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person1960s-2020

Judith Jarvis Thomson

Disciplines:
ethics
metaphysics
philosophy of action

Summary

American philosopher who became famous for the violinist thought experiment defending abortion rights and for developing the trolley problem into the central test case for deontological ethics.

Core Contribution

A Defense of Abortion (1971): even if the fetus is a person, abortion can be permissible — using the violinist analogy (you wake up connected to a famous violinist; you may disconnect even though he will die). The Trolley Problem (1985): systematized and extended Foot's thought experiment — the loop case, the fat man — to tease out the principles underlying our moral intuitions.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • The violinist argument changed the abortion debate — it showed that even granting full personhood to the fetus, the question of the mother's obligation to maintain life support is a separate question.
  • The fat man case — is it permissible to push a large man off a bridge to stop the trolley? — generates a strong intuition that it is not, despite identical numbers, showing that how the harm is caused matters morally.

Notable Works & Achievements

A Defense of Abortion

The Trolley Problem

Acts and Other Events

Rights, Restitution, and Risk

Historical Influences

Philippa Foot G.E.M. Anscombe

Intellectual Lineage

Analytic Ethics

Contemporaries & Peers

Philippa Foot Frances Kamm

Minds Influenced

Moral Philosophy Judith Jarvis Thomson

Intellectual Posterity

Trolley Problem Abortion Debate

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