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Matt_Stevenson comments on The Problem With Trolley Problems - Less Wrong
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I think you are looking at the Trolley Problem out of context.
The Trolley Problem isn't suppose to represent a real-world situation. Its a simplified thought experiment designed to illustrate the variability of morality in slightly differing scenarios. They don't offer solutions to moral questions, they highlight the problems.
I understand the supposed purpose of trolley problems, but I think they're conducive to poor quality thinking none the less.
Right, but I think there's better ways of going about it. I wanted to keep the post brief and information-dense so I didn't list alternative problems, but there's a number you could use based in real history. For instance, a city is about to be in lost in war, and the military commander is going through his options - do you order some men to stay behind and fight to the death to cover the retreat of the others, ask for volunteers to do it, draw lots? Try to have everyone retreat, even though you think there's a larger chance your whole force could be destroyed? If some defenders stay, does the commander lead the defensive sacrificing force himself or lead the retreat? Etc, etc.
That sort of example would include imperfect information, secondary effects, human nature, and many different options. I think trolley problems are constructed so poorly that they're conducive to poor quality thought. There's plenty of examples you could use to discuss hard choices that don't suffer from those problems.
The trolley-problem is interesting in that it's a very simple way to show how most people's morals are not based on some framework like consequentialism (any flavor) or deontology or virtue ethics or... but are based on some vague intuitions that are not very consistent - with the ethical frameworks used post-hoc for rationalization.
The problem could be complicated (made more realistic) by adding unknowns, probabilities and so on, but would that bring any new insights?
I would compare the trolley problem to a hypothetical physics problem. Just like a physicist will assume a frictionless surface and no air resistance, the trolley problem is important because it discards everything else. It is a reductionist attempt at exploring moral thought.
Interesting thought, but it wouldn't be difficult to take the time to make situations more lifelike and realistic. There's plenty of real life situations that let you explore moral thought without the flaws listed above.
It isn't necessarily difficult for a good physicist to factor in friction and air resistance, either. But those are distractions, unnecessarily drawing effort and attention away from the specific force actually being studied. That's what the trolley problem also tries to do: create a simplified environment so that a single variable can be examined.
But physicists don't ignore friction when performing experiments, they do so only in teaching. If philosophers used trolley problems only to teach ethics ("Push one fat philosopher onto the tracks, to save two drug addicts.") or to teach metaethics ("An adherent of virtue ethics probably wouldn't push") then I doubt that lionhearted would complain.
But we have psychologists using trolley problems to perform experiments (or, if from Harvard, to publish papers in which they claim to have conducted experiments). That is what I understand lionhearted to be objecting to.
Excellent point; conceded.
(I haven't made up my mind yet about whether I agree with the thesis of the post, so I'm making arguments for both sides as I think of them and seeing which ones get refuted.)
Physicists ignore friction when teaching, when thinking, and when performing experiments. Doing so reduces confusion, and allows for greater understanding of the effects of friction once attention is turned to it.
The fact that the analogous situation in moral philosophy increases confusion is revealing.
Yes. It reveals that physicists understand their subject well enough to know what can profitably be ignored ... but moral philosophers do not.
I don't disagree.
I think a better example than frictionless surfaces and no air resistance would be idealized symmetries. Once something like Coulomb's Law was postulated physicists would imagine the implications of charges on infinite wires and planes to make interesting predictions.
We use the trolley problem and its variations as thought experiments in order to make predictions we can test further with MRIs and the like.
So a publication on interesting trolley problem results would be like theoretical physics paper showing relativity predicts some property of black holes.
Nitpick: I think you're implying that no philosophers are drug addicts.
Suppose that both the people on the bridge are sufficiently heavy to stop the trolley. Should one of them sacrifice themself, or are both obligated to try to preserve their lives by fighting not to be thrown off?
Sorry. What I meant to suggest is that drug addicts are thin.