Experimental Philosophy
In his article 'Experimental Philosophy', Joshua Knobe (2007) gives an overview of the field of experimental philosophy and the ongoing disagreement concerning how work coming out of this relatively new endeavour should be understood in relation to analytic philosophy. Knobe asserts that people's intuitions have often played a significant role in philosophical debates within analytic philosophy (Knobe 2007: 81), particularly when dealing with moral questions. Indeed, analytic philosophers have often made use of people's intuitions in order to untangle moral dilemmas (Knobe 2007: 88).
Although intuitions are usually given weight by analytic philosophers, it is often the case that their claims about people's intuitions …show more content…
Moreover, he does so from the point of view of a consequentialist. In doing so, Norcross illustrates a type of thought experiment that often unsettles consequentialists, using the following example, which he refers to as 'life for headaches': “a vast number of people are experiencing fairly minor headaches, which will continue unabated for another hour, unless an innocent person is killed, in which case they will cease immediately. There is no other way to avoid the headaches. Can we permissibly kill that innocent person in order to avoid the vast number of headaches?” (Norcross 1997: …show more content…
For instance, the 'incomparability' objection holds that you cannot compare the premature death of an innocent individual with headaches. However, Norcross claims that we can dismiss this objection, because when an individual makes this type of assertion they do so because they consider killing someone to be worse than allowing headaches to continue, not because the two are incomparable (Norcross 1997: 60). Another objection states that the loss of innocent life is always worse than any number of other minor sufferings, and is therefore, impermissible (Norcross 1997: 61). But again, Norcross rejects this objection by introducing what he terms 'lives for convenience', which refers to most consequentialist's views on traffic regulations. That is, given the high probability that road deaths are positively correlated with speed limits, we could impose mandatory speed limits of forty kilometres per hour. We do not, however, because it would be a terrible inconvenience for road users. Thus, we willingly accept deaths for the sake of convenience, which, Norcross asserts, is not significantly different, morally speaking, from 'life for headaches' cases.
Norcross' paper is significant for the ethics of AV algorithms due to the fact that harm will never be entirely avoidable, and that we will inevitably have to face scenarios in which the options an AV comes up against all involve causing
In his article 'Experimental Philosophy', Joshua Knobe (2007) gives an overview of the field of experimental philosophy and the ongoing disagreement concerning how work coming out of this relatively new endeavour should be understood in relation to analytic philosophy. Knobe asserts that people's intuitions have often played a significant role in philosophical debates within analytic philosophy (Knobe 2007: 81), particularly when dealing with moral questions. Indeed, analytic philosophers have often made use of people's intuitions in order to untangle moral dilemmas (Knobe 2007: 88).
Although intuitions are usually given weight by analytic philosophers, it is often the case that their claims about people's intuitions …show more content…
Moreover, he does so from the point of view of a consequentialist. In doing so, Norcross illustrates a type of thought experiment that often unsettles consequentialists, using the following example, which he refers to as 'life for headaches': “a vast number of people are experiencing fairly minor headaches, which will continue unabated for another hour, unless an innocent person is killed, in which case they will cease immediately. There is no other way to avoid the headaches. Can we permissibly kill that innocent person in order to avoid the vast number of headaches?” (Norcross 1997: …show more content…
For instance, the 'incomparability' objection holds that you cannot compare the premature death of an innocent individual with headaches. However, Norcross claims that we can dismiss this objection, because when an individual makes this type of assertion they do so because they consider killing someone to be worse than allowing headaches to continue, not because the two are incomparable (Norcross 1997: 60). Another objection states that the loss of innocent life is always worse than any number of other minor sufferings, and is therefore, impermissible (Norcross 1997: 61). But again, Norcross rejects this objection by introducing what he terms 'lives for convenience', which refers to most consequentialist's views on traffic regulations. That is, given the high probability that road deaths are positively correlated with speed limits, we could impose mandatory speed limits of forty kilometres per hour. We do not, however, because it would be a terrible inconvenience for road users. Thus, we willingly accept deaths for the sake of convenience, which, Norcross asserts, is not significantly different, morally speaking, from 'life for headaches' cases.
Norcross' paper is significant for the ethics of AV algorithms due to the fact that harm will never be entirely avoidable, and that we will inevitably have to face scenarios in which the options an AV comes up against all involve causing