Free Would You Kill the Fat Man by David Edmonds

intuition.
     
—Albert Einstein
     
    HERE’S A TROLLEY PROBLEM FROM FAMOUS Professor Robert Unger Joaching. It’s pouring rain. A man is crossing the railway track, protecting himself with an umbrella. Given where he is, it would be prudent of him to pay more attention, but he’s in a hurry and so doesn’t spot a train racing toward him. It crashes into him at such speed and with such force that he is killed instantly and bits of his body go hurtling through the air. One large chunk hits a woman waiting on the platform, causing her severe injury. The question for the philosophy and law student is whether the woman should be able to make a financial claim against the dead man’s estate.
    But let’s park this surreal trolley question for just a short while.
    The Comfort Zone
     
    Reading through the trolley literature is a little like watching a Rambo movie: you know it won’t be long until the next slaying.There are threats from every angle: from tractors and trains and collapsing bridges, from bombs and noxious gases. The cases have exotic names: there is the Loop Case of course, but also the Two Loop Case, the Extra Push Case, the Roller Skates Case, The Three Islands Case, the Tractor Case, and the Lazy Susan Case. But while trolleyology is a godsend to philosophy professors keen to entertain and enthuse students, does it have any relevance to the real world? How seriously should we take our intuitions about these outlandish fictions?
    Exactly a century after John Stuart Mill finished making his amendments to Utilitarianism , another book was published that has received almost as much scholarly attention and that addressed the issue of how much weight we should give to our intuitions. A Theory of Justice , published in 1971, aimed to set out the rules by which a just society should be governed. It was written by a quiet, bookish Harvard professor, John Rawls, and although it has probably been read by only a tiny number of people outside academia, it has proved both radical and influential.
    The book’s most radical claim was that inequality was permissible only if it was to the benefit of the least advantaged. Its most important influence was felt not in university departments—although it rejuvenated political theory—but in the offices of state, among politicians and bureaucrats. It helped nudge decision makers away from a neutral utilitarian weighing up of policies by costs and benefits and toward a particular focus on the most deprived in society. Education, health, and transport policies were, of course, to be judged by whether they led to an overall improvement in standards, but also, and now especially, on what impact they had on the poorest and most marginal individuals and communities.
    In A Theory of Justice , Rawls used a phrase relevant to thefate of the fat man: “Reflective Equilibrium.” Theories about morality are not testable in the same way as theories about molecules. To test a theory about molecules we can use a microscope. To test a theory about morality we have to appeal to internal resources of the mind.
    Crudely put, we are in reflective equilibrium when our general principles and our individual judgments about particular cases are in harmony. For example, we may start with a theory that we should never lie. But suppose lots of lives would be at risk on a particular occasion if we told the truth? Perhaps, then, we should amend our theory—water it down: “do not lie unless truth-telling would result in serious harm,” or something like that.
    On the other hand, we may wish to stick to the theory and ignore any conflicting intuitions. Mill had a principle of liberty: we ought to be free to do anything that causes no harm to others. What about private acts such as consensual, “safe,” and nonpsychologically damaging sex between siblings? Firm believers in Mill’s principle will probably have to overcome their instinctive opposition to such sibling sex. They may believe that their