Under some moral systems it is, and under some it isn’t.
Right. And provided some of the latter moral systems are ones endorsed by actual people, it cannot be true that “Everyone knows …”.
Which percentage of the population [...]
Oh, I’m sorry. I’d thought we were having a discussion about ethics, not a popularity contest. What percentage of the population has even heard of utilitarianism? What proportion has heard of it and has a reasonably accurate idea what it is?
Any more than the trolley one?
Nope, ridiculous to a similar extent and in similar ways. This is relevant not because there’s anything wrong with using unrealistic hypothetical questions to explore moral systems, but because there’s something wrong with making a naked appeal to intuition when addressing an unrealistic hypothetical question (that being what entirelyuseless just did). Because our intuitions are not calibrated for weird hypothetical situations and we shouldn’t expect what they tell us about such situations to be very enlightening.
Right. And provided some of the latter moral systems are ones endorsed by actual people, it cannot be true that “Everyone knows …”.
Oh, I’m sorry. I’d thought we were having a discussion about ethics, not a popularity contest. What percentage of the population has even heard of utilitarianism? What proportion has heard of it and has a reasonably accurate idea what it is?
Nope, ridiculous to a similar extent and in similar ways. This is relevant not because there’s anything wrong with using unrealistic hypothetical questions to explore moral systems, but because there’s something wrong with making a naked appeal to intuition when addressing an unrealistic hypothetical question (that being what entirelyuseless just did). Because our intuitions are not calibrated for weird hypothetical situations and we shouldn’t expect what they tell us about such situations to be very enlightening.