Would You Kill the Fat Man?: The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us about Right and Wrong Paperback – February 22, 2015

Pretty interesting book if you have an interest in ethical dilemmas. It sets up various scenarios with historical examples. I was able to get a video call with David Edmonds and he is a very down to earth guy. I recommend checking this out

If you are the type of person who thinks you might like philosophy but also think those texts are just so darned esoteric, so inaccessible to your own experience, then WOULD YOU KILL THE FAT MAN? is for you. It makes the field of ethics interesting and accessible, on a very immediate level, through the use of various and deceptively simple thought experiments based on an impending trolley disaster.The premise is simple: A trolley is heading towards five people tied on the track. You can prevent their deaths by hitting a switch that will redirect the trolley onto an alternate track, on which lies a single person, also tied up. This scenario is tweaked numerous times in numerous ways and reveals some interesting results about people.Along this trolley ride, the authors address a number of issues and ideas. One of the more important is the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE), with its distinction between intending and foreseeing, as written by Saint Thomas Aquinas. This idea is also simple yet incredibly profound, allowing us to ethically harm others in certain circumstances, if that harm is not our specific intent. A person can kill another in self-defense because, although the assailant’s death is foreseen, it was not the specific intent. Saving one’s own life was the intent, with the killing of another as the foreseen action to accomplish it. The DDE intuitively allows us to recognize the wrongness of such things as the killing of one healthy young man to provide organs to five people who would otherwise die.We also read of common ethical trains of thought, such as utilitarianism and its uses and limitations through trolley scenarios. The role of emotions in making ethical decision is also considered, with some philosophers arguing that reason only appears to take the starring role, with irrational emotions really doing all the hard work.The authors include a number of interesting real world situations that demonstrate that, although trolley thought experiments may be limited to academia, their implications are much broader. From the bombing of London and the attempt to trick the Nazis into bombing less populated areas of the city, to the famous tale of cannibalism on the high seas after one survivor picked the short straw, these situations are both interesting and illuminating.The book also describes some interesting distinctions between different groups of people in how they respond to trolley scenarios. My favorite is the distinction between conservatives and liberals with respect to the race of the person to be killed. Conservatives revealed no difference in whether they would or would not kill someone based on race. Liberals did. They were more likely to kill white people. Anyone familiar with modern liberals should not be surprised by this. Liberals attack conservatives as racist day and night, but it is all a matter of perspective. Yes, if you are more likely to kill white people, then others who do not make such racial distinctions do indeed seem racist by comparison!WOULD YOU KILL THE FAT MAN? becomes a tad tedious here and there. But the book is not very long and these parts pass quickly enough. In all, this is an interesting and readable book.

This author takes a topic that might seem obscure and makes it very engaging. Whilst looking at recent variations on Philippa Foot's Trolley Problem from all different points of view, one is given interesting biographical information about the lives of modern moral philosophers in an appealing and entertaining fashion, which easily holds one's interest. I always looked forward to reading this book, never found it uninteresting or impractical (though it addresses a topic which can seem far too theoretical at times), and would recommend it to both professional ethicists and philosophers as well as to lay people. This is a great read!

My immediate thoughts were that the book “Would You Kill the Fat Man?” by David Edmonds was good. It introduced me to something called “Trolleyology” which I thought was a lot of fun. I feel it took a question that was easy to answer and showed me why that’s not always the case. It forced me to take a hard look at my reasoning; so maybe I would describe the book as enlightening. I would recommend the book to anyone that’s not a philosopher; I don’t think it introduces anything new to people who are familiar with the world of modern philosophy. But as someone who isn’t, I found all the references and demonstrations of the complexity of the problem interesting. I now find myself burdened with an extensive reading list.

This small book, only 182 pages of text, was a delightful and quick read. The book makes you think but it really did not answer too many questions. Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene is a more exhaustive treatment with a different emphasis. If you are not familiar with the trolley questions you are in for quite a treat. Trolley problems highlight moral intuitions that we have a hard time explaining rationally.This book has the Amazon "Look Inside" feature which allows you to preview much of the text. I recommend you take advantage of this feature.Easily recommended.

Fat Man isn’t a bad book but it isn’t anywhere as good as it could have been. It isn’t just a matter of length either. Neither Bernard William’s Moral Luck nor Thomas Nagel’s the View from Nowhere is much longer than this book but both are masterpieces of concision and analysis. This book is more, as one reviewer notes, a work of reportage: here is a classic thought experiment (would you throw a fat man under a runaway trolley if it would save five other people?), here are the variations on it and here is the debate it raised, here is its subsequent history. Edmonds is a gracious stylist and he presents the subject concisely but I didn’t leave the book feeling that it had added significantly to my knowledge of the subject or left much of an impression on me.(A caveat: I am not a philosopher but someone who is interested ethics and moral philosophy, which means I have not read systematically in the subject but I’m not wholly illiterate in it.)

This is an incredibly interesting book on Sociomoral Reasoning, ethics and the like, and believe it or not, any lay person would love it. AND I am not the author's mom, and in fact have never and will never meet the author, so this is unsolicited. I am going to use it in some graduate school presentations on Ethics and bought a copy for our Ethics professor. Fascinating read!!Jim Nolan

For the last half century, the trolley problem has been debated and investigated. The issues it raises are fundamental to how we do make and should make ethical choices. Edmonds surveys the field in a thorough manner. The book is written entertainly for anyone with college level reading skills and with a level of humor as per the title.

Libro que te hace pensar y reflexionar. No puede faltar en tu estantería

Stimolante e spesso divertente, ci aiuta a capire quanto NON sappiamo sulle motivazioni delle nostre scelte in campo etico, senza fornire ricette basate su una specifica posizione filosofica, nè tantomeno generalizzate scusanti a comportamenti considerati "moralmente inaccettabili", la cui inaccettabilità è però difficilmente dimostrabile su basi razionali.Suggerirei di leggerlo insieme a "Thinking, fast and slow" di Kahnemann, che lo ricorda per facilità e piacevolezza di lettura e per la capacità di analizzare scientificamente i nostri meccanismi decisionali più o meno razionali.

What is the moral choice? How do we make these decisions? This book is a highly readable, addicting, page-turner that serves as a great introduction to the philosophy of ethics. This one book has given birth to much further interest and further reading in Philosophy. The book covers things well, and is written for non-academics and under-graduates. The author uses real-world examples, thought-problems, and dashes of humour to make this a merry read.

A lovely piece of writing. Reading about philosophy can make your brain hurt. Here Edmonds has done a huge amount of heavy lifting for you, and produced a book of fascinating material on far from straightforward concepts that is never anything but a joy to read. The man is a magician of the pen.

Cheguei a este livro através das obras de Michael Sandel. O livro aprofunda a questão acerca da justiça nas decisões tomadas pelas pessoas.