Walden Pod Friendly Debate w/ Ben Burgis - Do ethical thought experiments have any value in philosophy?
Apr 20, 2022
01:15:27
Ben Burgis recently invited me on his Callin show to speak about the value of “science fiction” thought experiments in applied ethics. I argue that in the realm of applied ethics, thought experiments often confuse more than they clarify. They don’t map on to the real world cases they’re intended to help with (for various reasons), and we shouldn’t be informing action with scenarios that differ in ethically relevant respects.
Applied ethics is about what we should do – it’s a uniquely practical subfield of philosophy. Ethical thought experiments commonly provide us with both too much and too little information: they exclude morally relevant detail that we would possess in the real world, and they include morally relevant detail that we would not possess in the real world. So even though we may come to the same conclusion regarding an action or principle in a thought experiment doesn’t mean we’d agree in the real world case, since these two cases differ in morally relevant respects. Consequently, I think it’s often a mistake to inform action in the real world with conclusions drawn from a thought experiment.