Presumably you think that in a case like the fat man case, the human somehow mistakenly believes the consequences for pushing the fat man will be worse? In some cases you have a good point, but that’s one of the ones where your argument is least plausible.
I don’t think that the person mistakenly believes that the consequences will be sufficiently worse, but something more like that the rule of not murdering people is really really important, and the risk that you’re making a mistake if you think you’ve got a good reason to violate it this time is too high. Probably that’s a miscalculation, but not exactly the miscalculation you’re pointing to. I’m also just generally suspicious of the value of excessively contrived and unrealistic examples.
I’ll take two broader examples then- “Broad Trolley cases”, cases where people can avert a harm only at the cost of triggering a lesser harm but do not directly cause it, and “Broad Fat Man Cases”, which are the same except such a harm is directly caused.
As a general rule, although humans can be swayed to act in Broad Fat Man cases they cannot help but feel bad about it- much less so in Broad Trolley cases. Admittedly this is a case in which humans are inconsistent with themselves if I remember correctly as they can be made to cause such a harm under pressure, but practically none consider it the moral thing to do and most regret it afterwards- the same as near-mode defections from group interests of a selfish nature.
Presumably you think that in a case like the fat man case, the human somehow mistakenly believes the consequences for pushing the fat man will be worse? In some cases you have a good point, but that’s one of the ones where your argument is least plausible.
I don’t think that the person mistakenly believes that the consequences will be sufficiently worse, but something more like that the rule of not murdering people is really really important, and the risk that you’re making a mistake if you think you’ve got a good reason to violate it this time is too high. Probably that’s a miscalculation, but not exactly the miscalculation you’re pointing to. I’m also just generally suspicious of the value of excessively contrived and unrealistic examples.
I’ll take two broader examples then- “Broad Trolley cases”, cases where people can avert a harm only at the cost of triggering a lesser harm but do not directly cause it, and “Broad Fat Man Cases”, which are the same except such a harm is directly caused.
As a general rule, although humans can be swayed to act in Broad Fat Man cases they cannot help but feel bad about it- much less so in Broad Trolley cases. Admittedly this is a case in which humans are inconsistent with themselves if I remember correctly as they can be made to cause such a harm under pressure, but practically none consider it the moral thing to do and most regret it afterwards- the same as near-mode defections from group interests of a selfish nature.