4 Philosophy Professors Weigh In on Why The Good Place Is So Forking Funny — and Important; Popsugar, February 28, 2018

Gwendolyn Purdom, Popsugar; 4 Philosophy Professors Weigh In on Why The Good Place Is So Forking Funny — and Important

"There's a scene in the second season of The Good Place where, in order to illustrate the classic moral dilemma known as The Trolley Problem, the characters are forced to live it. The famous thought experiment, which asks different variations of whether you would steer an unstoppable trolley into one person to avoid killing five, has long been a go-to for ethics scholars — but watching the show's hilariously gory take on it brought the lesson to life in a way Agnes Callard, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, hadn't considered before. "There's something very violent about the thought experiment itself, like, we're asking them to imagine murdering people," Callard told POPSUGAR. "And the show just takes that really seriously, like, 'OK, let's reallyimagine it.'"

It's just one of the ways tuning into the NBC sitcom has been a fun first for philosophy and ethics professors like Callard, who aren't used to seeing their area of expertise at the center of a hit network comedy. Callard and the three other philosophy professors/The Good Place fans we talked to said that while pop culture has always reflected on philosophical themes, they don't remember a show or movie ever examining specific theories and works this explicitly."