Judith Jarvis Thomson

Ray Briggs
Is it ever okay to kill one person to save many?

Josh Landy
How much are we required to sacrifice to help other people?

Ray Briggs
What can we really learn from thought experiments?

Josh Landy
Welcome to Philosophy Talk the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs.

Josh Landy
And I’m Josh Landy. We’re coming to you via the studios of KALW San Francisco Bay Area.

Ray Briggs
Continuing conversations that begin at philosophers corner on the Stanford campus, where Josh teaches philosophy.

Josh Landy
and at the University of Chicago where Ray teaches philosophy.

Ray Briggs
Today it’s the next episode in our “Wise Women” series, generously supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, we’re exploring the life and thought of Judith Jarvis Thompson.

Josh Landy
So I bet a bunch of our listeners have heard of the infamous trolley problem, but what they may or may not know is that we owe the name to Judith Jarvis Thompson.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, although she didn’t come up with the original thought experiment. That was Philippa Foot, one of the other philosophers that we’re featuring in this wise women series.

Josh Landy
So Foot came up with the original thought experiment, but Thompson developed it and called it the trolley problem. So remind us of what it’s all about, Ray.

Ray Briggs
All right, imagine there’s this runaway train, and it’s about to smash into five people who are working on the track. So if you do nothing, the train’s gonna kill them. All All right, what can I do to save them? Well, let’s say you happen to be standing next to a lever. If you pull the lever, the lever, the train goes onto a different track where it’s only gonna kill one person. So what would you do?

Josh Landy
Well, obviously, I’m gonna pull that lever. I mean, why would I let five people die when it could be just one?

Ray Briggs
Because there’s a big difference between letting five people die and actively killing one person. Do you want that poor person’s blood on your hands?

Josh Landy
No, well, no, I definitely don’t want someone’s blood on my hands, but I just don’t see why. That’s the question that matters. Surely, it’s all about saving the maximum number of lives.

Ray Briggs
Oh, okay, maybe your view isn’t so bad in this case, but where is it gonna lead? Thompson imagines a doctor who kills a healthy patient in order to harvest their organ in order to save five sick patients. If it were all about saving the maximum number of lives, why not murder the one person to use their organs to save the five? Yeah, okay, I agree. That would be horrible. So it’s not just the outcome that matters. Even if you can save five people, there are some things you just cannot do to bring that about.

Josh Landy
Oh, I get it. So Thompson’s saying that even if the consequences are good, it’s never okay to cause harm to another person.

Ray Briggs
Well, that’s not quite her view either. Think about the way that she discusses abortion. Abortion results in the death of a fetus, and some people think that that’s like killing a baby. So according to them, it’s wrong for a doctor to perform an abortion if the mother’s life isn’t in danger, we have to save the life of the child.

Josh Landy
Wait a minute, Ray, what’s this “child” you’re talking about? Are you saying Thompson thinks a fetus is a person?

Ray Briggs
To her that’s not the question that matters. Remember what we were just saying about the murderous surgeon. The five patients who need a transplant, they’re definitely people too. But that doesn’t mean you can just murder somebody to save their lives.

Josh Landy
All right, so let’s leave aside the question of whether or not a fetus is a person. Why does Thompson think abortion is okay?

Ray Briggs
She had this great analogy. Imagine you wake up in a hospital room with a whole bunch of tubes and wires coming out of you, and there’s this guy standing next to you, and he tells you he’s from the music lovers society, the music lover society, yes, because you’re supporting a brilliant violinist, the greatest of our age.

Josh Landy
I hesitate to ask, but how exactly am I supporting this violinist?

Ray Briggs
Well, it’s simple: the violinist’s kidneys are failing, and the doctors are using your kidneys to filter his blood. It should only take you about nine months to lose up and healthy again, when did I agree to that you didn’t? And that’s exactly Thompson’s point. No one is entitled to use your body without your consent, not even the greatest violinist in the whole world.

Josh Landy
I really like that point, Ray, but I have to say, it’s a bit of an unusual way of getting to it, isn’t it? I mean, how much philosophical mileage Can we really get out of outlandish, fictional scenarios?

Ray Briggs
I bet our guest will have something to say about that. It’s Elizabeth Harmon from Princeton University, author of “Creation ethics: the moral status of early fetuses and the ethics of abortion.”

Josh Landy
But first, Thompson’s work on the trolley problem was so influential that it spawned a huge industry, jokingly known as “trolleyology.” We sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Sheryl Kaskowitz, to find out more. She files this report.

Judith Jarvis Thomson
There’s an out of control trolley speeding down the track and on the track ahead are five track workmen.

Sheryl Kaskowitz
That’s Judith Jarvis Thompson giving a lecture in 1978. She’s asking us to imagine that we could flip a switch that would turn that speeding trolley onto a different track with just one worker on it.

Judith Jarvis Thomson
If you do nothing, five will die. If you turn the trolley, you will kill one. Can you turn the trolley?

Sheryl Kaskowitz
This thought experiment forces us to reckon with choosing to kill someone rather than just letting five people die. Thompson had found that most people say you can go ahead and pull the switch.

