The Trolley Problem — Origins

The Trolley Problem is a thought experiment in Ethics that was first created by philosopher Philippa Foot and then later rehashed and developed by philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson. In this piece, I will try to convey how these two philosophers presented the problem. I will develop more about the Trolley Problem in other Medium pieces, including more contemporary examples and applications.

Philippa Foot (1920–2010)

Philippa Foot was a British Philosopher born in Owston Ferry, Lincolnshire in the UK. Her maternal grandfather was Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th President of the United States. She spent most of her career at Oxford, where she was a student and then a professor. In the 60s and 70s she was a visiting professor at Cornell, Berkeley and CUNY. She is one of the founders of contemporary virtue ethics. She was the first to write about the Trolley Problem.

Philippa Foot’s original paper was called “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect” and was published in 1967. In this paper, she was thinking of the Christian doctrine of double effect. According to this doctrine, there is a difference between:

• Foreseeable consequences.
• Intended consequences.

One example of this kind of distinction would be a military airstrike, the intended consequence would be a certain military target and a foreseeable consequence would be the civilians next to the location of the target. This action could be defended saying that the civilians are collateral damage. In a similar fashion, Catholics use this distinction for medical intervention that results in the foreseeable but unintended consequence of abortion. For instance, if a pregnant woman needs urgent surgery and as a result of the surgery it is foreseeable, but not intended, that she will abort, this doctrine would say that in this case, the abortion is acceptable. However, in the case of labor, where killing the baby by say crushing his skull would save the woman, this action would not be acceptable because the action is one of killing the baby. This doctrine is not exclusive to Catholics, in Jewish hospitals, there are ventilators on a timer so that if a doctor decides that a patient should no longer be kept on a respirator, they just need to wait for the timer to run out, they don’t…