thought experiments

Bernard Williams and Moral Dilemmas

The following moral dilemmas come from a Bernard Williams’ essay “A Critique of Utilitarianism” in a book entitled “Utilitarianism: For and Against”. They are presented as part of Bernard Williams’ specific objections to Utilitarianism. However, I want to use them here to talk more generally about hypothetical moral dilemmas as a tool of thought (an ‘intuition pump’, to use the Dan Dennett euphemism) in philosophy. Here are the dilemmas, as stated in Williams’ essay