Hypotheticals in Ethics
Episode: 20 March 2011, Question 4
Are hypothetical scenarios useful in ethics? In your 27 February 2011 webcast, you talked about a hypothetical in which saving a stranger costs $200 and two hours of time. How can you know such details, except by stipulation? Aren't such hypotheticals useless because they're not the like the circumstances that people actually face, which usually involve lots of unknowns?
My Answer, In Brief: Hypotheticals are useful in ethics provided that they are metaphysically and epistemically realistic.
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