itch.io

Yes—I love that I can bring them out every semester!

 It can be a bit tedious and irritating to restring the cut models, depending on what you use to tie them… I was using embroidery floss, which is finicky, and I will probably switch to a nice chunky yarn for next semester. 

It is great that they can see what other students have chosen, agreed—but even better is that they are FORCED to choose themselves. When I teach thought experiments without the models, there are always a few students who don’t seem to pay very close attention, perhaps just because they have trouble imagining the case. And there are others, too, who tend to waffle around rather than get serious about what they would actually do, but the models really focus everyone on the scenario. And whether or not they’ve been interacted with (string cut or scissors set deliberately aside) let’s me know when the whole class is ready for the next part of the lesson, in which they all now have a stake. 

(Next semester, I will ask students who decide not to cut actually bring their scissors back up to the front so I have a clear indicator both ways when they are finished.)

That is a great question. This is Eli Shupe, answering this in my capacity as project lead; I’m sure some of the students might have different perspectives, but they’re all cramming for their final exams at the moment…

I think the materiality of the model in some ways makes it harder to break the connection—the violinist is right there for you to look at, after all, and you have to physically sever the connection yourself, not just affirm it would be permissible to do so. I am not sure whether this changes anything for me personally, because I have never been very comfortable severing the connection, at least not in the version of the thought experiment where it’s only nine months’ confinement. 

I wonder if having the model makes it easier to imagine the violinist but simultaneously harder to identify with the kidnap victim, who is now a representation in front of you that you are being asked to identify with, rather than your very own body. If one is very good at imagining things, and simulating scenarios from the first person perspective, then in some ways the activity set might decrease the immediacy of the dilemma.

My colleague Dr Charles Hermes tells me that experiencing the case with the models does change his intuitions—I will link him this dialogue and see if he’s willing to share more about that.