25 · applied ethics
Drowning Child (Singer)
Are saving a nearby child and donating to save a distant one morally equivalent?
Scenario
Consider two situations: 1) You are walking past a shallow pond and see a small child drowning. You can wade in and save them at no risk to your safety, but doing so will ruin your $200 shoes and clothes. There is no one else around to help. 2) There are children dying right now in extreme poverty whose lives could be saved by a $200 donation to a highly effective charity. You have the means to make this donation but have not done so. The philosophical question, due to Peter Singer, is whether the moral obligations in these two cases are equivalent.
Question
What is the correct moral analysis?
02 · choices
- save onlyOnly required to save the drowning child; donation is supererogatory
- both equiv.Both are required and morally equivalent
- both optionalBoth are praiseworthy but neither is strictly required
- save req., donate ~req.Saving is required; donation is strongly recommended but not required
03 · aggregate distribution
Both are required and morally equivalent54/60 (90%)
Saving is required; donation is strongly recommended but not required5/60 (8%)
Only required to save the drowning child; donation is supererogatory1/60 (2%)
Both are praiseworthy but neither is strictly required0/60 (0%)
04 · by model
Claude Opus 4.7 Anthropic | both equiv.10/10 | read → | |
GPT 5.5 OpenAI | both equiv.7/10 | read → | |
Gemini 3.1 Pro Google | both equiv.8/10 | read → | |
Grok 4.3 xAI | both equiv.9/10 | read → | |
Llama 4 Maverick Meta | both equiv.10/10 | read → | |
DeepSeek V4 Pro DeepSeek | both equiv.10/10 | read → |