It’s Time to Retire the “Trolley Problem”

In the 1960s, the moral philosopher Philippa Foot devised a thought experiment that would revolutionize her field. This ethical puzzle, today known as the “trolley problem,” has become so influential—not just in philosophy but also in neuroscience, behavioral economics, evolutionary psychology, and meme culture—that it’s garnered its own tongue-in-cheek sub-discipline, called “trolleyology.” That body of commentary, wrote one philosopher, “makes the Talmud look like Cliffs Notes.”

The person largely responsible for popularizing the trolley problem was the philosopher Judith, “Killing, Letting Die, and The Trolley Problem,” tweaked the original scenario. In Foot’s version, five workers are on a track in front of a runaway trolley, and you, the conductor, must choose whether to change tracks, which will put you on a collision course with just a single worker—you could be responsible for the death of one instead of five. But in Thomson’s version, you are a bystander on a footbridge positioned behind an extremely fat man. You notice that, if you were to push him onto the tracks, he’d be large enough to derail the runaway train, saving everyone (except him). Should you?