I support and agree with every paragraph except the last one.
I cannot come up with any sensible, useful separation between “actual scenarios” and “thought experiments”. Consider the following question: “You have the ability to instantly make an arbitrarily high number of copies of a book, and distribute them to billions of people, at a negligible cost to everyone. Should you compensate the author before doing so?”. To us this is an everyday matter, but to a medieval scholar it is about as much of an abstraction as “torture vs. dust specks”. It is likely more abstract to him than “push the fat guy on the train tracks” is to us.
While I don’t believe that morality is well-founded, I do believe that the word “morality” has some meaning, even if it is incorrect—in the same way that theism isn’t well-founded, but “theism” still means something. And I consider that the word “morality” must indicate a function (or a set of functions) having its domain included in the set of logically possible universes, and its codomain in some sort of algebraic structure (utilitarians should think it’s a totally ordered field, but it needn’t be such a powerful structure). I do not think that whether we might actually experience a given universe is a relevant criterion to morality as most people intend the word.
If I take you correctly, you are pointing out that thought experiments, now abstract, can become actual through progress and chance of time, circumstance, technology, etc., and thus are useful in understanding morality.
If this is an unfair assessment, correct me!
I agree with you, but I also hold to my original claim, as I do not think that they contradict. I agree that the thought experiment can be a useful tool for talking about morality as a set of ideas and reactions out-of-time. However, I do not agree that the thought experiments I have read have convinced me of anything about morality in actual practice. This is for one reason alone: I am not convinced that the operation of human reason is the same in all cases, and in this particular, in the two cases of the theoretical and the physical/actual.
I am not convinced that if a fat man were actually standing there waiting to be shoved piteously onto the tracks that the human mind would necessarily function in the same way it does when sitting in a cafe and discussing the fate of said to-be switch-pusher.
If I were to stake the distinction between the actual and the theoretical on anything, it would be on the above point. What data have we on the reliability of these—I think you must agree that, regardless of the hypothetical opinions of medieval scholar types, the Torture vs. Dust Specks scenario abstract for us now and here—thought experiments to predict human behavior when, to retreat to the cliche, one is actually in the trenches?
This may have some connection to the often-experienced phenomenon when in conversation of casual nonchalance and liberalism about issues that do not affect the speaker and a sudden and contradictory conservatism about issues that do affect the speaker. This is a phenomenon I encounter very often as a college student. It is gratis to be easy-going about topics that never impact oneself, but when circumstances change and a price is paid, reason does not reliably produce similar conclusions. Perhaps this is not a fair objection however, as we could claim that such a person is being More Wrong.
If you can convince me of a reliable connection, you’ll have convinced me of the larger point.
I am not convinced that if a fat man were actually standing there waiting to be shoved piteously onto the tracks that the human mind would necessarily function in the same way it does when sitting in a cafe and discussing the fate of said to-be switch-pusher.
If I were to stake the distinction between the actual and the theoretical on anything, it would be on the above point. What data have we on the reliability of these—I think you must agree that, regardless of the hypothetical opinions of medieval scholar types, the Torture vs. Dust Specks scenario abstract for us now and here—thought experiments to predict human behavior when, to retreat to the cliche, one is actually in the trenches?
I… don’t think the point of such thought experiments was ever to predict what a human will do. That we do not make the same choices under pressure that we do when given reflection and distance is quite obvious. If you are interested in predicting what people will do, you should look at psychological battery tests, which (should) strive to strike a balance between realism and measurability.
The point of train tracks-type experiments was to force one to demand some coherence from their “moral intuition”, and to this end the fact that you’re making such choices sitting in a café is a feature, not a bug, because it lets you carefully figure out logical conclusions on which (at least in theory) you will then be able to unthinkingly rely once you’re in the heat of the moment (probably not an actual train track scenario, but situations like giving money to beggars or voting during jury duty where you only have seconds or hours to make a choice). When you’re actually in the trenches, as you put it, your brain is going to be overwhelmed by a zillion more cognitive biases than usual, so it’s very much in your interest to try and pre-make as many choices as possible while you have the luxury of double-checking every one of your assumptions and implications.
