Last updated on July 28, 2026
For the uninitiated, the Trolley Problem is a well-known thought experiment used in many college ethics courses. Some people think that it, and other exercises like it, are too absurd to be helpful as educational tools. After all, nobody is ever going to stand beside a railroad switch and decide whether to divert an out-of-control trolley car from five people onto one unsuspecting worker. If the account is too absurd and the rules so arbitrary, then surely it cannot teach us anything about real-world ethics, say the critics. But that criticism misses the point.
The Trolley Problem is not about trolleys or train switches. It is about us, about whether the principles we say we hold are the principles we actually live by.
We tend to treat moral convictions we’ve held for years as settled facts, rarely stopping to ask what they actually require of us. Thought experiments disrupt that complacence. By placing our principles in unfamiliar, even uncomfortable, situations, they force us to discover whether we believe what we think we believe. To do this, the direct approach is not always the best one.
That is why thought experiments have remained a staple of ethics education for generations. A few examples will show what thought experiments actually accomplish and, just as importantly, what they cannot.
Storytellers have understood for millennia that extraordinary accounts can open our eyes to see ordinary truths. The absurd illuminates the mundane. Good teachers simply put that to work in the classroom.
Pool Politics
Instead of trolley cars, let us imagine you are standing in your backyard and two creatures are drowning in the swimming pool. One is a human being you’ve never met before and the other one is a stray dog. They are both nearly exhausted from struggling and you can only save one. Which do you choose? The answer can be more wobbly than people expect, depending on how it is framed.
The big moral issue under examination is the concept of human exceptionalism or the sanctity of human life. Traditionally, most people would say that the life of a human being is intrinsically more valuable than the life of an animal, if they ever consciously thought about such things. After all, most of us eat animals, hunt them, and make them our pets with clear consciences but the taboo against doing those things to human beings is pretty strong. Thus, in theory, you would save the drowning human being. But do we really believe that human life is more precious than animal life across the board? In my classroom teaching experience, even for those who would assert theoretically that human life is sacred in a sense that animal life is not, their actual opinions vary depending on the details. This is what makes it interesting as a teaching tool instead of merely a parlor game.
As a teacher, I want to know not just how they would answer the question about the value of human life, but why they gave their answer, how consistently they hold it, whether they would allow any exceptions, and if so, why.
So, let us adjust the details of the example. Say the dog is not a stray but it is your dog and the person is still a total stranger. Would your answer change?
Eleven years of teaching tells me that plenty of people do change their answer, no matter what they first said about the comparative value of human beings and animals. Plenty would try to rescue the random person and let the random dog go under.
But once the dog is their family pet and the person’s identity remains unknown, students have definitely changed their answers. Why? In part I think it is because you have a relationship, such as it is, with the dog but not with the stranger, who might, for all you know, be a sadistic candy-store burglar.
Scott and Banjo. Scott is the one in the blue shirt.
You will probably never be in that exact situation, but that doesn’t matter because you have been forced to examine your moral intuitions and explain them. People often surprise themselves. Sometimes they are embarrassed by their answers. One big lesson is that people are inconsistent. They often cannot rationally defend their moral choices, though they stick with them anyway. They operate from emotion, maybe more than they would like to admit.
The bigger principle in the drowning dog scenario is the question of human dignity and moral status. Do animals have rights? And if so, what happens when their rights conflict with the rights of humans? Is there some quality that makes some animals more deserving of help than some human beings? The dog, when it is your beloved pet, brings joy to your whole family, whereas the sadistic candy-store burglar pours out misery upon thousands. Is that fact relevant when it comes to determining which life to save?
Simply discussing the drowning dog or a runaway train does not provide you with an answer. For that, more work needs to be done. But the thought experiment has gotten the ball rolling in an interesting way.
Also, of course, we must keep in mind that what a person thinks she would do while sitting in a classroom listening to her half-baked professor is not necessarily what she would really do when facing an analogous dilemma in real life. A thought experiment is not an argument or proof of anything. It is a thought-provoking exercise.
