Would You Kill the Fat Man?: The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us about Right and Wrong - David Edmonds

. .

Résumé :
A runaway train is racing towards five men who are tied to the track. You are standing on a footbridge watching the unfolding disaster and next to you is an overweight man. If you push the man off the bridge he will die but his large body will stop the train. What do you do? David Edmonds invites readers to contemplate this moral dilemma. *STOP PRESS OCTOBER*

Biographie:
David Edmonds is the author, with John Eidinow, of the best-selling Wittgenstein's Poker, as well as Rousseau's Dog and Bobby Fischer Goes to War. The cofounder of the popular Philosophy Bites podcast series, Edmonds is a senior research associate at the University of Oxford's Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and a multi-award-winning radio feature maker at the BBC. He holds a PhD in philosophy.

Sommaire:
List of Figures xi Prologue xiii Acknowledgments xv Part 1 Philosophy and the Trolley Chapter 1 Churchill's Dilemma 3 Chapter 2 Spur of the Moment 8 Chapter 3 The Founding Mothers 13 Chapter 4 The Seventh Son of Count Landulf 26 Chapter 5 Fat Man, Loop, and Lazy Susan 35 Chapter 6 Ticking Clocks and the Sage of Konigsberg 44 Chapter 7 Paving the Road to Hell 57 Chapter 8 Morals by Numbers 69 Part 2 Experiments and the Trolley Chapter 9 Out of the Armchair 87 Chapter 10 It Just Feels Wrong 94 Chapter 11 Dudley's Choice and the Moral Instinct 108 Part 3 Mind and Brain and the Trolley Chapter 12 The Irrational Animal 127 Chapter 13 Wrestling with Neurons 135 Chapter 14 Bionic Trolley 153 Part 4 The Trolley and Its Critics Chapter 15 A Streetcar Named Backfire 169 Chapter 16 The Terminal 175 Appendix Ten Trolleys: A Rerun 183 Notes 193 Bibliography 205 Index 213

This is a highly engaging book. David Edmonds's reflections are full of insight and he provides fascinating biographical background about the main players in the history of the trolley problem, in a style reminiscent of his very successful Wittgenstein's Poker.--Roger Crisp, University of Oxford