I think trolley problems suffer from a different type of oversimplification.
Suppose in your system of ethics the correct action in this sort of situation depends on why the various different people got tied to the various bits of track, or on why ‘you’ ended up being in the situation where you get to control the direction of the trolley.
In that case, the trolley problem has abstracted away the information you need (and would normally have in the real world) to choose the right action.
(Or if you have a formulation which explicitly mentions the ‘mad philosopher’ and you take that bit seriously, then the question becomes an odd corner case rather than a simplifying thought experiment.)
Exactly. Context is very important.You can’t just count deaths. For example, the example AlanCrowe gave above has an obvious answer because the military has a clear context: soldiers have already committed their lives and themselves to being ‘one of a number’.
Based on the limited information of this trolley problem, I think my answer would have to consider that the entire universe would be a better place if 5 people died being run over by an unwitting machine than 1 person dying because he was deliberately pushed by one of his fellows.
Taking the constraints of the trolley problem at face value, one action a person might consider is asking the fat man to jump. If asked, ethically, the man should probably say yes. Given that, I am not sure it would be ethical to ask him. Finally, since the fat man could anticipate your asking, it might be most moral, then, to prevent him from jumping.
Thus over the course of a comment, I have surprised myself with the position that not only should you not push the man from jumping, you should prevent him if it occurs to him to do so. (That is, if his decision is impulsive, rather than a life commitment of self-sacrifice. I would not prevent a monk or a marine from saving the 5 persons.)
But if he does decide to jump, you have no way to know whether it’s because he anticipated your asking or whether he came to that decision independently of you.
Yeah, preventing the man from jumping given a probability that he really, desperately wants to do it might be the only moral dilemma.
In the movie, ‘A Trolley Problem’, he should threaten to kill me if I try to prevent him. Or I should precommit to killing all the people he saves if he saves them, so he must kill me to secure the 5 lives. This would be a voluntary sacrifice of my life to prevent an involuntary sacrifice of life.
I suppose 5 people should try to prevent him. If he kills all five of us, he really wanted to do it.
(I’m sure exactly where this line of reasoning became inane, but at some point it did.)
Attempting to prevent him might clarify it. If it’s easy to prevent him, he may have just assumed you’d ask. If it’s not, it may have been his own idea.
I think trolley problems suffer from a different type of oversimplification.
Suppose in your system of ethics the correct action in this sort of situation depends on why the various different people got tied to the various bits of track, or on why ‘you’ ended up being in the situation where you get to control the direction of the trolley.
In that case, the trolley problem has abstracted away the information you need (and would normally have in the real world) to choose the right action.
(Or if you have a formulation which explicitly mentions the ‘mad philosopher’ and you take that bit seriously, then the question becomes an odd corner case rather than a simplifying thought experiment.)
Exactly. Context is very important.You can’t just count deaths. For example, the example AlanCrowe gave above has an obvious answer because the military has a clear context: soldiers have already committed their lives and themselves to being ‘one of a number’.
Based on the limited information of this trolley problem, I think my answer would have to consider that the entire universe would be a better place if 5 people died being run over by an unwitting machine than 1 person dying because he was deliberately pushed by one of his fellows.
Taking the constraints of the trolley problem at face value, one action a person might consider is asking the fat man to jump. If asked, ethically, the man should probably say yes. Given that, I am not sure it would be ethical to ask him. Finally, since the fat man could anticipate your asking, it might be most moral, then, to prevent him from jumping.
Thus over the course of a comment, I have surprised myself with the position that not only should you not push the man from jumping, you should prevent him if it occurs to him to do so. (That is, if his decision is impulsive, rather than a life commitment of self-sacrifice. I would not prevent a monk or a marine from saving the 5 persons.)
But if he does decide to jump, you have no way to know whether it’s because he anticipated your asking or whether he came to that decision independently of you.
Yeah, preventing the man from jumping given a probability that he really, desperately wants to do it might be the only moral dilemma.
In the movie, ‘A Trolley Problem’, he should threaten to kill me if I try to prevent him. Or I should precommit to killing all the people he saves if he saves them, so he must kill me to secure the 5 lives. This would be a voluntary sacrifice of my life to prevent an involuntary sacrifice of life.
I suppose 5 people should try to prevent him. If he kills all five of us, he really wanted to do it.
(I’m sure exactly where this line of reasoning became inane, but at some point it did.)
Attempting to prevent him might clarify it. If it’s easy to prevent him, he may have just assumed you’d ask. If it’s not, it may have been his own idea.