A Cultural Fascination)

I do not know if moral dilemma thought experiments were a fascination of earlier ages, but they certainly are in this era. We have many theoretical situations, torturously contrived to try and force the participant into morally compromising him- or herself, no matter what choice is made.

In this series I’m going to try and discredit these false moral dilemmas and also try to see where the desire for them comes from. Why do we think that it is sometimes impossible to be moral or why do we want that to be the case?

For today, we’ll start by examining one of the most popular moral dilemma thought experiments out there.

Imagine a Trolley)

We’ve all heard of the trolley problem, in which a trolley is barreling down the tracks towards five people tied to the railway. You, alone, stand by a switch that can divert the trolley onto a second track, but there is another person tied to that track. Is it better to remain uninvolved and let more people die, or to take action, making you personally responsible for the death of one person?

This is, of course, a ludicrous setup, one that I think we can safely say no one has ever encountered in the real world. What is more, if you try to find any creative options outside of the two originally provided, the person presenting the problem will always artificially shoot those down.

“No, you can’t signal the train to stop in time. No, you can’t untie the people on the tracks. No, you can’t throw yourself on the tracks to try and force the train to stop. Why? Because you just can’t, you have to only choose from the two options that you’ve been given.”

Manufactured Dilemmas)

While the intention of the thought experiment is to get you to appreciate and consider difficult moral dilemmas, the fact that it is so unrealistic speaks to how scarce moral dilemmas really are. I’m not saying that they don’t ever exist, we’ll examine some genuine ones later, but if most of these situations have to be manufactured, then clearly moral clarity is the norm, not the exception.