Silicon at the Switch: A Computational Moral Grammar for Solving Trolley Problems

A popular set of moral dilemmas in philosophical literature are "trolley problems"—choices between killing (or letting die) different groups of people, named after the most famous example, involving a runaway trolley. Dr. John Mikhail has suggested a generative moral grammar for solving such problems; this paper critically examines this grammar, especially through a partial implementation of that grammar in Prolog. Extensions, amendments, and alternatives to both the grammar and its computational implementation are discussed.