I like the thought experiment, but I think (unfortunately) the Singerian analogy is closer to reality.
In the “woodland commotion” case, you don’t feel bad for not going to help because, well, how could you have known this weird situation was occurring? But it doesn’t seem like the world is like that, where it’s so non-obvious how we help that no one could blame us for not seeing it.
Indeed, even if the world were like that to us initially, the situation changes as soon as someone tells you what you can do to help.
To adjust your case, suppose you hear a commotion in the distance, but then someone next to you who has binoculars, sees what’s going on and say “hey, there’s a man stuck over there, shall we go help?” Then the case becomes much like Singer’s shallow pond where you can easily help someone else at a cost to you and you know it. So all the concerns about demandingness resurface. But Singer, effective altruists, and many others in society, are basically being the guy with binoculars (“hey, do you know how you can do good? Don’t buy that latte, buy a bednet instead”) so once you’ve heard their pitch, you can hardly claim you had no idea how you could have helped.
I like the thought experiment, but I think (unfortunately) the Singerian analogy is closer to reality.
In the “woodland commotion” case, you don’t feel bad for not going to help because, well, how could you have known this weird situation was occurring? But it doesn’t seem like the world is like that, where it’s so non-obvious how we help that no one could blame us for not seeing it.
Indeed, even if the world were like that to us initially, the situation changes as soon as someone tells you what you can do to help.
To adjust your case, suppose you hear a commotion in the distance, but then someone next to you who has binoculars, sees what’s going on and say “hey, there’s a man stuck over there, shall we go help?” Then the case becomes much like Singer’s shallow pond where you can easily help someone else at a cost to you and you know it. So all the concerns about demandingness resurface. But Singer, effective altruists, and many others in society, are basically being the guy with binoculars (“hey, do you know how you can do good? Don’t buy that latte, buy a bednet instead”) so once you’ve heard their pitch, you can hardly claim you had no idea how you could have helped.