One problem I have with the way such thought experiments are phrased is that they often ask “what would you do?” rather than “what’s the best thing to do?”, which muddles this notion of being more interested in my moral intuitions about the latter than my predictions about the former.
But I realize that people and cultures vary widely in how they interpret phrases like that.
I support and agree with every paragraph except the last one.
I cannot come up with any sensible, useful separation between “actual scenarios” and “thought experiments”. Consider the following question: “You have the ability to instantly make an arbitrarily high number of copies of a book, and distribute them to billions of people, at a negligible cost to everyone. Should you compensate the author before doing so?”. To us this is an everyday matter, but to a medieval scholar it is about as much of an abstraction as “torture vs. dust specks”. It is likely more abstract to him than “push the fat guy on the train tracks” is to us.
While I don’t believe that morality is well-founded, I do believe that the word “morality” has some meaning, even if it is incorrect—in the same way that theism isn’t well-founded, but “theism” still means something. And I consider that the word “morality” must indicate a function (or a set of functions) having its domain included in the set of logically possible universes, and its codomain in some sort of algebraic structure (utilitarians should think it’s a totally ordered field, but it needn’t be such a powerful structure). I do not think that whether we might actually experience a given universe is a relevant criterion to morality as most people intend the word.
If I take you correctly, you are pointing out that thought experiments, now abstract, can become actual through progress and chance of time, circumstance, technology, etc., and thus are useful in understanding morality.
If this is an unfair assessment, correct me!
I agree with you, but I also hold to my original claim, as I do not think that they contradict. I agree that the thought experiment can be a useful tool for talking about morality as a set of ideas and reactions out-of-time. However, I do not agree that the thought experiments I have read have convinced me of anything about morality in actual practice. This is for one reason alone: I am not convinced that the operation of human reason is the same in all cases, and in this particular, in the two cases of the theoretical and the physical/actual.
I am not convinced that if a fat man were actually standing there waiting to be shoved piteously onto the tracks that the human mind would necessarily function in the same way it does when sitting in a cafe and discussing the fate of said to-be switch-pusher.
If I were to stake the distinction between the actual and the theoretical on anything, it would be on the above point. What data have we on the reliability of these—I think you must agree that, regardless of the hypothetical opinions of medieval scholar types, the Torture vs. Dust Specks scenario abstract for us now and here—thought experiments to predict human behavior when, to retreat to the cliche, one is actually in the trenches?
This may have some connection to the often-experienced phenomenon when in conversation of casual nonchalance and liberalism about issues that do not affect the speaker and a sudden and contradictory conservatism about issues that do affect the speaker. This is a phenomenon I encounter very often as a college student. It is gratis to be easy-going about topics that never impact oneself, but when circumstances change and a price is paid, reason does not reliably produce similar conclusions. Perhaps this is not a fair objection however, as we could claim that such a person is being More Wrong.
If you can convince me of a reliable connection, you’ll have convinced me of the larger point.
I… don’t think the point of such thought experiments was ever to predict what a human will do. That we do not make the same choices under pressure that we do when given reflection and distance is quite obvious. If you are interested in predicting what people will do, you should look at psychological battery tests, which (should) strive to strike a balance between realism and measurability.
The point of train tracks-type experiments was to force one to demand some coherence from their “moral intuition”, and to this end the fact that you’re making such choices sitting in a café is a feature, not a bug, because it lets you carefully figure out logical conclusions on which (at least in theory) you will then be able to unthinkingly rely once you’re in the heat of the moment (probably not an actual train track scenario, but situations like giving money to beggars or voting during jury duty where you only have seconds or hours to make a choice). When you’re actually in the trenches, as you put it, your brain is going to be overwhelmed by a zillion more cognitive biases than usual, so it’s very much in your interest to try and pre-make as many choices as possible while you have the luxury of double-checking every one of your assumptions and implications.
One problem I have with the way such thought experiments are phrased is that they often ask “what would you do?” rather than “what’s the best thing to do?”, which muddles this notion of being more interested in my moral intuitions about the latter than my predictions about the former.
But I realize that people and cultures vary widely in how they interpret phrases like that.