In Defence of the Hypothetical
Why the question nobody will ever face is often the only one worth asking.
There is a particular objection that surfaces whenever a conversation turns to a constructed scenario: that would never happen. It is offered as though it ends the discussion, and it almost always ends it, which is a shame, because it is not an argument.
What a hypothetical is for
A hypothetical is an instrument for isolating a variable. Real situations arrive with everything tangled together — the stakes, the relationships, the history, the incentives — and it is very difficult to work out which of those is doing the moral work. Constructing an artificial case lets you hold everything else still and vary one thing.
This is exactly what a physicist does with a frictionless plane. Nobody objects that frictionless planes do not exist, because everyone understands that the plane is not the claim. The claim is what the plane lets you see.
Objecting that a hypothetical is unrealistic is objecting to the method, not the conclusion. It is a way of not answering that feels like an answer.
The honest version of the objection
There is a real version of the complaint, and it is worth separating out. Some hypotheticals smuggle their conclusion into the setup. If the scenario has been built so that only one answer is available, then the exercise is rhetoric dressed as inquiry, and “that would never happen” is a clumsy way of noticing that the construction is doing all the work.
The fix is not to abandon hypotheticals. It is to ask what would have to change about the scenario for the answer to flip. If nothing would, the case was rigged. If something would, you have just found the thing the argument is actually about — which was the point of the exercise.
Why I keep having these conversations
Partly because they are enjoyable, which I do not think needs defending. But mostly because the alternative is discovering your principles for the first time in the moment you need them, under time pressure, with something at stake.
Working out what you think when nothing depends on it is not idle. It is preparation.