Judith Jarvis Thomson
Some of my students say even more strongly that you must go ahead. I don’t know if you must, but it seems to me you can certainly

Sheryl Kaskowitz
Pop culture has continued to run wild with variations on this question.

Trolley Problem
Would you rather run over Britney Spears or all five Backstreet Boys?

Sheryl Kaskowitz
Most of them play around with who the people are on the tracks.

Trolley Problem
Are you picking the Backstreet Boys? I mean, they’re five people. I don’t care if they were 25 people. They can dance better.

Sheryl Kaskowitz
You can find memes and websites with truly ridiculous scenarios involving various celebrities, animals and inanimate objects. There’s even a board game version that my family agreed to try out for this report.

Kaskowitz family
Trial by trolley: a party game of moral dilemmas and trolley murder.

Sheryl Kaskowitz
Each team lines up three characters or scenarios on their track, a mix from the innocent and guilty cards

Kaskowitz family
Helen Keller. Betty White.Aa boy and his dog.Aa team of diplomats on the verge of world peace. Some guy mugging your friend.T he cute little bat that gave the world COVID 19,

Sheryl Kaskowitz
Each team makes their case about why the other team should die. Then the conductor has to choose.

Kaskowitz family
I would hit the side without the world peace. I’m sorry, dad, because as much as I love a dog, I just I value World Peace just a little bit more. Also your point about the bat, the bat already gave everyone COVID, so it’s just revenge.

Sheryl Kaskowitz
These popular versions of the trolley problem might be entertaining, but the question of exactly who was on the tracks wasn’t what Thompson was most interested in in that same 1978 lecture, she suggests another trolley case. This time there’s no switch.

Judith Jarvis Thomson
There’s a trolley speeding toward five, and you’re up on a little footpath over the track.

Sheryl Kaskowitz
The only way to stop the trolley is by pushing a very large man from this bridge onto the tracks, he will die, but it will save the other five.

Judith Jarvis Thomson
Can you push him off the bridge into the path of the trolley?

Sheryl Kaskowitz
For many people, turning the switch is okay, even if it leads to a person’s death, but pushing someone is not and for Thompson, that’s the heart of the trolley problem, not just the question of, when is it okay, but…

Judith Jarvis Thomson
Why in the one trade off case, can you go ahead and in the other not? It’s a nice problem, and I’m not about to give you an answer.

Sheryl Kaskowitz
Since then, Thompson’s question has inspired thinkers in philosophy and beyond.

Joshua Greene
I kind of got my start in science because of the trolley problem.

Sheryl Kaskowitz
That’s Josh Greene. He’s a professor in Harvard psychology department and Center for Brain Science,

Joshua Greene
and it was her walking through all those cases and making those sort of fine comparisons that set me on my course to become a philosopher / experimental psychologist / cognitive neuroscientist.

Sheryl Kaskowitz
Greene considers himself a trolleyologist, so he seemed like a good person to talk to. He was actually the one who told me about the board game. I ask him what he thinks these pop culture versions of the trolley problem are missing.

Joshua Greene
The point of all this is not to prepare ourselves for public transportation emergencies. The point of the thought experiment philosophically is to clarify one’s thinking,

Sheryl Kaskowitz
And this kind of clarity is only becoming more important as we race ahead with AI and train machines to make decisions with moral implications.

Joshua Greene
The problem of machine ethics, of getting good values into machines, is partly a technical problem, but it’s really a moral problem. It’s a problem of sorting out the inconsistencies in our own moral thinking before we go about deciding what should be trained into machines.

Judith Jarvis Thomson
I think that’s one of the prettiest going problems in ethics.

Sheryl Kaskowitz
So it seems clear that Thompson’s trolley problem still has some serious lessons to teach us, whether or not pop culture has gotten it right.

Trolley Problem
A trolley’s heading towards one guy, you can pull the lever to divert it to the other track, but then your Amazon package will be late. No!

Sheryl Kaskowitz
For Philosophy Talk. I’m Sheryl Kaskowitz/

Josh Landy
Thanks for that really interesting report, Sheryl, I’ll make sure not be around any train lines while you’re in the vicinity. I’m Josh Landy. With me is my fellow philosopher, Ray Briggs, and today we’re asking about the life and thought of Judith Jarvis Thompson.

Ray Briggs
We’re joined now by Elizabeth Harman. She’s professor of philosophy at Princeton University and author of the forthcoming book “When To Be a Hero.” Liz, welcome back to Philosophy Talk.

Elizabeth Harman
Thanks so much for having me.

Josh Landy
So Liz, you were actually a student of Thompson’s. What was that like?

Elizabeth Harman
Well, Judy had extremely high standards for her students’ work, and in particular, high standards about writing very clearly. So it was common for Judy to draw a line across the page and say, This is where I stopped reading. Yeah, it was an intense thing for a student to confront. It was hard on us, but it really did help us to be better writers. We wanted to meet Judy’s high standards.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, I knew her a little bit when I was a graduate student, and she always said my work was too technical, so she stopped reading before word one. But she was always very kind to me and would have a good conversation with me in the hallway. So Liz, earlier, Josh and I were talking about a bunch of Thompson’s thought experiments, like the violinist and the murderous surgeon. When we come out with these outlandish scenarios, what are we actually trying to do?

