in under five minutes. She was already planning to walk over as part of her daily routine. However, on her way, she discovers that the area in front of the bank has been transformed into a field covered with hundreds of shallow ponds, each containing a child who will drown unless someone saves them. Lisa realizes that every child she manages to rescue means an additional life saved that would otherwise be lost. It takes her about five minutes to save each child, and she faces an excruciating decision: how many children should she pull to safety before going inside the bank? As soon as she enters the bank, any remaining children she has not rescued will drown. The nightmare doesn’t end there. For the rest of her life, the hackers strike again every day, draining her account while the ponds refill with drowning children, forcing Lisa to face this horrific choice over and over.

This illustrates the obligation Singer expects of us. For each coffee given up, it represents a drowning child Lisa has to sacrifice her time and safety of her bank account to risk saving. This dilemma leads Lisa into an uncomfortable situation: she must decide how many babies she should save each day while still maintaining enough money in her bank account. It seems like an impossible situation. Lisa must practically reduce herself to the level of the babies—only having enough money in her bank account to survive—in order to act in a way that Singer would morally justify. Intuitively, no one would wish this upon Lisa. But if we are thinking strictly morally, it makes sense. If all lives have the same value, and we accept life as the most important quality anyone has, Lisa should be prepared to sacrifice everything in order to keep saving babies. She should bring herself to a state of near poverty, leaving her bank account for the hackers, in order to save more babies from there subsequent drowning ponds every day. This leads us to a sole conclusion: morality cannot be the only doctrine we live our lives under.

Morality is meant to be a guide for how we live our lives, not something that consumes it. Imagine you make 100k a year, but you only need 70k to actually support yourselves. The other 30k, in Singer, opinion, should go directly to charity, as you can lead a fine life with only 70k. But that means no present for your wife, no birthday for your kid, no fancy meals or shared memories with your family—saintly behavior to say the least. But Singer calls this basic decency. He expects you to practically give up your life to support others, to degrade your familial relationships and social bonds until you live a life of such poverty that you are forced to help yourself. If taken seriously, Singer’s model erases any capacity we have for self-care, relationships, or personal and individual goals—what makes us truly human. In process of helping others, Singer posits that we should give up ourselves, and live like shells of human beings. Not only is this completely impractical, it seems supererogatory, not obligatory. If one asked you if you would live a dull life, without joy and and full of misery to save a drowning child, the results would certainly be more split. And the people who would live a life of destitution, i.e, like Lisa in the example, would be praised by society for doing something most people would not agree to do. Moral demands must respect the autonomy of a person, and morality cannot be the only factor in our lives. If we were to truly live in a state where we are obligated to reduce ourselves to the same level as those we help, we would be nothing but worker-cogs in a machine of donations.

Singer’s thought experiment is a helpful way of reminding us of how effective our money could be if we decided to not use it for amoral, or trivial actions, like buying a cup of coffee. But it is just that: a strong, powerful reminder. Singer cannot insist that we live a life where we give away so much of our money that we are on the same financial level as the people we are helping without sacrificing the essential qualities of the human life. We should strive to live ethically, yes, but a morality that demands total self-erasure fails to understand the very beings it hopes to make more generous.