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Edmonds, and me, Nigel Warburton.
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Imagine you see four people drowning in a fast rushing river.
What do you do?
The dangers involved in attempting a rescue mean that no one could reasonably demand that you risk your life to try to save them.
But three of them are close together, and you calculate that you're just about able to save them if you push your canoe out towards them.
But that means abandoning the single person in a different part of the river.
There's no time to save both the group of three and the one person on their own.
So what should you do?
You can justifiably not take the huge risk of attempting a rescue at all, perhaps call the emergency services and hope they get there in time.
Or you can try to save either the three or the one.
According to the philosopher Theron Pammer, it would be morally legitimate not to attempt to rescue at all.
But if you do attempt to rescue, you have a strong moral obligation to try to save the three.
Theran Palmer, welcome to philosophy bites.
Oh, thanks very much for having me.
It's a real pleasure to be here.