My delulu solulu to the Moral Trolley Problem.
Or how despite behavioral economics is in question it might help beyond markets...
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This includes some violence language…
I am not a philosopher!.
The trolley problem in Ethics is one where there is a search for a preference to end one or more persons lives to save some others lives. And the active agent, that is me for instance, needs to decide to push a bystander, or several, into the railways to, somehow miraculously, save the passengers in a, I imagine, fast moving train.
As far I know it is a standing, unresolved, problem in Ethics.
There are variants of that problem, 1 bystander, 2, 3 etc. And passengers, 10, 2, 100, etc.
The only thing fixed is the active agent, the dude or dudette pushing the bystander to, miraculously, save the passengers.
Now, that problem is not solvable, it has no SOLUTION, as far as I know.
Why?. Because the intransitivity of preference in HUMAN CHOICE.
According to some research in behavioral economics, human preferences are not transitive.
That is, if a prefer A over B, and B over C, does not mean immediately that I prefer A over C.
That research finding as far as I know was established on studies of political preference: Candidate A over Candidate B, Candidate B over Candidate C. And sometime, candidate C over candidate A. Even the sometimes, in logic is a killer to do logic. I think I read that in some Malcolm Gladwell`s book, intransitivity, great books btw, I invite everyone to read his full stack of books.
So, the problem with intransitivity as formulated is that is illogical. One cannot rank THE most preferred choice from individual comparisons. Using logic with intransitive things leads to contradictions even if the argument is a valid one, valid meaning it conforms to the rules of logic, and contains no fallacies. Contradictions in logic means sometimes saying yes and sometimes saying no to the same statement. Important to notice that in this kind of logic, the WORD sometimes, although stated as a probability, it will lead to contradictions sometimes with something a simple as Modus Ponens. The famous Socrates is mortal kind of statement is a modus ponds.
Hence, the trolley problem, involving at least 3 preferences: the active agent, aka the pusher, the bystander, aka the victim that was not to be, and the passengers, aka the victims that would or will be, cannot be ranked, by intransitivity.
And maybe that is why no one, if true, has found a solution for the trolley problem: because using logic it does not have one. Logical like arguments will lead to contradictions even if following the rules of logic when intransitivity arises even if sometimes.
Thanks.
Federico Soto del Alba.