Elizabeth Harman
Well, so one thing that we’re trying to do with these cases, and maybe the first thing that Thompson is trying to do, is to figure out whether some general principle or other is true. So when she thinks about her violinist case, what she’s interested in is, is it always true that a right to life Trumps a right to decide what happens in and to your body, because people are always saying that in the case of abortion, look, it’s the fetus’s life that’s at stake, and by comparison, it’s only the pregnant woman’s right to decide what happens in and to her body, which is a less significant right people say, but that’s exactly what we get in the violinist case.

Ray Briggs
The violinist case actually seems pretty morally clear to me that, of course, it’s okay to say no, violinist doesn’t get to use my kidneys. I’m gonna unhook myself. But some of Thompson’s thought experiments are sort of really bizarre, and I’m not always sure that there is a clear moral verdict, even if I have an idea about, like, whether it’s okay for me with my anti artillery gun to shoot a tank with a baby strapped to the front of it that’s coming at me. I’ve never really been in that situation, and so I don’t know whether I should trust my intuitions. What would an advocate of Thompson say about that?

Elizabeth Harman
I think it is really important whether you have a clear view of the cases so that. So what I would say is often, while in some sense, the cases are outlandish, often it just is super clear whether it’s right or wrong to do something. But if you’re going to use a claim about the case in a moral argument, your argument is only as strong as that claim about the case is. So I don’t know, you know, I think if somebody straps a baby to something that they’re using to attack you, I think, you know, it is okay to shoot back. You know, that’s a it’s a hard thing to say, because I’m saying it’s okay to shoot at a baby, but I have that intuition quite clearly.

Josh Landy
So that’s at least imaginable. I mean, I hope it never happens to anybody. But there are some of her thought experiments, for example, chop somebody into and make two new people out of that person. Or she imagines, in a different scenario, a kind of drug that gives you Queen Victoria’s memories as a Brit. I like that a lot. There’s one about a health pebble, a special pebble that can cure you. And you know, in cases like that, I sort of, I share the worries of philosophers like Tamar gendler and Alan wood, that these are so unrealistic, they’re so kind of outside of the realm of human experience that it’s not clear whether we should really trust any judgments we form on the basis of thinking about them.

Elizabeth Harman
Well here I think we really have to go case by case and argument by argument. So I would say that in a lot of Thompson’s most famous arguments, the cases that she relies on are just very compelling. You know, as Ray was saying, the violinist case, it’s it seems really clear that you’re allowed to unplug yourself and walk out of the hospital. And so I would really want to have that argument case by case. And I think that Thompson’s work stands up really well, but it definitely is a weakness of a philosophical argument, if it’s trying to put a lot of weight on a claim about a case, and it just and it’s hard to know what to think about the case. I don’t see that so much in Thompson’s work, but that does exist in the literature and philosophy.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk today. We’re talking about the life and thought of Judith Jarvis Thompson with Elizabeth Harmon from Princeton University.

Ray Briggs
Is there anything you wouldn’t do to save your own life? What are you obliged to do to save the lives of others? What does it really mean to do the right thing?

Josh Landy
Service, sacrifice, and saving your own skin—along with your comments and questions, when Philosophy Talk continues.

SNL
That’s an impossible question, girl, but I can promise you this, either way, I’d be so racked with guilt I would kill myself within a year, which is kind of like dying for you. Thank you.

Ray Briggs
Is the solution to the trolley problem to just do it for love. I’m Ray Briggs, and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy, and we’re exploring the life and thought of Judith Jarvis Thompson. Our guest is Elizabeth Harmon from Princeton University, author of “When to be a Hero.”

Ray Briggs
It’s the latest episode in our “Wise Women” series, supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. You can listen to all the episodes in the series at our website, Philosophy Talk dot, O, R, G, slash, wise women. And while you’re there, you can also become a subscriber and experiment with thought in our library of more than 600 episodes.

Josh Landy
So Liz, before the break, we were talking about Judith Jarvis Thompson’s wonderful thought experiments. You’re standing in a meadow minding your own business. You happen to have an anti tank gun with you. I love that one. There’s one about having a choice between giving you the rest of my ice cream versus burying it in the ground. Some of these are almost like beautiful short stories, but she herself occasionally suggests that there are pitfalls here. So when she talks about body swap thought experiments, for example, imagine that you put the, you know, the brain of a prince in the body of a cobbler. She says the intuitions you get are misleading. And in other cases, she says it’s just not enough, because you need the details. Maybe I could ask you a little bit about that. When it comes specifically to the trolley problem, for example, she says you actually need to know who we’re talking about, who’s on the track. Is it people whose job it is to be there? Is it people who are tied to the tracks by a villain? Is it a foolish schoolboy who ignored the signs. So how can we actually tinker with these thought experiments to make them as robust as possible, to make sure that the intuitions that they generate are reliable?

