The Trolley Problem

[Cai]

Clearly, as atheists, it's important that we use reason and science to workout what is the "best" course of action in any given circumstance. It is not hard to understand that it might be possible to come up with a comprehensive and coherent (though probably also tentative - like scientific facts) ethical system by which we can live good lives.

Most "controversial" ethical problems actually have a simple solution after you remove dogma and religious considerations. Eg:

- Stem cell research is not inherently immoral
- Early aborting is not inherently immoral
- Sexual acts in private between consenting adults are not inherently immoral
- Vegetarianism is morally superior to unnecessary meat-eating (oooh! )

There are also some questions which we can't satisfactorally answer, but this is only due to a lack of scientific understanding:

- When is the cut-off-point where a termination of a pregnancy becomes immoral?
- When do we have a moral right to "pull the plug" on a brain-dead patient?

However, sometimes we come across moral problems that are really tricky - they need to be argued out carefully on a philosophical level in order to determine which is the right course of action.

My friend Koel explained one such problem, apparently a well-known one amongst philosophy students, and it's called the "Trolly Problem". Though the Wikipedia entry is pretty clear, I'll restate the problem here:

There's a train with broken breaks hurtling down a track towards 5 people working on the track. If nothing is done, these 5 people will definitely be killed. There's a turn-off to a side track where a single person is working. Inside the train there is a switch which can be flipped, causing the train to turn off down the side track; this will save the 5 people, but will definitely kill the 1 person.

The question is, are you morally justified in flipping the switch?

If it seems obvious to you that you would be, as it did to me initially, consider the following problem:

You are a doctor in a hospital where 5 people are in critical condition awaiting organ transplants. If they do not get organ transplants immediately, they will surely die. Now a perfectly healthy person walks in.

The question now is, are you morally justified in killing this 1 healthy person, harvesting his organs, and saving the lives of the 5 waiting people?

If you have different answers to these two questions, then: what is the significant difference between them? I'd be really interested to know what y'all think!

[Rachel]

There's an extension to the trolley problem where, again, a trolley is out of control and hurtling down a track towards five people. You are standing on a bridge under which the trolley will pass, and you can stop the trolley by dropping a heavy weight from the bridge in front of it- and there just happens to be a very fat man standing next to you on the bridge. Is it right to push the fat man off the bridge to save the five people on the track?

Is there a difference between the two cases? Some people might say that in the second case, you actually intend harm to the fat man, but in the first case, if you flip the switch, someone dies only as a side effect of your actions.

There's loads of versions of the trolley problem on the web (like http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.c ... y_pro.html) which looks at the problem from different perspectives.

[Ed_Haz]

The difference between the two scenarios is simple. In the trolley case, you do not have the oppourtunity to collect consent from the one man who will die when you divert the train. In the hospital/transplant case, you have the oppourtunity to collect consent from the one man you would kill to save the five.

In the first case, the unfortunate single worker is 'collateral damage', (I hate this phrase, but it seems the only one which fits right now!), wheras in the second case, you would be actively murdering someone.

Also, in the first case, you are making the best of a bad situation. The utilitarian mathematics are pretty clear, the outcomes are -1 or -5, you have the outcomes decided for you. In the second case however, you are actively making someones situation much worse, (probably!) against his consent. Now, you would be changing the outcomes, creating new ones, ethically more sticky as now you have to accept responsibility as a completely free agent, which you weren't in the first case.

Did anyone make any sense of that, I kinda made it all up...?

[Ed_Haz]

ooops, ok my above post was a reply to cai, i think you probably started posting just as i started typing.

[Cai]

The difference between the two scenarios is simple. In the trolley case, you do not have the oppourtunity to collect consent from the one man who will die when you divert the train. In the hospital/transplant case, you have the oppourtunity to collect consent from the one man you would kill to save the five.

You appear to be arguing from the Doctorine of Double Effect.

It's convincing, but it leads to the following conclusion:

If a nuke was about to go of in Tokyo (very densely populated) and one man knew the whereabouts (and hence presented the way in which its detonation could be prevented), would you be justified in torturing this one person in order to get the information out of him (assuming he's unwilling)? The DDE says no.

But what if it's a dead-cert, and you're saving 35,000,000 lives?

How does this compare to the killing of unwilling foreign soldiers invading from a country with conscription and death-for-desertion laws, all in order to protect your family? Or other instances of "collateral damage"? I'm not sure what I think, but I don't think it's clear cut...

I'm uncomfortable with there being two acts which have (physically) identical consequences, but where one is allowed and the other is not; because if you're appealing to the non-physical, then what are you appealing to? That's a nonspecific "you" - I'm not saying you're doing this: I'm almost sure it's more complicated than that - but that's the immediate problem I have.

[Ed_Haz]

If a nuke was about to go of in Tokyo (very densely populated) and one man knew the whereabouts (and hence presented the way in which its detonation could be prevented), would you be justified in torturing this one person in order to get the information out of him (assuming he's unwilling)? The DDE says no.


Ok, bare in mind that I never advocated being morally consistent. In fact, I believe moral consistency to be in itself rather daft, as there are conundrums which seem to throw doubt on the outcomes of every ethical system devised to date. I would advocate moral particularism, (which is distinct from moral relativism).

It is just obvious that the man in the hospital should not be killed, and the nuclear bomber should be made to give up his information, (provided you are as close to 100% certain it is him that has the information as you can be!).