Fun with Blowtorches
Sticking with our treatment of animals, the vast majority of people do believe that animals have rights or interests that deserve respect. For instance, do you think it is morally acceptable for a man to torture a kitten with a blowtorch solely because he thinks it would be fun? Why or why not?
There are two parties in this example with conflicting interests, the man and the cat. How do you know which one’s interests should be recognized? Does the animal’s right to not be tortured supersede the man’s freedom to entertain himself? Few people would defend the blowtorcher. Their gut reaction says it is wrong and that pre-rational impulse deserves investigation. Revulsion is your instinct but I want to find out if that response is based upon principle or merely preference.
Educators will propose variations to the story in order to further explore why we have the moral feelings and beliefs we do. To that end, say it isn’t a kitten that is being torched. It’s a pile of sticks in your driveway. Is it morally acceptable to set that pile of sticks on fire for entertainment? You might think it’s juvenile, but you would not think the sticks have had their rights violated. Kittens, then, have greater rights than sticks, and sometimes their rights, or interests, are more important than certain human interests. If kittens have a right not to be tortured, then I have an obligation to refrain, and perhaps to prevent others, from doing it.
It is uncontroversial to say that blowtorching a human being is intrinsically bad and that blowtorching sticks is fine. But why do we lump kittens in with human beings instead of with wooden sticks? Maybe it is that since cats can feel pain whereas wood cannot, their interests have a higher priority.
Once suffering becomes the principle under discussion, it naturally raises more difficult bioethical questions.
If we say that the animal’s ability to experience suffering is morally important, then does that apply to medical research? Grown rats, for example, can feel pain and human embryos cannot. Is the ability to feel pain important in making a moral decision? Most would say “yes,” but when and where? We have already established that it is important with the kittens and the sticks. But how far does this apply? Rats versus embryos.
The next step might lead us to think about abortion and ask whether the fetus’s ability to feel pain should determine at which point abortion should be limited. Lawmakers are all over that debate.
Of course, all of this could become an endless rabbit hole of questions without answers. But a skilled instructor can discern when to change classroom methodologies to accomplish his or her learning objectives for the day.
What Thought Experiments Can—and Cannot—Do
I cannot give a yes or no answer about whether to use thought experiments in ethics education. The answer is that it depends. Some thought experiments are better crafted than others, and some teachers know how to utilize them better than others.
The critics do have a point. Thought experiments cannot settle ethical debates all by themselves. Real life is almost always more complicated because people have histories, relationships, uncertainties, incomplete information, and conflicting obligations. No thought experiment can capture all of that. But that does not make them useless.
You have to manage your expectations before any thought experiment can be a helpful pedagogical device. Sometimes they can open our eyes to a serious matter when a direct, literal approach would only cause us to become defensive.
In Conclusion: The Human Ashtray
I have asked students whether they think it would be all right to use an ear sliced from a human corpse as an ashtray so long as the person had given consent before he died. There is never total consensus. I don’t ask because I think they need to prepare for that exact scenario. I ask because it always leads to vibrant discussions about human dignity, theology of the body, and the limits of consent. From there, the conversation can move to things such as cremation, the resurrection body, transgenderism, and how we treat the disabled.
Some students latch on right away and others need more guidance. But the exercise forces them to notice their assumptions and question them. That is why thought experiments endure. Not because they provide effortless answers, and not because the scenarios themselves are particularly life-like, but because they expose our uncritical intuitions, identify inconsistencies, and force us to ask better questions. Human ashtrays aside, those steps are important when it comes time to talk about more realistic ethical issues. Storytellers have understood for millennia that extraordinary accounts can open our eyes to see ordinary truths. Good ethics teachers simply put that to work in the classroom.
If you appreciate this article, check these out:
Animal Rights or Would You Baptize a Cat?
Limitation is Evidence that God Loves Us
Is There Such a Thing as Christian Ethics?
© 2026, Scott Stiegemeyer. All rights reserved.