Elizabeth Harman
Well, it’s very interesting when we notice that our view of a case changes if we add or alter certain details. I mean, that’s telling us something about our moral commitments. And so in some ways, when you say, Well, when we when we add this detail, that it was their fault that they ended up on the trolley tracks, it’s not so much. I think that the original case needed us to specify that. It’s more like we’re adding another case that’s helpful, or we’re realizing something we were assuming about the original case, and that’s inevitably going to be true. So because, as you say, and I love that you said short stories, because in my own work I do, when I write cases, I think of myself as telling really short stories. And Ray is a poet, you know, so we’ve got, I don’t know, but when we tell a short story, of course, we’re not going to give out the details. And so it’s always true if I tell a short story, and then I say, Well, in this case, it’s wrong to do this, or in this case, it’s permissible to do this, I’m inviting you to fill in the rest of the details in certain ways, or to assume that certain details aren’t present. So we’re always doing that all the time, whenever anybody gives us a philosophy case, and we’re figuring out stuff about what’s morally important, when we realize that adding in certain details makes a difference to our view of the case.

Ray Briggs
So Liz, this kind of brings me to a listener email that we have from Ron. So we asked our listeners about the trolley problem, whether they’d throw the lever to save the five people and kill the one. And so Ron asked, kind of jokingly, do I happen to own the town’s funeral home? I think there’s a kind of serious question in there. Does what I should do depend on who I am and what my interests and standpoint are. So what did Thompson have to say about that kind of thing and whether it makes a difference?

Elizabeth Harman
I love that suggestion for tweaking the case so that actually I have something to gain if more people die. That’s sort of a sinister twist on the trolley problem case. And one thing that that brings to mind for me is, you know, Thompson thinks if you’re the bystander at the switch, you don’t have to flip the switch. You’re allowed to just do nothing and let the five die. What she thinks is that the interesting action is in pointing out that it’s okay to flip the switch. You’re allowed to flip the switch. But now someone might say, look, it’s okay to not flip the switch because you just don’t want to cut you don’t want to kill anyone. But if the reason that you’re not flipping the switch is so that your funeral home will make more money, then it’s actually wrong to not flip the switch. That’s what. Some people would say, and so your motives matter, huh? That’s what some people would say. And then Thompson thinks your motives don’t matter to what’s morally right or wrong to do. She thinks your motives, or your intentions, they can make a difference to how blameworthy you are, the way that she puts it is, they can make a difference to whether you’re at fault, but she thinks they’re not going to make a difference to what it’s okay to do so. And one example that she gives, actually, I’ll just give a variant case, which is in her in the spirit of her thing. So suppose somebody shows up at the hospital and they’re in a lot of pain, and they need a procedure that’s painful, and the only doctor on call hates them and will relish causing them the pain that they need to receive to be helped. Thompson says about a different case, it’s crazy to think this person can’t, isn’t we’re not allowed to help them until we can find a different doctor who won’t relish the pain like the doctor who would relish causing them pain, they should still do it, even though they’re going to do it for the wrong reasons, it’s still they’re still permitted to do it. They’re still allowed to do it. So that’s her way of arguing that intentions can’t make a difference to what it’s right or wrong to do. So similarly, if it’s permissible to not turn the trolley, in the ordinary case, then it’s going to be permissible to not turn the trolley even when you stand to benefit from more people dying. But you might be blameworthy. You might be at fault for doing it to get more money from more funerals.

Ray Briggs
So I have a little bit of a worry about this approach, both for the funeral director and for the pain doctor, which is, are people with different motives really going to do the same thing in the same way, like if, if the evil doctor is put in charge, they might only cause the necessary amount of pain, but aren’t they going to be tempted to do a little bit more because they’ve got bad motives, right?

Elizabeth Harman
And then Thompson can say, look, the thing that you’re doing isn’t the permissible thing. So that’s kind of easy for her to talk about. So once you start doing something different out of your bad motive, she can say, the action that you’re performing that’s wrong because you because you shouldn’t have caused that unnecessary extra pain.

Josh Landy
I love it that Thompson is so willing to get into these extremely sensitive and difficult moral problems. She talks an awful lot about situations where one person is killing another and sometimes, as you say permissively, sometimes not right, and throwing the lever, that seems like a case where you’re actually causing the death of a person, but because you’re saving five, it’s permissible. Now I wanted to ask you about something in the way that Thompson herself explains the outcome of this which is around the question of killing versus letting die. Thompson’s description of the trolley problem sets it up as in part a case where you might be confused if you think that killing is always worse than letting die. Do I have that about right?

