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You're really over thinking this. The classical problem is more or less designed to be a utilitarian thought experiment. Are you willing to be actively unethica

by dsacco 10y ago

You're really over thinking this. The classical problem is more or less designed to be a utilitarian thought experiment. Are you willing to be actively unethical for a greater ethical action? Are you willing to be passively unethical to allow a greater ethical action to happen? Is it possible to be passively unethical? There is enough philosophical meat in the thought experiment without going "out of bounds" and trying to undermine the question. Your comment would make for a good modern essay, but it frankly dismisses the spirit of the problem. Good faith arguments in philosophical debates require both parties to have a common set of premises. If you don't both work from those premises, you need to go "down" to your next set of shared premises and start arguing "up" from there. If you don't do this, you're just talking past each other and you end up in a Wittgenstein-ian limbo where each of you is arguing coherently but disparately and no one is going to take the other's point. Given this, it's not a good faith argument against the trolley problem to say that an action doesn't make sense due to premises that are not typically included in the classical problem. Furthermore, the only reason we have thought experiments like this is because it is difficult to reason in the abstract without formal training. Using concrete allegories helps to give participants mental "skin in the game" to illustrate whether or not their opinions are coherent. Allow me to restate this problem: "Given a simulation where you have the choice between certainly observing five people die by taking no action, or certainly saving five people by taking an action that certainly kills one person, and all persons are equally familiar to you, what do you do?" Now, a valid response is to disagree with my problem as stated. That's fine, but then we need to argue something else because we're no longer talking about the trolley problem as it is classically defined and intended.

pdkl95 10y ago
> Is it possible to be passively unethical? If that's the question you want to ask, then the problem is badly under-specified. > "out of bounds" Including the prior probability that the situation can even happen is important information; if a specific value for this probability was desired, the problem should have included it. > dismisses the spirit of the problem Quite a few people in this thread seem are dismissing the Bayesian solution even though it does resolve an ethical dilemma. Is it better to take an unethical action to prevent a greater tragedy? If the situation is very unusual and easily-confused human senses are a more probable explanation, then the ethical response is to recognize your own limitations. Leaving out these details results in a model that won't actually match anything in the real world.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Leaving out these details results in a model that won't actually match anything in the real world. Yes. It's not supposed to.
  - dsacco 10y ago
    Correct - because it's a thought "experiment", not a physics experiment. There is an attempt at logical and rational rigor, but there is a reason philosophy is not a hard science. It doesn't attempt to model the world accurately, it attempts to make concrete understanding from abstract principles. Unlike the sciences, the experiments are not designed to conclusive, they're designed to be instructive. One could take issue with philosophy as a discipline for working this way, but "them's the rules."
lisper 10y ago
> Are you willing to be actively unethical But the details matter with respect to the meaning of the word "active". Pushing someone off a bridge and watching them die is very different from flipping a switch from the "five people die" to the "one person dies" position.
- blowski 10y ago
  You're taking a decision which results in the death of those people. The trolley problem is about showing how people's attitudes change when they become responsible, instead of being bystanders.
  - lisper 10y ago
    That's what it's supposed to be about, but the details matter. You can get different results by tweaking the story in different ways. For example: You are seated at a console. In front of you is a button. If you don't push the button, five randomly selected people will die. If you do push the button, only one randomly selected person will die. That is all you know. Do you push the button? Or if that still feels like a moral dilemma to you, try this: You are seated at a console. In front of you is a button. If you push the button you will save the lives of four randomly selected people who would otherwise die. Do you push the button?
    - blowski 10y ago
      It doesn't map the real world, and it's not supposed to. It's a model, and like all models, it's designed to make sense of the world by reducing its complexity.
      - pessimizer 10y ago
        But the problem is that it is needlessly complicated, and the complications are what make the decisionmaking difficult. If the question was "You must flip a switch to the left or to the right. If you flip it to the right, one person will die. If you flip it to the left, five people will die. Again, you must flip the switch. Which way do you flip it?" everybody would give the same answer. Instead, of "you must flip the switch" you get a speeding train. Instead of the switch you get fat people and bridges. Are the five people children and does the fat person have heart trouble? Is the fat person fat because he's greedy, or does he have a glandular problem. Will anyone see me pushing the fat man? And again, what guarantee do I have that a fat man's body will stop a train? How old is the fat man? How young are the kids? Are there suspicious looking people around who, if the train fails to run over the five people, will just back the train up and try again?
mrob 10y ago
The trolley problem is hard to think about, because like the prisoner's dilemma, it deliberately ignores the implied context. Both problems should really go something like this: "You are suddenly transported into a magical portal. You arrive in the home of a powerful magical creature. It explains to you what has happened, and that you are not crazy. It gives you as long as you like to investigate this and convince yourself that it's right. It tells you that it has a one time chance to transport you to a parallel universe for a few minutes. It has never happened before, and it will never happen again, and you will never be able to prove it happened. Nobody in the parallel universe except those directly involved will believe it either. You are then transported to the parallel universe, and the trolley problem/prisoners dilemma happens. Then you are immediately returned home and the magical creature vanishes, never to interact with our universe again." Under those conditions, I would take the utilitarian solution. In the real word we have unintended consequences, and utilitarian solutions are uncomputable. Deontology is at least fair and predictable.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  Under those conditions, everyone would pick the utilitarian solution. There lies the problem IMO: psychologists carrying out experiments about "morality" when they have absolutely no theory of morality. Lacking this, they're left with "two of the same bad thing is worse than one of that exact same bad thing," and limit themselves to problems of relative morality, ignoring the fact that you can't do the same bad thing twice. Ignoring is a mild way to put it, actually, because all of their experiments involve doing multiple additions and subtractions and substitutions. For them, morality is definitely a real number. I think the complexity of these hypotheticals is entirely a result of a need for varied responses. The real answer is that there's not enough information given to make a determination. In the case of your hypothetical, there's clearly enough information (because one of the premises is that you have all possible information.) The question for the subject becomes easier, and the tough question becomes "Why is this horrible magical creature doing this, and how can we make it stop?"
im4w1l 10y ago
>The classical problem is more or less designed to be a utilitarian thought experiment. Are you willing to be actively unethical for a greater ethical action? That may be what it is designed to do. But maybe the design is flawed, and it doesn't actually test that? Maybe when you ask random people on the street (or undergrads or whatever) this question, all those details that you don't want to matter, turn out to have a big effect.

