David Edmonds is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. He is the author or co-author of eighteen books translated into twenty-five languages, including Parfit, Would You Kill the Fat Man?, and, with John Eidinow, the bestseller Wittgenstein’s Poker. With Nigel Warburton, he co-hosts the podcast Philosophy Bites. In this interview, Edmonds discusses Death in a Shallow Pond, a book that traces the history and influence of Peter Singer’s famous drowning-child thought experiment, its connection to effective altruism and the philosophy of Derek Parfit, and the pressing question of how much we owe to distant strangers.

What is your work about?

Death in a Shallow Pond is, in effect, the biography of a famous thought experiment.

On your way to work, you pass a shallow pond. You hear the cries of a young child, and, turning towards the pond, you notice a toddler flailing about. You look for the parents or babysitter, but there is no one in the vicinity. 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 and expensive shoes you bought only a few days ago and get your suit wet and muddy. What should you do?

Of course, everyone says that you should save the child. How could your shoes be more important than that! Silly question. But then, the inventor of the thought experiment, Peter Singer, makes a contentious move. He says that many of us in the affluent West could easily afford to donate money to a charity that could then be used to save a life. Failing to do so is like worrying about one’s shoes rather than the child in the Shallow Pond.

The book is a history of this thought experiment, published in 1971. It describes the circumstances of its invention (during the Bangladesh Liberation War) and how it became so influential. It also analyzes whether not donating money to charity is really analogous to allowing the child in the pond to drown.

Why did you feel the need to write this work?

I’m not sure I felt a “need” to write it. I had previously written a book about arguably the most famous thought experiment in moral philosophy, namely the Trolley Problem. Death in a Shallow Pond seemed like a natural sister project. And the thought experiment had cropped up in a biography I’d just completed about the English philosopher Derek Parfit. Parfit’s ideas were influential in shaping the global movement—effective altruism—that was inspired by the Shallow Pond. The effective altruism movement encourages people to sign a pledge to donate at least ten percent of their income. The movement stresses that picking the right charities to support is just as important as the amount of money you donate, since some charities are massively more effective than others.

How is the book relevant to everyday life?

It’s very relevant! If Peter Singer is right, then almost all of us should be doing a great deal more than we actually do to help distant strangers. But is he right?

Did you encounter any problems getting yourself published and, if so, how did you overcome them?

I’m very fortunate in that I’ve established a great relationship with my publisher, Princeton University Press (PUP). I think they’re currently the best publisher of philosophy. My editor, Rob Tempio, is a lovely bloke and an excellent editor. Relationships in the publishing world are much undervalued. I’m obviously not present for internal PUP meetings, but it always feels to me as if Rob is batting for his authors. The Shallow Pond was my fourth Princeton book—and because I enjoy working with Rob, I didn’t offer the idea to anybody else. They said “yes” to the proposal quite quickly.  

What writing tips do you have?

The best advice I have received was from my co-podcaster, Nigel Warburton. Nigel said that writers often assume that they need to be sitting comfortably at their desk before they put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard: it’s an excuse for a kind of procrastination. But in fact, you can write anywhere. You can write in buses, in cafes, and while waiting for the kids to finish their ballet class or football game. This tip has been hugely helpful to me. Snatch 25 minutes of writing time on a train journey, and it will contribute, in a small way, to reaching the finishing line.

What’s next for you?

I’m planning a book that will tell the history of twentieth-century philosophy and onwards through famous thought experiments and the lives of those who invented them. This seems like a logical next step. I’ve already written books about two thought experiments, and my Parfit biography was quite thought-experiment heavy. The next book will cover thought experiments in the philosophy of mind, language, epistemology, metaphysics, decision-theory, art and science, as well as in politics and ethics.

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