A runaway trolley is about to collide with five innocent people! But you have a choice: you can pull a lever, diverting the trolley onto another track. There’s someone else standing on that track, but one person is better than five, right? What would you do? This is the trolley problem, a famous philosophical thought experiment. But what’s the point of thought experiments? Surely, we would never find ourselves in such a bizarre situation. And if we did, surely, we’d have more choices than either pulling the lever or doing nothing. In this talk, we’ll discover a range of thought experiments to find out why philosophers use them and why they’re so weird.

Presented by Tim Nailer, a master’s graduate from the University of Adelaide with research interests in moral agency and responsibility, and child and animal cognition. He has taught undergraduate courses in ethics, metaphysics, and critical thinking, as well as high school philosophy.

 Presented in partnership with University of Adelaide