 Action/Adventure: May 30, 2018 Issue [#8930] |
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This week: On Thought Experiments Edited by: NaNoKit  
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Thought experiments can help you discover your own moral intuitions as well as help you find motivations for your characters.
This week's Action/Adventure newsletter, then, is all about Philosophy, morality and thought experiments.
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On Thursday, I am supposed to be handing in my final paper for the first year of my Master’s degree. I still have thousands of words left to write, and I haven’t a clue what direction I am heading in with my argument. Philosophy can be a tricky subject, as can the topic of this paper – it’s centered around morality. I am generally comfortable with my morals, but it’s not always easy to create a irrefutable argument in favour of them. That is one of the interesting aspects of Philosophy, except for when I have an essay deadline.
It did make me think of the morals of our characters, and how these morals can spur them on to act in one way rather than another. My main characters tend to have moral views that are aligned with mine. I guess that’s natural – if I’m going to write a character, and cheer for that character, I have to like them and want them to succeed. It can be interesting, though, to assign them different morals and yet have them be your hero or heroine. To sit down and consider how they have come to those views/beliefs, how this will motivate them, and whether or not they will change these beliefs along the way.
How I have viewed my own morals has been challenged through doing an undergraduate degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, and now a Master’s in Philosophy. For example, I used to consider myself a pacifist. I’m really not okay with violence, let alone the big-scale violence that is war. Yet, I’ve had to consider what I would do if my country were to be invaded. Having been born and raised in the Netherlands, which has a history of invasion and terrible suffering, I can’t say that I would simply sit by and let this happen. I would have to do something. Probably not a frontline kind of role, because I am really not comfortable with harming anyone, but maybe I would be a part of an underground resistance, like my family members before me.
It’s easy to say things about what I would and wouldn’t do, of course. I have been very fortunate to grow up and live in countries that weren’t battlefields. Unlike my grandparents, I haven’t had to be frightened of the sound of planes at night. I haven’t known life under occupation. I haven’t known life in a concentration camp, like my grandfather, and my great-grandfather, and their family. Your lived reality can alter your moral viewpoints, I’m sure. Or, it can create the necessity to act against them.
Philosophy offers many uncomfortable thought experiments. A famous thought experiment is that of the runaway trolley: it’s barrelling down the railway track and you spot that, ahead of it, are five people who are unable to move out of its way. You are standing next to a lever. If you pull the lever, the trolley will switch onto a different track. However, on this track, there is one person who cannot move away. Should you pull the lever to save the five people over the one person?
There are different varieties of this thought experiment. In one of these, again, the trolley is hurtling towards the five people. You’re standing on the bridge under which the trolley will pass. The trolley would stop if something heavy landed in front of it. There’s a heavy person standing right next to you. Should you push them off the bridge to save the five people?
What if you knew this person standing next to you to be a very bad person? What if you knew they were responsible for the five people to be stuck on that track in the first place?
The reactions to these thought experiments differ. People tend to be more comfortable pulling the lever than actively pushing the person off the bridge. However, if the person on the bridge is a villain, it can feel more just to do so. I will leave you to decide for yourself.
I do enjoy thought experiments, even if they are uncomfortable. They can inform me of my own moral intuitions, and give me food for thought when it comes to my characters. If you enjoy them, too, there are plenty to find on the Internet. Just type in “Philosophy thought experiments”, and you’re good to go.
In the meanwhile, I am heading back to my paper. See you all next month! 
NaNoKit
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Wishing you a week filled with inspiration,
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