Thought experiments are a common methodological device in ethics to decide between competing theories. They usually present an imagined situation involving an ethical dilemma and explore how moral intuitions about what behavior is right depend on particular factors in the imagined situation.^[1][2][3] For example, in the trolley problem, a person can flip a switch to redirect a trolley from one track to another, thereby sacrificing the life of one person in order to save five. This scenario explores how the difference between doing and allowing harm affects moral obligations.^[4] Another thought experiment examines the moral implications of abortion by imagining a situation in which a person gets connected without their consent to an ill violinist. It explores whether it would be morally permissible to sever the connection within the next nine months even if this would lead to the violinist's death.^[5][6]

• Baggini, Julian; Fosl, Peter S. (27 February 2024). The Ethics Toolkit: A Compendium of Ethical Concepts and Methods. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-119-89197-0.
• Brun, Georg (2017). "Thought Experiments in Ethics". The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-315-17502-7.
• Brown, James Robert; Fehige, Yiftach (2019). "Thought Experiments". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Archived from the original on 21 November 2017. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
• Woollard, Fiona; Howard-Snyder, Frances (2022). "Doing vs. Allowing Harm". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Archived from the original on 5 October 2023. Retrieved 7 September 2023.
• Rini, Regina A. "Morality and Cognitive Science". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archived from the original on 7 September 2023. Retrieved 7 September 2023.