As thought experiments related to ethics goes, the “Trolley Problem” always bothered me. It is a classic “there is no right choice” scenario, which I would contend is the wrong way to frame it from the beginning – there are no IDEAL choices, that’s the correct way of looking at life.
But what I’ve come to understand is this: the Trolley Problem bothers me because in reality it’s just a Skinner Box – an experimental prison for torture and applied logic, period. You can build a box big enough for a person, and you can do all KINDS of fucked up shit.
For example: imagine you were trapped in a cage, and at the center of the cage is a BIG RED BUTTON. A lab tech over a PA system tells you that you MUST press the red button every time the bell rings, or a person in another room dies. Each time, someone dies. Better yet, they show you, on a monitor, the killing – could be fake, but do you really want to see it to make sure it’s “real”? In this situation, what do you do?
Now, imagine there are TWO BUTTONS, the red one and a BLACK one …
Every time you hear a bell, you press the red one and one person dies, you press the black one and your child gets an electric shock. If you press no button, a random person AND your kid dies …
All of these scenarios can get more grotesque, to the point where a fair philosopher might say: isn’t this just kidnapping and torture? ANS: yes
The Trolley Problem, like the Skinner Box, is a form of imprisonment with torture – and in such scenarios it’s hard to see how ANY ethical choice is not coerced, and therefore not a choice at all.
Once you recognize the Trolley Problem as a coerced environment, then you should dismiss the thought experiment for that reason alone – there are no valid COERCED ethical choices …
It’s simply “do what I say or die”, and that’s kidnapping, not ethics.
The real purpose of the Trolley Problem is not to elicit discussion among philosophy students, nope …
Its real purpose is to convince MULTIPLE GENERATIONS of philosophy students that all choices are crappy, and so it doesn’t matter …
Trolley Problem == Ethical Nihilism
[curated: 3/31/2023]
