My option, would be take out a pen and paper and take notes. If you had a camera, even better. Make notes, interview the survivors and make a name as a journalist. Case closed – problem solved!
As a philosophy professor, I have run across this thought experiment too. In fact, there’s a whole family of them, sometimes called “trolley” scenarios. (I guess trolleys can be deadly despite their cute name.)
I like your critique of the whole attempt to force us into this fantasy of playing god. There is something all too smug about the people who like to pose these conundrums.
Of course, occasionally one IS put into a position of responsibility and encounters a situation where one has to try to choose the lesser of two evils (and failing to act is itself a choice with bad consequences). I am very skeptical about the possibility of giving hard and fast rules for such situations, or a moral criterion that will let one escape from such a situation with a perfectly clear conscience. The most important thing is to care about people, and to be willing to accept one’s own responsibility and the guilt that comes with it.
Hi, Richard! I feel better knowing that my rant makes sense to a philosophy professor. On rereading it, I find myself cringing at its first-draft-itude. I would hate to think what kind of a grade it would get if I turned it in to you looking like that… 😀
Sounds like the makings of a t-shirt: diagrams of the trolley scenarios with a caption saying “This Ain’t Mister Rogers’ Trolley!”
Very though provoking.
My option, would be take out a pen and paper and take notes. If you had a camera, even better. Make notes, interview the survivors and make a name as a journalist. Case closed – problem solved!
Diabolically brilliant, Gary! A very out-of-the-box solution.
As a philosophy professor, I have run across this thought experiment too. In fact, there’s a whole family of them, sometimes called “trolley” scenarios. (I guess trolleys can be deadly despite their cute name.)
I like your critique of the whole attempt to force us into this fantasy of playing god. There is something all too smug about the people who like to pose these conundrums.
Of course, occasionally one IS put into a position of responsibility and encounters a situation where one has to try to choose the lesser of two evils (and failing to act is itself a choice with bad consequences). I am very skeptical about the possibility of giving hard and fast rules for such situations, or a moral criterion that will let one escape from such a situation with a perfectly clear conscience. The most important thing is to care about people, and to be willing to accept one’s own responsibility and the guilt that comes with it.
Hi, Richard! I feel better knowing that my rant makes sense to a philosophy professor. On rereading it, I find myself cringing at its first-draft-itude. I would hate to think what kind of a grade it would get if I turned it in to you looking like that… 😀
Sounds like the makings of a t-shirt: diagrams of the trolley scenarios with a caption saying “This Ain’t Mister Rogers’ Trolley!”
If you make the t-shirt, I guarantee it will sell like hotcakes at the American Philosophical Association conference.
It might even do better than the one that says “The sentence on the back of this t-shirt is false.” (Can you guess what it says on the back?)