Ethics II: Applied Ethics & Contemporary Moral Debates

Core Philosophical Problems

Course 3 · Chapter 6 · Ethics II: Applied Ethics & Contemporary Moral Debates

Chapter 5 laid the three frameworks side by side in the abstract. This chapter takes them out of the classroom entirely, applying all three to two of the most influential — and most genuinely contested — arguments in contemporary applied ethics, both from the same real philosopher.

Singer's Drowning Child and Effective Altruism

Peter Singer's real 1972 essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" — written in response to the real Bangladesh Liberation War refugee crisis — opens with a now-famous thought experiment: you pass a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it. Saving the child is easy, but will ruin your clothes. Singer's real argument, built from four premises: suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and care are bad; if you can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, you ought to; geographic distance makes no moral difference; and it makes no difference whether you're the only person who could help or one among millions. The conclusion, Singer argues, is a genuinely demanding one — the same obligation to save the drowning child applies, in principle, to donating a very substantial share of disposable income to prevent equally real, equally preventable suffering happening far away.

A Direct Echo of Course 2 Singer's argument is explicitly utilitarian in structure — weighing the moral importance of muddy clothes against a child's life is exactly the kind of calculation Bentham's own felicific calculus (Course 2, Ch.6) was built to make. The essay went on to genuinely, directly shape the modern effective altruism movement, including philosophers like William MacAskill.

Animal Ethics and Speciesism

Singer's real 1975 book Animal Liberation, widely regarded as the founding philosophical statement of the animal liberation movement, coins the term speciesism — unjustified discrimination based purely on species membership, structurally parallel to racism or sexism. Singer's real argument grounds moral status in sentience, the capacity to suffer, rather than in intelligence or reasoning ability — noting that some animals show cognitive capacities comparable to some humans we'd never deny moral status to on intelligence grounds alone.

A Direct Echo of Course 2 — By Singer's Own Explicit Design This isn't a loose thematic parallel — Singer built his own real argument directly on Bentham's real, already-quoted line from Course 2, Chapter 6: "The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" Two centuries separate Bentham's original claim from Singer's own extended application of it, and Singer names that debt explicitly rather than treating the idea as his own invention.

Applying All Three Frameworks

Three Verdicts on the Drowning Child

A consequentialist agrees with Singer directly and without much friction — his argument already speaks their language. A deontologist working from Ross's real prima facie duties (Chapter 5) can reach a similar practical conclusion through a genuinely different route: a real, standing duty of beneficence toward those in need, not an aggregative calculation at all. A virtue ethicist reframes the question entirely — not "what does the math say?" but "what would a person of genuine compassion and generosity actually do here?" — often converging on Singer's own practical conclusion while resisting his framing of it as a strict, near-absolute obligation.

Framework	On the drowning child	On animal suffering
Consequentialism	Directly supports Singer's own conclusion	Directly supports Singer's own conclusion — suffering counts, wherever it occurs
Deontology (Ross)	Grounded in the duty of beneficence, not aggregation	Grounded in non-maleficence — a duty not to cause unnecessary suffering
Virtue Ethics	What would a compassionate, generous person do?	What would a person of genuine temperance and compassion eat?

Where This Goes Next — Chapter 7 scales this same three-framework toolkit up from individual moral choices to the level of a whole society: political philosophy, drawing on Locke, Mill, and Rawls's own veil of ignorance from Course 2.

Questions to Sit With

Reflection 1

Singer argues distance makes no genuine moral difference between saving a drowning child in front of you and donating to prevent an equally real death far away. Does that argument actually convince you, or does something about physical proximity still feel morally relevant even after considering his case?

Reflection 2

Singer explicitly builds his animal-ethics argument on Bentham's own two-centuries-earlier claim. Does tracing an idea's real lineage like this strengthen the argument, or does an idea need to stand on its own regardless of its pedigree?

Reflection 3

The three frameworks converge on similar practical conclusions here but for genuinely different reasons. Does that convergence make you more confident the conclusion is correct, or does the disagreement over why still matter?

Quick Reference — Chapter 6

Singer's drowning child (1972) — a real, four-premise utilitarian argument for a demanding duty to prevent distant suffering; directly shaped the effective altruism movement
Speciesism (Animal Liberation, 1975) — unjustified discrimination by species; moral status grounded in sentience, not intelligence
Singer's animal-ethics argument explicitly builds on Bentham's own real "can they suffer?" standard (Course 2, Ch.6)
All three ethical frameworks from Chapter 5 can reach similar practical conclusions on both cases, but via genuinely different routes — aggregation, duty, or character