It’s easy to respond to a question that doesn’t contain much information with “It depends” (which is equivalent to saying “I don’t know”), but you still have to make a guess. All else being the same, it’s better to let 1 person die than 5. Summed over all possible worlds that fall under that description, the greatest utility comes from saving the most people. Discovering that the 1 is your friend and the 5 are SS should cause you to update your probability estimate of the situation, followed by its value in your utility function. Further finding out that the SS officers are traitors on their way to assassinate Hitler and your friend is secretly trying to stop them should cause another update. There’s always some evidence that you could potentially hear that would change your understanding; refusing to decide in the absence of more evidence is a mistake. Make your best estimate and update it as you can. The only additional complexity that ethical questions have that empirical questions don’t is in your utility function. It’s equally valid to say “answers to empirical questions are usually context-dependent”, which I take to mean something like “I would update my answer if I saw more evidence”. But you still need a prior, which is what the trolley problem is meant to draw out: what prior utility estimates do utilitarianism/deontology/virtue ethics give over the action space of pulling/not pulling the lever? Discovering and comparing these priors is useful. The Harvard students are correct in answering the question as asked. Treating the thought experiment as a practical problem in which you expect more information is missing the point.
It’s only in the real world that you have to make a choice instead of saying “I don’t know”. In a real world situation you have lots of contextual information. It is the burden of the person asking an ethical question to supply all the relevant context that would be available in a real-world situation.
I disagree that anyone who poses an ethical thought experiment has a burden to supply a realistic amount of context—simplified thought experiments can be useful. I’d understand your viewpoint better if you could explain why you believe they have that burden.
The trolley problem, free from any context, is sufficient to illustrate a conflict between deontology and utilitarianism, which is all that it’s meant to do. It’s true that it’s not a realistic problem, but it makes a valid (if simple) point that would be destroyed by requiring additional context.
It’s possible for a question to be wrong. Suppose I ask “What’s 1+1? Is it 4 or 5?” (“No” is not allowed.) The question assumes the answer is 4 or 5, which is wrong.
Presenting a false dichotomy makes the same mistake. In the trolley problem, the implied dichotomy is “pull the lever” or “don’t pull the lever”. They’re both wrong. “Sometimes pull the lever” is the correct answer. If “sometimes pull the lever” isn’t an option then the only options are “always pull the lever” and “always don’t pull the lever”. This is a false dichotomy.
A thought experiment need not provide a realistic level of context. But it bears the burden of providing necessary relevant context when that context would be available in reality.
The trolley problem does illustrate the conflict between utilitarianism and deontology. It also illustrates how underspecified questions elicit nonsense answers.
Thanks for explaining—I think I understand your view better now.
I guess I just don’t see the trolley problem as asking “Is it right or wrong, under all possible circumstances matching this description, to pull the lever?” I agree that would be an invalid question, as you rightly demonstrated. My interpretation is that it asks “Is it right or wrong, summed over all possible circumstances matching this description, weighted by probability, to pull the lever?” I.e. it asks for your prior, absent any context whatsoever, which is a valid question.
Under that interpretation, the correct answer of “sometimes pull the lever” gets split into “probably pull the lever” and “probably don’t pull the lever”, which are the same in effect as “pull” and “don’t pull”. The supposition is that you have a preference in most cases, not that your answer is the same in all cases. (This is still a false dichotomy—there’s also the option of “pull the lever equally as often as not”, but I’ve never heard of anyone genuinely apathetic about the trolley problem.)
The first interpretation seems sensible enough, though, in the sense that many people who pose the trolley problem probably mean it that way. The correct response to those people is to reject the question as invalid. But I don’t think most people mean it that way. Most people ask for your best guess.
Edit: On further reflection I think the usual interpretation is closer to “Is it better to follow a general policy, over all possible circumstances matching this description, to pull the lever or not?” I think this is closer to your interpretation but I don’t think it should produce a different answer to mine.
My interpretation is that it asks “Is it right or wrong, summed over all possible circumstances matching this description, weighted by probability, to pull the lever?” I.e. it asks for your prior, absent any context whatsoever, which is a valid question.
It sounds like you realize why this doesn’t work. If you sum over all possibilities then the philosophical question of deontology vs utilitarianism disappears. Instead, it’s a practical real-world question about actual trolleys that can be answered by examining actual trolley crash data.
Edit: On further reflection I think the usual interpretation is closer to “Is it better to follow a general policy, over all possible circumstances matching this description, to pull the lever or not?” I think this is closer to your interpretation but I don’t think it should produce a different answer to mine.
This makes more sense. I argue that a “general policy” is meaningless when circumstances dominate so hard. You argue that a general policy is still meaningful. I agree that a general policy is the right way to interpret some ethical questions…depending on the context.
(This is still a false dichotomy—there’s also the option of “pull the lever equally as often as not”, but I’ve never heard of anyone genuinely apathetic about the trolley problem.)
If I were to answer “pull if it is day and don’t pull if it is night” then that would not be “I don’t know” answer but would be a “It depends” answer. Also if somebody were to say “pull if night and don’t pull if day” we can say that they disagree with the first person and both have a decided stance even if it is not decided in the “yes-no” axis.
