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Authors: David Edmonds
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the term, “Philippa Foot,” to what, or to whom, do we refer? One answer is that we refer to the person who fits a certain description, such as “the woman who devised the trolley problem.” The American philosopher and logician Saul Kripke thought that this account was wrong; he proposed a variation of the following thought experiment to show why. Suppose another philosopher, call her Penelope Hand, conceived the trolleyproblem, and just before she died mentioned it to Philippa Foot, who then passed it off as her own. Surely, if we then used the name Philippa Foot, we wouldn’t be referring to Penelope Hand, who fits the description of Philippa Foot better than Foot herself? And indeed, in surveys using a similar question, American philosophers concurred with Kripke’s intuition: use of the term Philippa Foot would not, in their view, refer to Penelope Hand. But when this experiment was conducted in Hong Kong, the majority disagreed: for them, anybody who used the name Philippa Foot would actually be referring to Penelope Hand.
You Tell Me
Trolleyology has been embraced by the x-phi movement: there have been numerous studies to examine whether the intuitions of the philosopher are shared by the man on the Clapham omnibus. And there have been various experiments designed to test the influences on, and the stability of, our trolley intuitions.
Some of these experiments have been small in size. But the Internet has provided a flawed, though cheap and convenient way to collate opinion on a grand scale. One data-gathering tool has been managed by Harvard University. Since it was set up in 2004, more than 200,000 people have tested their moral intuitions in numerous scenarios at their Moral Sense Test: several tens of thousands of participants have been non-American. That’s a decent sample by any statistical standards, though caution still has to be applied in interpreting the numbers, since those who take such a test may in some ways be unrepresentative of the general population—they have an eccentric interest in moral philosophy, for starters.
Another large survey has been conducted by BBC online: it included 65,000 participants. The findings on these various sites do not markedly differ. The BBC found that roughly four out of five agreed that the trolley should be diverted down the spur. Meanwhile, only one in four thought that the fat man should be heaved over the footbridge. Other studies have suggested that closer to 90 percent would divert in Spur, and up to 90 percent would not push the fat man.
Some gender differences have been found. In general, women emerge as harm-averse (less likely to push the fat man, or flip the switch in Spur), men as more utilitarian (more likely to push the fat man or flip the switch). And there is some other demographic variability. Hospital workers are more harm-averse than military workers (with many other professions falling in between). Religious people (those surveyed are mostly Christian) are more harm-averse than the non-religious. Conservatives are more harm-adverse than liberals. However, these differences are not dramatic. And on the whole there is no significant distinction between the rich and poor, the educated and uneducated, and those from the developed and the less developed worlds.
What is the philosophical value of appealing to such polls and surveys? None: it’s a worthless exercise, say some, including the eminent Cambridge philosopher Hugh Mellor. “If this is philosophy then questionnaires asking people whether they think circles can be squares, is maths—which it isn’t.” 8
But the gathering of survey information, the building of intuition data banks, has been used to cast doubt on whether our intuitions can ever be relied upon—and has raised the related question of whether the intuitions of experts are any more reliable than those of normal folk.
CHAPTER 10
----
It Just Feels Wrong
The only really valuable thing is
You Tell Me
Trolleyology has been embraced by the x-phi movement: there have been numerous studies to examine whether the intuitions of the philosopher are shared by the man on the Clapham omnibus. And there have been various experiments designed to test the influences on, and the stability of, our trolley intuitions.
Some of these experiments have been small in size. But the Internet has provided a flawed, though cheap and convenient way to collate opinion on a grand scale. One data-gathering tool has been managed by Harvard University. Since it was set up in 2004, more than 200,000 people have tested their moral intuitions in numerous scenarios at their Moral Sense Test: several tens of thousands of participants have been non-American. That’s a decent sample by any statistical standards, though caution still has to be applied in interpreting the numbers, since those who take such a test may in some ways be unrepresentative of the general population—they have an eccentric interest in moral philosophy, for starters.
Another large survey has been conducted by BBC online: it included 65,000 participants. The findings on these various sites do not markedly differ. The BBC found that roughly four out of five agreed that the trolley should be diverted down the spur. Meanwhile, only one in four thought that the fat man should be heaved over the footbridge. Other studies have suggested that closer to 90 percent would divert in Spur, and up to 90 percent would not push the fat man.
Some gender differences have been found. In general, women emerge as harm-averse (less likely to push the fat man, or flip the switch in Spur), men as more utilitarian (more likely to push the fat man or flip the switch). And there is some other demographic variability. Hospital workers are more harm-averse than military workers (with many other professions falling in between). Religious people (those surveyed are mostly Christian) are more harm-averse than the non-religious. Conservatives are more harm-adverse than liberals. However, these differences are not dramatic. And on the whole there is no significant distinction between the rich and poor, the educated and uneducated, and those from the developed and the less developed worlds.
What is the philosophical value of appealing to such polls and surveys? None: it’s a worthless exercise, say some, including the eminent Cambridge philosopher Hugh Mellor. “If this is philosophy then questionnaires asking people whether they think circles can be squares, is maths—which it isn’t.” 8
But the gathering of survey information, the building of intuition data banks, has been used to cast doubt on whether our intuitions can ever be relied upon—and has raised the related question of whether the intuitions of experts are any more reliable than those of normal folk.
CHAPTER 10
----
It Just Feels Wrong
The only really valuable thing is
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