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That argument works for abortion, too. Try it and see how far it gets you in the pro-choice camp. If a woman is perfectly entitled to choose to terminate the life she conceived by her own actions (we're leaving rape etc. out of this), then I have no obligations towards a stranger that is nothing to me and who I might not even know is drowning had I chosen to walk down a different path.
The argument of the Drowning Child depends heavily on "if you say yes, you sound like you think you have a moral obligation to save lives even if it costs you money". But what if I say no? That cuts off the argument, which is then reduced to "But you're supposed to say yes!"
And why am I supposed to? Because of the lingering attitudes carried over from the Christianity which influenced Western civilisation, and that's an entirely different set of moral assumptions and foundational principles to what Singer et al. are trying to evoke and invoke. It's perfectly feasible for me to say "I prefer to take care of my clothes, which cost me money I had to work to earn; I don't see any obligation to some stranger's brat who may just as well die and reduce the surplus population".
Ah ah ah, you are the one who introduced it as having emotional salience: drowning child you are personally causing to die? But if it doesn't matter whether or not I am personally causing this child to die, then what is the problem with standing by and letting it happen? The emotional salience you mean is "the effect of seeing a child dying", not "child you are personally causing to die". But what if I'm cold-hearted and emotionless and don't feel affected by "oh no, a child is dying!" What if I am on my way to work at an abortion clinic as an abortion provider, and I see twenty pregnancies a week that could grow into a kid like this, but I'm asked to terminate them? Are the EA crowd going to claim I should care about "causing the child to die" in this instance? Why should I care about a full-term plus pregnancy that is being terminated by good old Mother Nature right now?
Okay, let's say I admit I should jump in and save the kid. What about all the drowning children I don't see drowning, those who are drowning fifty or two hundred or a thousand miles away? Am I obligated to wander around all day on the look-out for drowning children I could save, were I to happen upon them at the right moment? I don't think anyone would argue "If you save the child you saw on your way to work, you are now obliged to spend all day going around all the rivers, ponds, swimming pools and bodies of water in the neighbourhood to save any potential drowning children". What then is the difference about "if you save this child, then you are obliged to save children far away by giving us money to do Good Stuff".
I do think you should save drowning children, and I even think you should give to charity. But this argument has nothing to do with reason or logical thinking or any thing of that nature, it relies solely on the emotional heft of reaction to the scenario of "a young of our species is in danger of death" and the instinct programmed into us to protect the young of the species. It's pure feeling, and it's phooey. It's emotional blackmail dressed up as "this is a logically constructed argument to rationally convince you".
Most of this is factually true but idk how it matters?
because there aren't that many drowning children. On the other hand, there are many children with malaria.
Just saying 'feeling' doesn't mean anything. Pain is a 'feeling', yet it is also 'objectively' worthwhile to avoid cutting yourself with a knife, and "pain" is more of an understanding of that than a thing on its own. If you say 'that knife is there avoid getting cut', that's appealing to pain, but ... not 'appealing to pain' in the sense that if you e.g. didn't feel pain it'd still be worth avoiding, because 'pain' is just a way of understanding that!
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