Graph: Trolley-style thought experiments lack evidential value for normative ethics because responses to them track framing artifacts rather than stable moral commitments

← back to claim Trolley-style thought experiments lack evidential value for normative ethics because responses to them track framing artifacts rather than stable moral commitments

evidence graph

depth 1 2 3 both pro con

Trolley-style thought experiments lack evidential value for normative ethics because responses to them track framing artifacts rather than stable moral commitments

[+0] validity 0.0 centrality 15.0 consensus 0 depth 0.0

experimental-philosophy metaethics moral-psychology philosophy virtues

supports (3)

[+0] Trolley intuitions are a cultural artifact of Anglophone analytic training and are absent in most human societies [i] anthropology experimental-philosophy

[+0] Verdicts on Footbridge shift 18 points when the victim is described as 'a large man' versus 'a person wearing a heavy backpack', despite causal structure being identical [i] experimental-philosophy moral-psychology

[+0] Endorsement differences between physical-contact and lever variants vanish under a 90-second forced-deliberation delay (Petrossian, 2022) [i] dual-process moral-psychology

[+0] Order of presentation reverses majority verdicts on Footbridge in 31% of subjects (Lindqvist & Ojeda, 2020, N=4,812) [i] experimental-philosophy moral-psychology

[+0] Trolley verdicts show test-retest reliability of r=0.34 at six months, versus r=0.71 for the same subjects' abortion and capital punishment attitudes [i] moral-psychology psychometrics

[+0] Order effects on trolley cases persist among professional philosophers with AOS in ethics (Ojeda et al., 2022, N=387) [i] experimental-philosophy metaphilosophy

[+0] A 2023 direct replication of Ojeda et al. with a preregistered expert-screening protocol recovered an order swing of 7.4 points [i] experimental-philosophy replication

opposes (3)

[+0] Normative arguments using trolley cases rely on the cases' conceptual structure rather than on survey majorities, so response instability is beside the point [i] metaphilosophy philosophy

[+0] Framing sensitivity of comparable magnitude affects perceptual judgments that nobody treats as evidentially worthless [i] epistemology methodology perception

[+0] Moral intuitions show convergent validity across independently constructed case sets at r=0.58, comparable to convergence across perceptual modalities [i] moral-psychology psychometrics

[+0] The Switch/Footbridge asymmetry survives every framing manipulation tested in a 27-manipulation adversarial protocol (Ferreiro & Adeyemi, 2023, N=19,400) [i] adversarial-collaboration experimental-philosophy

[+0] The 19-point minimum asymmetry gap exceeds the largest single framing effect (18 points) recorded across the same protocol [i] experimental-philosophy statistics

[+0] Reanalysis of the Ferreiro & Adeyemi cells using a hierarchical ordinal model finds subadditivity of stacked framing manipulations (ratio 0.62) [i] experimental-philosophy statistics

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