Introduction: the Agony of Corinne Rey

Corinne Rey gave masked gunmen the passcode to the Charlie Hebdo building. If she had not, she and her young daughter would have been killed. She has not been criticised by philosophers for doing so. This chapter asks whether the lack of criticism denotes a lack of confidence in thought experiments (such as trolley problems), which one might think would shed light on what Rey should have done, or whether it shows a fundamental problem with the use of such thought experiments. We argue for this second conclusion, drawing on Judith Jarvis Thomson’s observation that, in such thought experiments, no bystander is expected to sacrifice themselves to save the greater number. Why is this? It indicates, we suggest, that that there are reasonable limits on what anyone can genuinely be expected to do in these real life dilemmas. That lesson should inform our consideration of trolley problems. We clarify the various uses of the word ‘intuition’ in the literature. Then we add an important use of our own: the intuition that some challenges to our moral beliefs and judgements are misconceived. We make use of and defend this intuition throughout the book.