Elizabeth Harman
Yeah, so Philippa foot is really the person who who started the trolley problem, and she thought that we can explain the cases and kind of solve the problem just by noticing that killing is worse than letting die. But then Thompson says it’s much harder than that, because there are cases where it’s okay to choose killing over letting die. And the bystander at the switch cases like that, you could let five die or you could kill one, and it’s okay to kill one. It’s very surprising, and she contrasts that with if you’re a doctor and a healthy patient comes in, you’re not allowed to kill and cut up your healthy patient to save five people who need organs, maybe two of them need lungs, two of them need kidneys, and one of them needs a heart. So five DYING PEOPLE, you’re not allowed to save them by cutting up one healthy person. But in the trolley bystander at the switch case, you are allowed to kill one to save five. So the really interesting trolley problem, as Thompson explains to us, is not about the difference between killing and letting die. It’s about different cases. Sometimes it is okay to kill one to save rather than let five die, and sometimes it’s not okay to kill one rather than let five die.

Ray Briggs
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk today. We’re asking about the life. And thought of Judith Jarvis Thompson with Elizabeth Harmon from Princeton University. So Liz, I want to get back to Thompson on abortion. Often these days, people frame the abortion debate as about whether the fetus is a person, but Thompson didn’t think that was what really mattered. Can you explain her point of view?

Elizabeth Harman
So Thompson says everyone assumes that once we come to the view that the fetus is a person, then abortion must be the killing of a person. In it must be like murder, it must be morally wrong. But she says, what actually is the argument from the claim that the fetus is a person to the claim that abortion is morally wrong. And as I mentioned earlier, there’s this principle that she thinks is behind the anti abortion argument. And the principle is a right to life just wins out in a battle between a right to life and a right to decide what happens in and to your body. But then she comes up with the violinist case, and she says, in the violinist case, your body is keeping the violinist alive. If you unplug from the violinist, you kill the violinist, and it’s just for the sake of your right to decide what happens in into your body. But the violinist case shows that sometimes the weaker right, the right of bodily autonomy, wins out against the supposedly stronger right of the right to life. So she thinks you just can’t there isn’t a direct argument. And then her paper, and I really recommend this paper, like it’s such a good read, it’s called a defense of abortion, she then systematically tries to think through, well, what else would the argument need? You know, maybe it’s not just that you’re killing the fetus, but that it’s unjust killing. But then how do you make the argument that it’s unjust killing, and what about the fact that the pregnant woman may have done things that led to her pregnancy, and then she talks about other cases where you might take various actions that lead you into certain predicaments, and it’s not obvious that then you would have to sacrifice nine months of your life to save someone.

Ray Briggs
So, yeah, I want to talk about some of these other cases. So the violinist case, I think, is really meant to establish that, like somebody who has been raped is under no obligation to carry the pregnancy to term if they get pregnant. Because the in the violinist case, the person who has been kidnapped for the purpose of using their kidneys is just like minding their own business, and this awful thing happens to them. But she also thinks like, all right, suppose that you, like, have perfectly consensual sex. You’re still that doesn’t incur an obligation to carry any pregnancy that would result from that consensual sex. And she has some like, I think that her examples here are kind of like gorgeous and interesting. I was wondering if you could tell us more about the examples later in the paper that are meant to establish that.

Elizabeth Harman
Yeah, let’s definitely get into those examples. But before that, I just want to push back a little bit on what you just said. So I think sometimes people say that all that the violinist case shows is that in cases of rape, abortion is permissible, and I don’t agree with that, so I think that’s kind of a challenge to Thompson. So what I see the other cases doing is not making a new argument when it comes to consensual sex, but just helping us to see how the violinist case is more illuminating of more cases. So that’s kind of a subtle point about how it all fits together. But so one of the cases that she talks about is the people seeds case, which I love so much. And it’s, you know, it’s a kind of analogy to birth control. So suppose that you’re living in a house. And we all know that in the environment, there are these people seeds, and they can’t grow outside, but if they get into your house, they will get lodged in the furniture and they’ll grow into babies. So you put screens on your windows, because you want to keep out the people seeds. But every you know, and the screens are pretty good, but every once in a while that people see might get through, and then if it gets into your house and a baby starts growing, there’s this question, Are you responsible to take care of that baby? Like, does that baby have an entitlement to be in that space? Suppose that it can only live, like where it is, it can’t survive if you move it. And somebody might say, Well, look, you had screens on your Windows, but you opened your windows like you wanted fresh air, like you could have just kept your windows closed all the time. And you know what, I think, what Thompson wants the example to show is like we are allowed to open our windows. And in that scenario, if you open your windows, but you took steps to keep the people seeds out, it’s not clear that you would have a deep obligation to this baby who grows out of the people seed. And one thing that I think is super interesting that comes out of really thinking that through is it becomes important to ask the question, is having sex a part of normal life? Like, is the sacrifice of not having sex more like, the sacrifice of like, never getting to open your windows and have fresh air, or is it like just giving up some fun extra thing and and then there’s another kind of case that people like to talk about of, what if the Society for music lovers has put you on notice that they want to kidnap you, and so you could just stay home, and then you would never get kidnapped, and you would never end up hooked. Up to the violinist, and then you go out, and you even get bodyguards to walk around with you, but still, you get kidnapped. So that there’s a kind of analogy between that and having sex with birth control, like you’re doing a thing that you know can lead to this scenario where this person is dependent on you, but you’ve taken steps to try to avoid it. And she just points out that there are lots of ways that you can be causally responsible. You’ve done something that that was one of the causes of an of an outcome occurring without your bearing a particular obligation to keep aiding a person.

