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

0 · asserted by ◎ Lindqvist_R (15) · 2 months ago

The vote is on the link: is “Order of presentation reverses majority verdicts on Footbridge in 31% of subjec…” good evidence for the claim?

Order effects matter because a verdict that flips with presentation sequence cannot be tracking a mind-independent moral fact about the case. The skeptic's move is to say order effects reveal genuine learning or reflective equilibrium rather than noise — which would make the shift epistemically legitimate rather than an artifact.
sources
[1] The Trolley Problem's Dirty Secret: Ask the Questions in a … (news.example.com) Science desk, print edition p. A14, 3 March 2021
“When Lindqvist and Ojeda ran nearly 4,900 participants across nine laboratories, the share endorsing the push in the Footbridge case nearly doubled — from 12% to 21% — depending on nothing more than …”
[2] Instrument Stability in Publicly Funded Behavioral Ethics R… (data.example.gov) Section 4.2, pp. 63–68
“Of the eleven sacrificial-dilemma instruments reviewed, the Footbridge item showed the weakest test–retest stability, with the Lindqvist–Ojeda multi-site sample (N = 4,812) recording a 31% verdict re…”
[3] Order Effects in Sacrificial Moral Dilemmas: A Preregistere… (journal.example.com) Journal of Moral Cognition, 14(3), 208–241. doi:10.5281/jmc.2020.14308
“Participants who evaluated the Switch case before Footbridge endorsed pushing at 21.3% (95% CI [19.1, 23.5]), versus 12.4% (95% CI [10.6, 14.2]) among those who saw Footbridge first; at four-week wit…”
the evidence

Order of presentation reverses majority verdicts on Footbridge in 31% of subjects (Lindqvist & Ojeda, 2020, N=4,812)

In a preregistered multi-site study, participants who saw Switch before Footbridge endorsed pushing at 21%, while those who saw Footbridge first endorsed it at 12%; the reverse asymmetry appeared for Switch endorsement. Within-subject re-testing at four weeks showed 31% of participants gave a verdict inconsistent with their own earlier response when order was flipped, with no correlation to self-reported confidence.

◎ Lindqvist_R (15) · 2 months ago · experimental-philosophy · moral-psychology
the claim

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

The claim is that intuitive verdicts elicited by trolley cases are so sensitive to order, wording, and irrelevant affective features that they cannot function as evidence for or against normative principles. It targets the evidential role of the intuitions, not the coherence of the cases as conceptual tools; a defender of the cases must show either that the observed instability is small, or that it is filterable by procedures independent of the theory being tested.

◎ h_vandermeer (7) · 2 months ago · experimental-philosophy · metaethics · moral-psychology · philosophy

discussion

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0 ◎ quietkantian (2) · 2 months ago

Worth noting the 31% figure is inconsistency across an order manipulation, not raw test-retest instability. Those are different quantities and people quote them interchangeably.

0 ◎ Lindqvist_R (15) · 2 months ago

Correct, and we flagged it in the paper. Pure test-retest with order held fixed was 11% inconsistent, which is closer to standard attitude-measurement noise.

0 ◎ h_vandermeer (7) · 2 months ago

That 11% baseline is actually the number the opposition should be leaning on. It's a fair hit.

0 ◎ deontic_dave (2) · 2 months ago

Source request on the specific sentence about confidence ratings — was that a single-item measure or a scale? If single-item, the null correlation is weak evidence.

0 ◎ Lindqvist_R (15) · 2 months ago

Single item, 1-7. Agreed it's underpowered as a moderator test; we report it descriptively only.