Simultaneously self-evident and inexplicable
Nothing intrigues philosophers more than a phenomenon that seems simultaneously self-evident and inexplicable. Thus, ever since the moral philosopher Philippa Foot set out Spur as a thought experiment in 1967, a whole enterprise of "trolleyology" has unfolded, with trolleyologists generating ever more fiendish variants.
Fat Man was developed by the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, in 1985.
WOULD YOU KILL THE FAT MAN?
The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us About Right and Wrong
By David Edmonds
Illustrated. 220 pp. Princeton University Press. $19.95.
THE TROLLEY PROBLEM; OR, WOULD YOU THROW THE FAT GUY OFF THE BRIDGE?
A Philosophical Conundrum
By Thomas Cathcart
Illustrated. 132 pp. Workman Publishing. $14.95.