Ray Briggs
So one thing I kind of love about all of these examples is that they’re kind of body horror ish in a way that feels completely appropriate to the topic. So Thompson is writing in a context where the people who are making most of the decisions about abortion are people who could not ever get pregnant and whose bodies are not on the line. And a thing I love about these examples is the way that they make you imagine that you are in a world where your own body is on the line and things are arranged in a way that is scary and potentially dangerous and horrifying. What do you think of that aspect of that example? So I don’t hear this talked about. People always talk about the logic of it, and they never talk about the emotions of it.

Elizabeth Harman
Well, I just, I love this idea that it’s body horror, but I also just think you’re profoundly right, that one of the ways that the violinist case is so brilliant is that you can say it to a man so like you a man wake up in the hospital and your body is used to support a violinist. What are you going to do? Like, what do you have to do? And it’s very easy for men to know that they’re allowed to leave the hospital.

Josh Landy
Yeah, that’s a good point. So let me ask you a question about the limits of Thompson’s view on this subject, if I understand correctly, her way of thinking about pregnancy is that it’s a kind of act of generosity. So if, if a mother provides for the health of her fetus, that’s an act of generosity that could be noble, but it’s not, strictly speaking, absolutely morally required. If that’s correct, what exactly does a mother owe to a fetus? So for example, would it be fine for a mother to drink a lot of alcohol while pregnant or or do drugs or things like that? Where does Thompson draw the line between things that seem morally permissible, and things that don’t?

Elizabeth Harman
You know, it’s such an important question, even if we think abortion is permissible, that doesn’t really settle. Other things you know, things that pregnant women can do that might endanger the health or limit the health of their fetuses. There’s a lovely recent paper in the important philosophy journal ethics. It’s by KingMa and Willard, and it’s called, can you do harm to your fetus? And what they argue is that if we really take seriously that pregnancy is providing life sustaining aid to the fetus, then when you do things like take a drug or drink excessively, or they even talk about failing to eat as healthy a diet as you could. What you’re doing is just making the life support that you’re offering to the fetus somewhat less good. So they think it’s not that what you’re doing is harming your fetus, but rather, you’re just providing slightly, you know, somewhat less good life sustaining aid. You’re damaging the life support system, but you’re still aiding rather than harming.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about Judith Jarvis Thompson with Elizabeth Harmon from Princeton University, author of “When to be a Hero.”

Ray Briggs
Is each of us more than the sum of our parts? Would x-ray vision violate your right to privacy? And is time an illusion?

Josh Landy
Personhoo, privacy, and the passage of time—plus commentary from Ian Shoales, the Sixty-Second Philosopher, when Philosophy Talk continues.

Patti Page
Throw mama from the train a kiss, a kiss, and she throws one back from up high.

Josh Landy
If you could save five people, would you even throw mama from the train? I’m Josh Landy, and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs. Our guest is Elizabeth Harman from Princeton University, and we’re exploring the life and thought of Judith Jarvis Thompson. It’s part of our “Wise Women series, generously supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Josh Landy
So Liz, earlier, you mentioned a fascinating Thompson thought experiment where someone is attacking you while holding a baby. So could you tell us a little bit more about what Thompson had to say about self defense?

Elizabeth Harman
She’s interested in the question, What explains why it’s okay to kill someone who’s trying to kill you. Why is it okay to act in self defense? And she, you know, a lot of people would say, Well, someone is trying to hurt you like they’re they’re aiming to hurt you. They have, you know, like a malevolent intention. And then there’s also sort of, whether they’re at fault for the fact that they’re attacking you, or whether they’re blameworthy, so whether they’re being a bad person and attacking you, and she says, Look, you know, actually you could defend yourself. It would be okay to defend yourself, even if the person attacking you isn’t being a bad person. And that might sound surprising at first, but then when you think about the cases, it’s very compelling. So one case she gives is someone has been drugged. They’ve been given a drug that makes them really aggressive, and that person is trying to kill you. Now, in a deep sense, it’s not their fault at all. They’ve been drugged against their will. They would never have attacked you normally, but still, they’re gonna kill you unless you kill them. First, she says it’s actually okay to kill them, even though they’re not at fault. And then she says, What if the person who’s a danger to you is not even really trying to kill you? What if they are just a projectile that’s been thrown at you? So, in fact, they will kill you, but it’s just that their body will kill you. You know, they’re just the object that will kill you. And she says, There again, they are a threat to you. It would actually be okay for you to kill them.

Josh Landy
But on the other hand, thing, there are things you can’t do. So you if a train is coming towards you, you can’t sort of grab someone and put them in front of the train instead of you, right? And she thinks you can’t make someone else die in your place.

