A simple question and a complicated answer. Most of us think we have a clear sense of right and wrong but how do we think about these things>
About 50 years ago an English philosopher posed a simple question to shed some light on our thinking processes in thinking about right and wrong. It is called the trolley problem and although most Americans will find it a bit out of ordinary experience, it is easy to imagine.
Trolleys run on tracks. You don’t see them often in America anymore. Most of us may have heard about them from parent or grandparents or seen them on vacations. But imagine a trolley running down a track such that there would be a certainty that several people would be killed. You had an option of throwing a switch so that the trolley would go down another track and kill one person.
Would you do it and would it be the right thing to do? What if the scenario differed somewhat? Are your answers the same or different? What change matters to you?
This is a very interesting book. It makes you think about your thinking process by presenting many variations on this problem and various justifications for different actions.
Here are some other reviews:
So I could find plenty of links online about the Trolley Problem in general and plenty of link by people who want to sell the book, but few reviews at this point. Maybe when the book comes out there will be more.
The Trolley Problem, or Would You Throw the Fat Guy Off the Bridge? by Thomas Cathcart comes out on September 10. So if it sounds interesting, look for it in a bookstore or library near you.