Philosophy · Level 5 · 232 words

The Child in the Pond

Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.

Suppose you pass a shallow pond and see a small child drowning. You could wade in and pull the child out at no risk to yourself, though your shoes would be ruined and you would be late for work. Nearly everyone agrees that stopping is a duty, not a favor, and that a person who walked on to save his shoes would be judged a moral failure.

The philosopher Peter Singer built an uncomfortable argument on that agreement. If we can prevent something very bad at a small cost to ourselves, he reasoned, we ought to do it. A child dying of a preventable disease on another continent is very bad. Some of the money we spend on things we barely notice could prevent it. Distance, on this view, carries no moral weight: a child far away drowns as completely as a child at our feet.

The standard reply is that the argument proves too much. It does not stop at one donation; it keeps demanding until giving more would cost something of comparable moral importance, which would swallow a comfortable life whole. Singer's answer is severe: perhaps the argument is sound and our lives are what need revising. His critics answer that a morality almost no one can live by has misunderstood what morality is for. The pond lies between the two positions, shallow, cold, and very hard to walk past.

Comprehension questions

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4 questions
1. Which statement best captures the passage's structure and claim?

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B. Singer extends an everyday rescue judgment into a duty to distant strangers, and critics object that the duty has no stopping point.
The passage moves in three steps: the shared pond judgment, Singer's extension of it across distance, and the reply that the resulting duty 'proves too much'. The right summary keeps all three.

2. What does the objection that the argument 'proves too much' mean here?

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A. If accepted, the argument demands far more than most people believe morality can require.
The objection is not that the logic fails but that it succeeds too well: it 'keeps demanding' until it 'would swallow a comfortable life whole', a conclusion critics take as a sign something is wrong.

3. "giving more would cost something of comparable moral importance," comparable means

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C. of similar size or weight
The demand stops only where the giver's loss would be as morally serious as the harm prevented. 'Comparable' marks that balance of similar weights.

4. In the pond story, what would rescuing the child cost you?

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D. Ruined shoes and a late arrival
The story fixes the cost precisely: 'your shoes would be ruined and you would be late for work', and 'no risk to yourself'. The smallness of that cost is what powers the argument.

Source: Written for Fluency. Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.