Elizabeth Harman
Yes, she says you can’t substitute someone else to die for you. So what’s the difference in both cases? The only way for me to survive is for this other person to die, and she thinks that’s not enough to justify causing the other person’s death. So it has to be that the other person is a threat to me, and that they will violate my rights unless I kill them. So she thinks, and this is, you know, it’s unclear if she’s right about this. She thinks that even the person who’s just the object that’s been thrown at you, even that person, will violate my rights. Like it’s clear that my rights will be violated if the person falls on me and kills me. But she also thinks that it will be true of that person that they violated my rights, and she thinks that that projectile, in the relevant sense, has waived their right, the person’s rights against being killed or waived by the fact that they were thrown at me. And she also thinks that in that a third party can also act in myself, in my defense, she thinks that all goes together.

Josh Landy
We’ve been talking quite a bit. Liz about Thompson’s views around situations where somebody dies when she’s absolutely fascinating on that. And these are obviously very important cases. But what are some of the other things that Thompson was was thinking and writing about? She was quite wide ranging, wasn’t she?

Elizabeth Harman
Yes, Judy wrote about so many different things. So just within moral philosophy, we’ve been talking about more specific moral questions, how is it okay for one person to treat another? But she was also interested, more generally, in, what is the nature of rights? She was interested in this meta ethical question, this question that’s about morality, which is, is moral objectivity true? Is there just a right answer to moral questions, and she really rejected an alternative view called Moral relativism, which says, you know, there’s just a bunch of different moral views that have equal footing. She thought there’s a right answer about morality. She also got interested in what’s the true moral theory, and she thought that there just isn’t a notion of goodness. That’s goodness in itself, which rules out some big candidates for the true moral theory. Some people think what you’re obligated to do is whatever will make the world as good as possible. And she thinks that can’t be right, because that doesn’t make sense. But then she had a whole bunch of work that wasn’t in moral philosophy. So she had some work in metaphysics. She was interested in constitution, the relationship between the statue and the clay that makes it up. She was interested in causation, and she also was interested in the nature of time.

Ray Briggs
Yes. One of my favorite Thompson topics is the metaphysics of like, what makes me me, like, what makes me a person? And so a lot of people think, well, it’s my memories that make me me, or it’s my psychology. And she just totally rejects that view. So she has this paper that’s full of wild thought experiments, like, what if you swapped my brain with somebody else’s brain and then you annihilated my body? Who would the resulting person be? And she kind of concludes that I’m my body. So I guess I have kind of a question about how this stuff relates to the applied ethics that we’ve been talking about, like, do these big metaphysical and ethical questions, then come back and tell me something about how I should treat other people.

Elizabeth Harman
Well, I think for Judy, it was important that it all fit together. So, for example, her view of the nature of rights would have been fully informed by the kinds of things that we’ve been talking about, and vice versa, she clearly has this picture where it’s not just that you should create the most good possible, because she thinks sometimes you’re not allowed to bring out about the best outcome. You know, as we would commonly say, even though she’s skeptical of talking that way. So I think there’s a kind of harmony between her more general work and her more specific work that we’ve been talking about.

Josh Landy
Yeah, I love that way of thinking about that everything, even though she’s very wide ranging. She writes about personal identity, she writes about affirmative action and privacy and all these other things. Ultimately, it all fits together into this overarching theory of how we should treat each other and what we are required to do, and also what we’re kind of asked to do without being required. You know that lovely thought experiment she has, should I give you the rest of my ice cream or bury it in the ground? Well, I don’t have to give you my ice cream, but maybe it’d be nice. But what I’m wondering now is, if you take this whole moral system that Judith Jarvis Thompson came up with that hangs together so beautifully, what light does it shed on questions that we’re thinking about today?

Elizabeth Harman
When I think about Judy’s relevance to today. Something that really comes to mind for me is that in here in the United States, we have people in significant who have significant power in our government, who really have the view that women have a certain role to play, that the role of women is to turn fetuses into babies and take care of children, and that they really are supporting policies that make sense given this idea that women have a purpose and a role like this. And I think that if we take seriously Judy’s violinist argument and her reframing of what pregnancy is, that pregnancy is this lovely thing that you could do for someone else, that you don’t have to do. It’s optional. You get to decide. It’s a healthy reframing that takes the idea that there’s a purpose and a role out of it, and I think it’s it’s really needed.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, one thing I love about that way of thinking and about her papers in general, is that she just treats women as people who are valuable in and of themselves, rather than containers for somebody else’s life and needs.

Elizabeth Harman
That’s profoundly true of her work. And she, you know, just going back to Judy as a teacher, like she was a tough lady, and it was both as an example, but also in how she treated her students, like she was a very serious person, and she took everybody very seriously. And it’s she really know blazed a feminist path in philosophy, which is a very male dominated field, and so I’m grateful to have had her you know, as a teacher.

Josh Landy
Well, he sure turned out a brilliant student. We are so grateful to you for joining us today. Liz, thank you so much.

Elizabeth Harman
Thanks for having me.

Josh Landy
Our guest has been Elizabeth Harman, professor of philosophy at Princeton University and author of the forthcoming book “When to be a Hero.” So Ray, what are you thinking now?

