The different response to two kinds of trolley problems (pulling a lever vs pushing a fat man) is sometimes explained by referring to the impersonal/personal nature of the respective experiments. While I think that the impersonal/personal distinction is important, I do not think that it explains the reluctance to push the fat man fully.
One explanation, which I do not think I have heard before, would be that failure to push the fat man has to do with a failure to correctly take all the premisses of the thought-experiment into account. Would-be fat man pushers are asked to imagine that they know for a fact that pushing the fat man will stop the trolley. But this may just be a premisse that is very hard for people to imagine correctly, and thus what people are actually imagining is a situation in which they doubt that pushing the fat man will stop the trolley (of course they wouldn’t push him if that is what they’re imagining!).
This explanation seems plausible to me because we find such a failure of changing perspective in other areas as well. Some people, for instance, do not believe in life after death. Yet, when asked whether they would donate their organs after they die, some reply that they wouldn’t because the thought of their organs being taken out of their body scares them. That, to me, seems like a clear case of not correctly imagining certain premisses, namely: after death there will be no one capable of being scared of their organs being taken.
Another thought: I think it would be wise to make a distinction between two questions, namely:
- Should you push the fat man?
- Would you push the fat man?
The first is more of a moral question, the second is more a psychological question. It is possible for a person to think that he should push the fat man, but that he wouldn’t push the fat man when push comes to shove. That’s not a contradiction, that’s just admitting that one may not have the mental fortitude to personally push someone onto the tracks, even though it would be moral to do so.
Lucas Gransier 