I guess for these purposes the signficant thing is whether you can specify the conditions/delineations or would they be ad hoc random afterthougts. There is also something to be said whether the delineation would be available. Like a counterargument of “What if you don’t know whether it is day or not?” is relevant to counter with “Phase of day is usually easily and readily available”. You don’t need to rely on the hypothetical provider to condition your answer on such a thing but that conditioning might still be highly questionable (I for one think that day/night can’t seriously be a relevant factor and would think somebody trying to pass that as a serious answer would be ridicoulus)
It’s easy to respond to a question that doesn’t contain much information with “It depends” (which is equivalent to saying “I don’t know”), but you still have to make a guess. All else being the same, it’s better to let 1 person die than 5. Summed over all possible worlds that fall under that description, the greatest utility comes from saving the most people. Discovering that the 1 is your friend and the 5 are SS should cause you to update your probability estimate of the situation, followed by its value in your utility function. Further finding out that the SS officers are traitors on their way to assassinate Hitler and your friend is secretly trying to stop them should cause another update. There’s always some evidence that you could potentially hear that would change your understanding; refusing to decide in the absence of more evidence is a mistake. Make your best estimate and update it as you can.
The only additional complexity that ethical questions have that empirical questions don’t is in your utility function. It’s equally valid to say “answers to empirical questions are usually context-dependent”, which I take to mean something like “I would update my answer if I saw more evidence”. But you still need a prior, which is what the trolley problem is meant to draw out: what prior utility estimates do utilitarianism/deontology/virtue ethics give over the action space of pulling/not pulling the lever? Discovering and comparing these priors is useful. The Harvard students are correct in answering the question as asked. Treating the thought experiment as a practical problem in which you expect more information is missing the point.
Welcoming to the forum!
It’s only in the real world that you have to make a choice instead of saying “I don’t know”. In a real world situation you have lots of contextual information. It is the burden of the person asking an ethical question to supply all the relevant context that would be available in a real-world situation.
Thanks for the welcome!
I disagree that anyone who poses an ethical thought experiment has a burden to supply a realistic amount of context—simplified thought experiments can be useful. I’d understand your viewpoint better if you could explain why you believe they have that burden.
The trolley problem, free from any context, is sufficient to illustrate a conflict between deontology and utilitarianism, which is all that it’s meant to do. It’s true that it’s not a realistic problem, but it makes a valid (if simple) point that would be destroyed by requiring additional context.
It’s possible for a question to be wrong. Suppose I ask “What’s 1+1? Is it 4 or 5?” (“No” is not allowed.) The question assumes the answer is 4 or 5, which is wrong.
Presenting a false dichotomy makes the same mistake. In the trolley problem, the implied dichotomy is “pull the lever” or “don’t pull the lever”. They’re both wrong. “Sometimes pull the lever” is the correct answer. If “sometimes pull the lever” isn’t an option then the only options are “always pull the lever” and “always don’t pull the lever”. This is a false dichotomy.
A thought experiment need not provide a realistic level of context. But it bears the burden of providing necessary relevant context when that context would be available in reality.
The trolley problem does illustrate the conflict between utilitarianism and deontology. It also illustrates how underspecified questions elicit nonsense answers.
Thanks for explaining—I think I understand your view better now.
I guess I just don’t see the trolley problem as asking “Is it right or wrong, under all possible circumstances matching this description, to pull the lever?” I agree that would be an invalid question, as you rightly demonstrated. My interpretation is that it asks “Is it right or wrong, summed over all possible circumstances matching this description, weighted by probability, to pull the lever?” I.e. it asks for your prior, absent any context whatsoever, which is a valid question.
Under that interpretation, the correct answer of “sometimes pull the lever” gets split into “probably pull the lever” and “probably don’t pull the lever”, which are the same in effect as “pull” and “don’t pull”. The supposition is that you have a preference in most cases, not that your answer is the same in all cases.
(This is still a false dichotomy—there’s also the option of “pull the lever equally as often as not”, but I’ve never heard of anyone genuinely apathetic about the trolley problem.)
The first interpretation seems sensible enough, though, in the sense that many people who pose the trolley problem probably mean it that way. The correct response to those people is to reject the question as invalid. But I don’t think most people mean it that way. Most people ask for your best guess.
Edit: On further reflection I think the usual interpretation is closer to “Is it better to follow a general policy, over all possible circumstances matching this description, to pull the lever or not?” I think this is closer to your interpretation but I don’t think it should produce a different answer to mine.
It sounds like you realize why this doesn’t work. If you sum over all possibilities then the philosophical question of deontology vs utilitarianism disappears. Instead, it’s a practical real-world question about actual trolleys that can be answered by examining actual trolley crash data.
This makes more sense. I argue that a “general policy” is meaningless when circumstances dominate so hard. You argue that a general policy is still meaningful. I agree that a general policy is the right way to interpret some ethical questions…depending on the context.
I like this answer. It’s delectably unsatisfying.
If I were to answer “pull if it is day and don’t pull if it is night” then that would not be “I don’t know” answer but would be a “It depends” answer. Also if somebody were to say “pull if night and don’t pull if day” we can say that they disagree with the first person and both have a decided stance even if it is not decided in the “yes-no” axis.
I guess for these purposes the signficant thing is whether you can specify the conditions/delineations or would they be ad hoc random afterthougts. There is also something to be said whether the delineation would be available. Like a counterargument of “What if you don’t know whether it is day or not?” is relevant to counter with “Phase of day is usually easily and readily available”. You don’t need to rely on the hypothetical provider to condition your answer on such a thing but that conditioning might still be highly questionable (I for one think that day/night can’t seriously be a relevant factor and would think somebody trying to pass that as a serious answer would be ridicoulus)