Ray Briggs
Well, I’m thinking about how Thompson was, first of all, just a good writer who is a pleasure to read every time I revisit her stuff, and second of all, just so prolific, like some of the papers that I thought about in preparation for this episode, are things that we didn’t even get to. She’s got this wonderful paper called McTaggart on time, which just explores one of. Have, I gotta say, the hardest to read papers in metaphysics I’ve ever had to hack through and just explains it in this way that has, like, cute squirrel examples. It’s really great. And I just love what a good writer she is.

Josh Landy
I mean, you can’t argue with cute squirrel examples. We’re gonna put links to all those papers and everything we’ve mentioned today on our website Philosophy talk.org, where you can also become a subscriber and question everything in our library of more than 600 episodes.

Ray Briggs
And don’t forget, you can also listen to all the episodes in our wise women series at philosophytalk.org/wisewomen.

Josh Landy
Now… strapped not to a violinist but to a rocket—it’s Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… In a most amusing essay, Ms Judith Jairus Thompson set up a number of trolley problems. The main one being a trolley driver whose brakes fail. You must choose between running over five people lying on the track for some reason or turning the trolley to hit one person on a spur. There’s your damn trolley problem. Now first question, what are the drivers pronouns? Well, Ms Thompson calls him Edward, okay, same deal, only. Edward dies from shock when the brakes fail. And Frank, a passenger played by Ken o Reeves, I think, can still turn the trolley under the spur, killing one or do nothing and kill five. Ms, Thompson thinks if Frank does nothing, he is innocent to five deaths because he’s not the driver. He’s not responsible. Well, see, it depends on who’s on the tracks. Are these five people, terrorists? Are they Maga? Are they protesters, blogging the road? Are they idiots who can’t find the sidewalk? Are they too stupid to live? Where even is this trolley? Haven’t they all been replaced by self driving cars and Uber? And what about the one person? Is it? Steve Bannon, that fifth grader who beat you up when you were in third grade? Hunter Biden Elvis. Think about it. Now, change it up. Now there’s an overpass over the trolley tracks. Bystander, George is up there watching the trolley. It’s kind of a hobby he has now, wait he has no wait. He sees five people on the tracks. Get up, you fools. They can’t hear George, and the trolley is about to run over them. George hears the driver screaming. The brakes are out. Is there something heavy to drop in the tracks to derail the trolley? George looks around, nothing, just the overweight bystander standing next to him, thinking quickly, George grabs the fat man, throws him over the railing, stopping the trolley, stating the five killing the fat man, and George puts his back up, lifting a fat man, and he’s arrested for vehicular manslaughter enablement, which is a crime in many states. I do think George is guilty here, though, the five people laying the tracks might want to give him a medal if they can get up off their lazy behind is not enough to go to the metal store and get him one. Miss Thompson also morphs the trolley problem into similar slippery slope type situations. A physician has five different patients, each with one thing wrong, a bum, ticker, bad lungs, a spleen with a bad attitude, a liver failing, a kidney that’s just not trying very hard. And he has another patient with healthy ones of those, why not kill that one guy and distribute his organs to those in need? Well, this is the plot of dozens of horror movies. Eyes Without a Face comes to mind. Doctor kills young women so he can craft their lovely faces unto his disfigured daughter. Why not? Why not? They have faces? She has none. This is also every vampire movie, really. They don’t need all that blood give Dracula some. There’s dozens of movies where the mad doctor has to kill people for their Adrena or whatever. Also, every other Godzilla movie involves some incredible monster from outer space or wherever that’s about to destroy the Earth. So it’s decided to throw a fat man at it, a fat man called Godzilla. In the 60s, I remember a movie made with Henry Fonda or eg Marshall, very messed up, and dropped a bomb in St Petersburg, and we offered to blow up Boston by way of apology, something like that, which is kind of another trolley problem. Ish ms Thompson offers in which Irving the president stops a bomb from destroying New York by dropping a bomb on Worcester, destroying the enemy bomb, but also Worcester, well, I don’t know about you, but I see the ghost of the fat man on the bridge all over that one. Not to fat shame that guy, but he’d gone to doctor now had the weight loss surgery. He could have saved his own life and now be an influencer regarding seating restrictions for trolleys, modernizing safety regulations, making overpass guard rails extra high, and what about the people lying on the tracks? Well, the trolleys have all been replaced by self driving. Teslas, if they hit you. Sue Elon, frankly, I don’t see why your little problems even be solved by philosophers. Get up, go home, just walk away. I gotta go.

Ray Briggs
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW local public radio San Francisco Bay area and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2025.

Josh Landy
Our executive producer is James Kass.

Ray Briggs
The Senior Producer is Devon Strolovitch. Laura McGuire is our Director of Research.

Josh Landy
Thanks also to Pedro Jimenez, Merle Kessler and Angela Johnston.

Ray Briggs
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University, and from subscribers to our online community of thinkers.

Josh Landy
And from the members of KALW local public radio San Francisco, where our program originates. Support for this episode and all the episodes in our Wise Women series comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Ray Briggs
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Josh Landy
Not even when they’re true and reasonable. That conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you can become a subscriber and question everything in our library of more than 600 episodes. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. Thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking.

The Fault in Our Stars
Are you familiar with the Trolley Problem?