trolley problem

English

Etymology

Coined by American philosopher Judith Thomson. The problems usually involve deciding whom to save from an approaching trolley that can be diverted but not stopped.

Noun

trolley problem (plural trolley problems)

  1. A type of thought experiment in ethics and psychology, involving ethical dilemmas of whether to sacrifice one person to save a larger number.
    • 2015 October 9, Lauren Cassani Davis, “Would You Pull the Trolley Switch? Does it Matter?”, in James Bennet, editor, The Atlantic‎[1], Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 1 February 2016:
      By the late ‘90s, trolley problems had fallen out of fashion. Many philosophers questioned the value of the conclusions reached by analyzing a situation so bizarre and specific. […] The paper that reported these results in 2001 inspired hundreds more studies using the trolley problem to study moral decision-making—and also piqued interest from people in other fields, like sociologists, economists, and anthropologists.

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Further reading

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