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Trolley Problem

^ we can tailor this multiple ways. The plane is damaged, but on autopilot set to land in a crowded field. The passenger or pilot can either divert the aircraft to a less crowded field, or allow the set course to continue. Either location is equally safe as a landing zone. The only difference is the number of people on the ground.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the situation itself is unethical. I view choices as ethical or unethical. I'm not sure how a situation can be.
 
when you tailor the example to that degree, not much is left of the original intuition you desired to provoke. also, having a damaged plane land in a field completely on autopilot seems very far fetched, if not downright unrealistic. all in all, what makes it different is the general intuition that planes don't land themselves. conscious control is needed. once control is assumed, the choice is a no-brainer.

an unethical situation would be one that is constructed as such that a 'good' ethical choice becomes impossible; ie. that your conscience cannot rest in either choice.
 
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^ What happens to the original intuition if we tailor it to that extent? If the autopilot scenario seems far-fetched, imagine that a plane has taken off, suffers a power loss, that the pilot loses consciousness, and a passenger, who fortunately knows how to fly the aircraft, now has a very limited range of places to land. If he does nothing at all, the plane will descend into a crowded field. If he alters course, the plane will descend into a less crowded field. All other possibilities are blocked by highly populated buildings and homes.

As far as the conscience being troubled in the trolley problem... is it the conscience that is troubled? One would feel terrible about the death of the one person, especially given how connected one was to it. That doesn't mean the choice was wrong, though, or that certain choices aren't better than other choices.
 
the example just seems very forced to me now. to me it seems it draws from the intuition 'planes don't land themselves' even while you state it does in the example, so as to make it lean to the response you desire. but yes; when you tailor it to: there is a plane that flies and lands itself, ... [rest of story] there is no difference.

i generally use feelings and intuitions as a compass when philosophing. i believe that pure, cold rationality all too easely derails into unspeakable abominations, and that it does so very fast. for that reason I do believe it is wrong to ignore feeling, given the consequences that brings. the trolley problem illustrates that. there is no difference between the doctor example and the trolley example save for the intuitions we have about doctors; namely 'doctors save lives'. in your own tailored example, you do something very similar as in the doctor scenario, but in the opposite direction. the new intuition is aimed at minimizing the active element. without the initial passivity, it is not the same scenario. but the intuitions you try to bring in with making it a plane serve no other purpose then trying to muffle that vital element of the scenario; namely that as a given, you do not control the situation. and this is the core of the ambiguity the trolley problem hinges on: there is a situation you have no control over, but you can seize control. that situation is then pressurized by a rational calculus: 3 lives versus 1. purely intuitively; that is, if it were 1 life vs 1 life, nobody would seize control.
 
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anyway, generalized, there is a qualitative difference between actively taking a life (killing) or passively allowing death. there are three elements that you can stress more or less with different examples to manipulate answers; the switch (reducing the active element; ie. is it a matter of flipping a switch or taking a knife and stabbing someone to death), the sacrifice (quantity,innocent/criminal) and the 'scheduled' death (quantity, innocent/criminal). the qualitative difference can be severely stressed/muffled by these quantitative factors, but never destroyed.

while you can construct an overwhelming quantity over a quality; (say you save a million lives by hitting a mere switch that would kill some criminal) you cannot inherently justify the qualitative leap by quantity. the criminals life can only be justly taken in a context of internal justice, ie. by means of a relation of responsability. if you do not heed this, you touch on free will and responsability in a way that destroys them. when you can be involuntarily killed for a situation you are not responsable for (sacrifice), your free will/choices in life do not matter anymore, and once your free will is compromised, you cannot be asked to be responsable for what you do. /end ethics.
 
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But if you derail the train to avoid the three people all the people on the train might die too
 
I would divert the trolley to kill the lone bystander while yelling "Sorry bro, I have to do it!"
 
I think I've figured out what's so appalling about this puzzle---namely, that the options are spelled out for you: Press the button, save three kill one, Don't press the button, save one kill three.

IRL, I think a "normal" person at the rail booth, while struggling to come up with a solution, would reason like this..."If I push the button, I'll kill the other guy"...and then the process would stop right THERE. In other words...the "normal" person wouldn't CONTINUE to reason..."but by pressing the button, it will save the other three, thus being the 'greater good'".
 
^greater good? what if those three people are a rapist, residential burglar, and serial killer. the one guy is a social worker who volunteers at the soup kitched every weekend.

there really is no "good" answer to this question.
 
azzazza !? said:
there is no difference between the doctor example and the trolley example save for the intuitions we have about doctors; namely 'doctors save lives'. in your own tailored example, you do something very similar as in the doctor scenario, but in the opposite direction. the new intuition is aimed at minimizing the active element. without the initial passivity, it is not the same scenario. but the intuitions you try to bring in with making it a plane serve no other purpose then trying to muffle that vital element of the scenario; namely that as a given, you do not control the situation. and this is the core of the ambiguity the trolley problem hinges on: there is a situation you have no control over, but you can seize control. that situation is then pressurized by a rational calculus: 3 lives versus 1. purely intuitively; that is, if it were 1 life vs 1 life, nobody would seize control.
Click to expand...

