My 9-year old daughter was rather curious about my Trolley cartoons, so we made a podcast. Her art criticism is spot-on, no question, and she makes some pretty strong moral claims. What do you think? (Don’t worry. I have her permission to post this. I interviewed my 6-year old, as well, but she declined to give consent to publish her philosophical work at this time.)
{ 18 comments }
John 10.07.10 at 1:42 pm
This should be a regular podcast series! In addition to the excellent art criticism (the only people not “sleeping” are the ones with the power to determine the fate of others), I thought it was interesting that your daughter spoke of being responsible for murder by making any intervention at all.
John Holbo 10.07.10 at 2:04 pm
Yes, she makes two basic assumptions – well, after only very minimal prodding against the ‘do nothing’ options: 1) letting people die when you could easily save them is murder. 2) intentionally killing the innocent, even for the sake of the greater good, is murder. Kind of a tough knot.
Salient 10.07.10 at 2:20 pm
“How is that guy going to be fat enough to stop the trolley?”
I totally, totally win.
Or perhaps I am nine years old.
Dingbat 10.07.10 at 2:21 pm
She also asks the only important questions: How did this situation come to be? And will this really work? For the first, moral responsibility lies with the creator(s) of this twisted scenario. Yes, the idea may be that this illustrates situations into which we are thrust, situations created by social and historical forces that reach back for years, but that’s a case where the “You” of the situation should have acted sooner.
For the second, her dubiety that pushing a fat man in front of trolley is warranted, and goes directly, I think to the heart of the situation: Philosophers should not be looking for excuses to kill people. There are plenty of real-world cases where killing is unavoidable, why revel in them, and try to stretch their limits and see how crazy a situation you have to come up with to get Mother Teresa to machine-gun an orphan? This is the “philosophy” of 24, a “philosophy” that justifies torture, a “philosophy” that contains neither love nor wisdom.
The Modesto Kid 10.07.10 at 2:55 pm
A philosophy that contains neither love nor wisdom would be a great subtitle for something.
John Holbo 10.07.10 at 3:00 pm
Yes, and then we could publish a ‘for dummies’ introduction to whatever it was a subtitle for.
Salient 10.07.10 at 3:51 pm
A philosophy that contains neither love nor wisdom would be a great subtitle for something.
The Road to Serfdom?
grackle 10.07.10 at 11:10 pm
Having missed the previous opportunity, I want to say how much I love your Trolley illustrations. They seem influenced (in a great way) by the classic UPA cartoons I grew up with – Gerald McBoing Boing and Mr. Magoo. Your art work is getting better and better.
implied otter 10.08.10 at 2:06 am
So, first: man that was brilliant. And “A Philosophy that Contains Neither Love Nor Wisdom! For Dummies” is a pretty good secret real title for the books that proliferate in the objectively pro-Satan churches we have now.
John Holbo 10.08.10 at 3:28 am
Yes, grackle, I’m riding the Gerald McBoingBoing UPI style thing for all it’s worth.
Henri Vieuxtemps 10.08.10 at 6:23 am
Doing this to minors should be against the law.
John Holbo 10.09.10 at 2:03 am
Tossing them in front of trolleys, you mean?
Charles St. Pierre 10.09.10 at 4:36 am
Suppose you have 5 people starving and you have one person who eats enough for those five people to survive…
musical mountaineer 10.09.10 at 10:19 pm
The previous post on the Trolley Problem was the first I’d heard of this problem, and that thread expired before I was ready to comment. So I’m glad to have a second chance.
Let’s stipulate that if you decide to push the fat man, there is no doubt whatsoever as to the outcome. He will definitely die, and the trolley will definitely stop. So, on pure moral-philosophy grounds, you can’t even work up a split hair’s worth of difference between the two scenarios. Either way, you bear no responsibility for the initial setup. Either way, you kill one to save many, or you don’t. Yet even with this stipulation, throwing the switch is clearly the right thing to do, but pushing the fat man is ambiguous at the very, very best. Why the difference?
If you take the question out of the abstract and consider the hypotheticals as whole, real-life situations, an answer presents itself. There is a social consequence to pushing the fat man, which does not apply to throwing the switch. If you push the fat man, there will be at least a moment when he knows you for his killer. To be known as a killer is among the most powerful of social stigmas. For this reason, the conscience recoils from the act.
A bit of a moral dimension arises from this, when the feelings of the victim are considered. To be run over by a trolley is awful enough, but to be pushed in front of a trolley by a stranger seems somehow worse. Though the final outcome is the same, in the process it seems a greater crime has been committed in the latter case. This moral difference, while it seems subtle, is potentially very deep. How would society treat a switch-thrower? As a hero, probably, for making an agonizing decision which saved lives. How would society treat a fat-man-pusher? As a criminal, at least at first. Whether saving the lives of the people down the track would count as mitigation in a court of law, is hardly assured.
Someone in the first thread said something about “proximity”, which seemed pretty meaningless to me at the time. And so it is, as long as you try to work out the problem in abstract philosophical terms. But when you bring in the social/human element, proximity becomes a real consideration. Anti-war people sometimes complain about modern technological warfare, which allows mass killing to be conducted anonymously and at a distance. This distance, they say, makes killing easier (and war more likely), by reducing or eliminating the social and psychological consequences to the killer.
Myles SG 10.09.10 at 11:40 pm
She also asks the only important questions: How did this situation come to be? And will this really work? For the first, moral responsibility lies with the creator(s) of this twisted scenario. Yes, the idea may be that this illustrates situations into which we are thrust, situations created by social and historical forces that reach back for years, but that’s a case where the “You†of the situation should have acted sooner.
I think the point of this was predicated on the limited scope of individual moral agency. That is, you have moral agency only to the extent where you are able to influence or control the course of events. The course of events which led to five people being tied to a rail track is beyond your control or influence, and thus beyond the scope of moral agency. But here’s the thing; just because the thing which made this so screwed up was beyond you doesn’t absolve you of the duty to exercise moral agency within the conditions to which you are thrust.
Of course, certain arguments nowadays are predicated on the assumption that sometimes the situation is so screwed up that indeed the individual is absolved of moral agency. I don’t agree with that assessment, but there it is.
Also, it’s immensely uncomfy to think that an 11-year-old reaches the level of cognition that I only reached at the end of high school.
Ellis Goldberg 10.10.10 at 12:18 am
Just out of curiosity, what happens if you change the trolley problem so that there is no second track and no fat man but you’re standing on the bridge with a Stinger and the only person on the trolley is the conductor? How do people respond if you use the missile to destroy the trolley (and the conductor who presumably because “the brakes have failed” has no moral responsibility) before it crashes into the five? And if there is a conductor and a single passenger? This would seem to implicate proximity and responsibility (as well as whether the “fat” man would really stop the trolley) more clearly.
Nancy Lebovitz 10.10.10 at 9:24 am
Is the fat man obligated to throw himself in front of the trolley?
musical mountaineer 10.10.10 at 7:47 pm
The problem with that scenario is, a trolley’s IR signature is insufficiently distinct for a Stinger to lock onto it. It is therefore impossible to evaluate the moral implications.
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