Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:10:37.542Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

I, Trolley: Self-Redirection and Hybrid Trolley Cases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2021

Dustin Locke Open the ORCID record for Dustin Locke [Opens in a new window]
Dustin Locke*
Affiliation:
Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, USA
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

While it is permissible to switch the trolley in the classic Switch case, it is not permissible to push the stranger in the classic Footbridge (aka, ‘Push’) case. But what may we do in cases that offer both a ‘switch-like’ option and a ‘push-like’ option? Surprisingly, we may choose the push-like option, provided that it has better consequences than the switch-like option. We arrive at this conclusion by taking ourselves seriously – not just as agents who might redirect threats – but as threats who might be redirected by agents.

Type
Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , December 2021 , pp. 458 - 473
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bader, Ralf. 2019. Agent-Relative Prerogatives and Suboptimal Beneficence, Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 9: 223–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broome, John. 1991. Weighing Goods: Equality, Uncertainty, and Time (Oxford: Blackwell).Google Scholar
Buchak, Lara. 2016. Decision Theory, in Oxford Handbook of Probability and Philosophy, ed. by Hitchcock, Christopher and Hajek, Alan (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 789–815.Google Scholar
Foot, Philippa. 1967. The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect, Oxford Review 5: 5–15.Google Scholar
Greene, Joshua. 2007. The Secret Joke of Kant's Soul, Moral Psychology, Volume 3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Disease, and Development Cambridge, ed. by Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter (MA: MIT Press), 35–79.Google Scholar
Greene, Joshua. 2014. Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality: Why Cognitive (Neuro)Science Matters for Ethics, Ethics 124: 695–726.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horton, Joe. 2017. The All or Nothing Problem, Journal of Philosophy 114: 94–104.10.5840/jphil201711427CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamm, Frances. 1998. Grouping and the Imposition of Loss, Utilitas 10: 292–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamm, Frances. 2000. The Doctrine of Triple Effect and Why a Rational Agent Need Not Intend the Means to His End, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 74: 41–57.Google Scholar
Kamm, Frances. 2007. Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamm, Frances. 2015. The Trolley Problem Mysteries (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liao, Matthew, Wiegmann, Alex, Alexander, Joshua, and Vong, Gerard. 2012. Putting the Trolley in Order: Experimental Philosophy and the Loop Case, Philosophical Psychology 25: 661–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locke, Dustin. 2020. The Normative Significance of Cognitive Science Reconsidered, Philosophical Quarterly 70: 502–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norcross, Alastair. 2008. Off Her Trolley? Frances Kamm and the Metaphysics of Morality. Utilitas 20: 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otsuka, Michael. 2008. Double Effect, Triple Effect and the Trolley Problem: Squaring the Circle in Looping Cases, Utilitas 20: 92–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettit, Philip. 1991. Decision Theory and Folk Psychology, in Essays in the Foundations of Decision Theory, ed. by Bacharach, Michael and Hurley, Susan (Oxford: Blackwell), 147–75.Google Scholar
Pummer, Theron. 2019. All or Nothing, but If Not All, Next Best or Nothing, Journal of Philosophy 116: 278–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwitzgebel, Eric and Cushman, Fiery. 2012. Expertise in Moral Reasoning? Order Effects on Moral Judgment in Professional Philosophers and Non-Philosophers, Mind and Language 27: 135–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1993. Internal Consistency of Choice, Econometrica 61: 495–521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson, Judith Jarvis. 1976. A Defense of Abortion, in Biomedical Ethics and the Law, ed. by Humber, James M. and Almeder, Robert F. (New York: Plenum Press), 39–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson, Judith Jarvis. 1985. The Trolley Problem, The Yale Law Journal 94: 1395–1415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson, Judith Jarvis. 2008. Turning the Trolley, Philosophy & Public Affairs 36: 359–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Unger, Peter. 1992. Causing and Preventing Harm, Philosophical Studies: An International Journal in the Analytic Tradition 65: 227–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Unger, Peter. 1996. Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiegmann, Alex, Horvath, Joachim, and Meyer, Karina. 2020. Intuitive expertise and irrelevant options, Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy 3: 275–310.Google Scholar