by dsacco 10y ago

pdkl95 10y ago

> Is it possible to be passively unethical? If that's the question you want to ask, then the problem is badly under-specified. > "out of bounds" Including the prior probability that the situation can even happen is important information; if a specific value for this probability was desired, the problem should have included it. > dismisses the spirit of the problem Quite a few people in this thread seem are dismissing the Bayesian solution even though it does resolve an ethical dilemma. Is it better to take an unethical action to prevent a greater tragedy? If the situation is very unusual and easily-confused human senses are a more probable explanation, then the ethical response is to recognize your own limitations. Leaving out these details results in a model that won't actually match anything in the real world.

icebraining 10y ago
Leaving out these details results in a model that won't actually match anything in the real world. Yes. It's not supposed to.
- dsacco 10y ago
  Correct - because it's a thought "experiment", not a physics experiment. There is an attempt at logical and rational rigor, but there is a reason philosophy is not a hard science. It doesn't attempt to model the world accurately, it attempts to make concrete understanding from abstract principles. Unlike the sciences, the experiments are not designed to conclusive, they're designed to be instructive. One could take issue with philosophy as a discipline for working this way, but "them's the rules."

lisper 10y ago

> Are you willing to be actively unethical But the details matter with respect to the meaning of the word "active". Pushing someone off a bridge and watching them die is very different from flipping a switch from the "five people die" to the "one person dies" position.

blowski 10y ago
You're taking a decision which results in the death of those people. The trolley problem is about showing how people's attitudes change when they become responsible, instead of being bystanders.
- lisper 10y ago
  That's what it's supposed to be about, but the details matter. You can get different results by tweaking the story in different ways. For example: You are seated at a console. In front of you is a button. If you don't push the button, five randomly selected people will die. If you do push the button, only one randomly selected person will die. That is all you know. Do you push the button? Or if that still feels like a moral dilemma to you, try this: You are seated at a console. In front of you is a button. If you push the button you will save the lives of four randomly selected people who would otherwise die. Do you push the button?
  - blowski 10y ago
    It doesn't map the real world, and it's not supposed to. It's a model, and like all models, it's designed to make sense of the world by reducing its complexity.
    - pessimizer 10y ago
      But the problem is that it is needlessly complicated, and the complications are what make the decisionmaking difficult. If the question was "You must flip a switch to the left or to the right. If you flip it to the right, one person will die. If you flip it to the left, five people will die. Again, you must flip the switch. Which way do you flip it?" everybody would give the same answer. Instead, of "you must flip the switch" you get a speeding train. Instead of the switch you get fat people and bridges. Are the five people children and does the fat person have heart trouble? Is the fat person fat because he's greedy, or does he have a glandular problem. Will anyone see me pushing the fat man? And again, what guarantee do I have that a fat man's body will stop a train? How old is the fat man? How young are the kids? Are there suspicious looking people around who, if the train fails to run over the five people, will just back the train up and try again?

mrob 10y ago

The trolley problem is hard to think about, because like the prisoner's dilemma, it deliberately ignores the implied context. Both problems should really go something like this: "You are suddenly transported into a magical portal. You arrive in the home of a powerful magical creature. It explains to you what has happened, and that you are not crazy. It gives you as long as you like to investigate this and convince yourself that it's right. It tells you that it has a one time chance to transport you to a parallel universe for a few minutes. It has never happened before, and it will never happen again, and you will never be able to prove it happened. Nobody in the parallel universe except those directly involved will believe it either. You are then transported to the parallel universe, and the trolley problem/prisoners dilemma happens. Then you are immediately returned home and the magical creature vanishes, never to interact with our universe again." Under those conditions, I would take the utilitarian solution. In the real word we have unintended consequences, and utilitarian solutions are uncomputable. Deontology is at least fair and predictable.

pessimizer 10y ago
Under those conditions, everyone would pick the utilitarian solution. There lies the problem IMO: psychologists carrying out experiments about "morality" when they have absolutely no theory of morality. Lacking this, they're left with "two of the same bad thing is worse than one of that exact same bad thing," and limit themselves to problems of relative morality, ignoring the fact that you can't do the same bad thing twice. Ignoring is a mild way to put it, actually, because all of their experiments involve doing multiple additions and subtractions and substitutions. For them, morality is definitely a real number. I think the complexity of these hypotheticals is entirely a result of a need for varied responses. The real answer is that there's not enough information given to make a determination. In the case of your hypothetical, there's clearly enough information (because one of the premises is that you have all possible information.) The question for the subject becomes easier, and the tough question becomes "Why is this horrible magical creature doing this, and how can we make it stop?"

im4w1l 10y ago

>The classical problem is more or less designed to be a utilitarian thought experiment. Are you willing to be actively unethical for a greater ethical action? That may be what it is designed to do. But maybe the design is flawed, and it doesn't actually test that? Maybe when you ask random people on the street (or undergrads or whatever) this question, all those details that you don't want to matter, turn out to have a big effect.