On so-called "Trolley Problems"
December 6, 2024•879 words
Trolley Problems are a class of thought-experiments in which someone is placed in a situation where they have to make a decision - usually under time pressure but not always - where the only two options involve people dying. In one case five people die, in the other 'only' one person. The question is posed: What ought one (anyone? or just you?) do?
These cases have captured the imagination of amateur philosophers and generated a small library worth of discussion. However, most of that discussion is framed as if, for each specific problem anyway, there is a 'solution' to be found, a correct answer. After all, if you are presented with a problem, the natural thing to do is to seek a solution. Let's call this 'solutionism'.
Solutionism comes from the dominance of STEM and legal disciplines in our conception of expertise, and thus by implication wisdom,1 and the correlated prevalence of a definition of intelligence, and thus reasoning, as problem-solving.
Trolley problems give a good example of the failings of solutionism. A real person, not an abstract fiction, unfortunate enough to be placed in the sort of situation described in the thought experiment does not respond by seeking a 'solution'. That would be an inhuman, even inhumane, response to the challenging situation. Rather, someone in such a situation is making a choice which expresses, perhaps more clearly than ever before, their values and will partially determine who they are from then onwards. They are 'making their mind up'.
All the most difficult decisions we face as adults have this character. Choices about whether and where to go to university, what to study, which jobs to take, about partners and friends, about whether to have children and how to bring them up. All these express our values, make those values more determinate, and contribute to who we become. They are not problems with solutions. And nor are so-called 'Trolley Problems'.
Philosophical Digression
The point I have just made should be persuasive on its own merits and not need the backing of more abstract philosophical considerations. So if you are persuaded and not inclined to greater abstraction, stop reading now. Otherwise, here goes:
The term 'ethics' in contemporary discourse has become ambiguous between three distinct - but related - branches of enquiry:
- 'Ethics' is one name for an academic discipline, also called moral philosophy, which studies the nature of good and bad, right and wrong.
- 'Ethics' is also what we call a system of rules or guidelines which are designed to reduce harm and promote social well-being.
- 'Ethics' is a way of making choices in your life for which you take personal responsibility and justify by your own values and beliefs. This is best called ‘being ethical’ or ‘the ethical life’.
Now, Trolley Problems were introduced by Philippa Foot as a way of making a point in moral philosophy, about the significance of the distinction between doing harm and allowing harm, which could be used to explain different 'intuitions' in structurally similar cases. The widespread discussion of trolley problems since then has taken them to be an ethical problem in the second sense: a challenge for formulating a system of rules or guidelines. Hence the solutionist approach. What I have just argued is that any person actually facing a trolley problem would have to make an ethical decision in the third sense. In fact, neither moral philosophy nor an ethical system would help them and anyone who made their decision on such a basis, perhaps someone who said 'I am a utilitarian so ...', would display ethical inadequacy in the third sense, because they would be avoiding the challenge that actually faced them and 'outsourcing' the decision to a different intellectual project. We might even go so far as to think it is a form of moral immaturity.
In making this claim, I have committed myself to a view about the relation between the three ethical projects, namely the priority of being ethical over moral philosophy and ethical principles. However, in so doing I am making a claim in moral philosophy and different moral philosophies will deny that. For example, some moral philosophies hold that moral philosophy itself will determine a system of rules which in turn determine what it is to be ethical (Kantianism); others might hold that moral rights determine rules or obligations which in turn determine what it is to be ethical (deontology); and yet others might hold that moral philosophy directly determines what it is to be ethical (utilitarianism).
This is not the place to argue against such views, but to note that what I said above about solutionist thinking and its inappropriateness to anyone actually facing the sort of hard choice described by a trolley problem is one argument in favour of the priority of being ethical. And it points to a more general point that opposing moral philosophies over-intellectualise the ethical life, that they force into everyday ethical decisions a range of thoughts which are alien to most of the 8 billion people just trying to get on with their lives without becoming a bad person.
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To be fair, this problem-solving conception of wisdom has deep roots. The 'wisdom of Solomon' is largely just finding clever solutions to problems. ↩