← Back to context

Comment by philosopher1234

2 years ago

I thought this was interesting and it didn't make me distrust him at all. I can't really tell why it should.

3 comments

philosopher1234

Reply
giraffe_lady  2 years ago

It's literally just the trolley problem, which is valuable and interesting only so far as it shows the limits and practical undecidability of thought experiments like this.

Which, morally sophisticated people inevitably find is almost comically sensitive to details of the scenario or context, and that's it's virtually impossible to find a satisfying generalizable solution. And then singer is just like "no. u simply pull the lever." It's not interesting.

  • suoduandao2  2 years ago

    Well, I think his position is more, "u simply pull the lever if you're sure you won't get caught", which logically might require telling other people you wouldn't pull the lever. So in that sense, one can speculate all kinds of things that he would do without telling others. I suspect his idea of proper obfuscation is more in a sense of double meanings - philosophers love those, and I think it was the basis of the 'noble lie' cited upthread.