I agree that our intuitions about the proper role of doctors play a role, but I do not agree that the rest of the difference is simply one of activity and passivity. In the case of the trolley, or the plane, the choices are very sharply defined, the consequences are very sharply defined, and the circumstances in which the choices present themselves are very sharply defined and very limited. In the case of whether a doctor should be permitted to determine whether healthy x person should be killed so that a, b, and c persons should live, the choices and consequences are not sharply defined at all; and there are few limits to the circumstances in which this choice could occur. Which person will the doctor kill? What are the effects of universalizing this rule of conduct? Given this lack of definition, we think more about the consequences of universalizing the doctor's conduct, and strongly dislike the result. We are less concerned about that in the case of the trolley, or the plane.

Let's take another example, that involves more activity than the trolley car, but it just as sharply defined and limited in circumstance.

You and a group of 5 other individuals are exploring a mine. You all had to crawl through a very narrow entrance. As your sixth friend tries to crawl through, a rock composing the entrance shifts, trapping him with half his body in the mine, and half in the entrance itself.

As you and your friends struggle futilely to free him, you hear a crash from deeper in the mine, and water begins to swirl around your feet, rising rapidly.

Examining the rest of the room, you notice light coming through a high crack in a wall, and determine that by knocking a support beam down, the wall itself will likely collapse inward and leave a space to exit. You and your friends can avoid being crushed by the falling wall by standing on the other side of the room. Unfortunately, your stuck friend will be crushed. If you do nothing, all will drown. As a variation: if you do nothing, you and your five friends will drown, but the pressure from the water will, regrettably after your death, allow your stuck friend to escape.

Now, without simply arguing against the hypothetical (how do you know the wall collapse like so, etc.), what would be the ethical act?

Other possibilities:

A suicide bomber is driving towards a crowded school, with a child sitting on his lap. Your weapon is sufficient to pierce the windshield, killing the driver, but insufficient to stop the vehicle itself. Worse, you have no clear line of sight to the driver; you would have to kill the child to kill the driver. What's the ethical action? How about if the bomber's hostage were an old man? A violent criminal? Your loved one?
 
im sorry but that made no sense. i can perfectly define the doctor one, if you like? also, any ethical action is pinned to universalisation. i mean, thats what ethics is no? categorical imperative? even in rule-utulitarianism, it is used as the justification for our intuitions regarding the inherent/absolute value of certain things. the only way to dodge the imperative is to embrace all-encompassing relativity of ethical calculus. and thats just, well, unrestrained economy, not ethics.

as for your additional examples:
-in the mine example: again, as i explained with the plane: your own life is at stake. control over your life is a God-given. thus you have already assumed control over the situation.
-in the suicide bomber one: the child dies regardless. it is in reality killed by the bomber the minute the bomber takes him as a hostage with said intentions. im not sure what you mean by 'insufficient to stop the vehicle'? everybody dies regardless of your action? then why shoot?

in all of your posts, i can only see you (attempting to) take away the vital element of original passivity, making the moral agent a priory responsable for the outcome of the situation. it is indeed that what makes people choose for the calculus. the intuition responsable for this is 'being given the means to control a situation, means that one becomes responsable for the situation'. you can see this very clearly by what you are doing in both your original plane example as well as in the mine example. and you have a very good point with those, though you seem to have difficulty articulating it. namely, you point out that 'God' or 'the given' spouts a rather conflicting message with the (possibility of) control. the intuition you go by is true. BUT; in the trolley problem, the control is not fully given. in both the trolley and the plane problem, 'God' has given you the means to control the situation. but when we go into this conflict; a crucial difference becomes apparent. in the trolley problem those means are external to yourself. you still have a choice; I don't *have* to use it. in your example, it has become internal to the I. the I *has* to use the control, for if it does not, there is no I. the I and the control are inescapably already part of eachother. while in the trolley problem, the control is given to you by the situation-builder, not inherently a part of you (a God given). thus in the trolley problem, given that you have no means of justification for your choice towards the sacrifice, your choice would be an evil on your account. in the original plane problem, given that you have not chosen to be in control of your life, while you are; you are not responsable for having that control, as you did not take it.
 
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I wouldn't divert the train, its not up to me to play god. I don't think you can just decide that the one person should die to save the 3 peopels lives, what would give you the right?
 
No-one knows what the reaction of diverting the train will be, would the decision to divert the train kill a person who would later go on to save hundreds of lives?
 
funny, since i kicked up a bit of a stink in this thread, i've completed a unit in ethics in uni and the doctor example actually came up in utilitarianism.


unit reader said:
The Replaceability Problem
If the rightness or wrongness of actions is determined by whether or not those actions increase total happiness, then utilitarianism seems to treat people simply as units of happiness. If so, what would be the objection to killing a person if by that means you could increase the happiness of a larger number of people? Gilbert Harman, a philosopher from Princeton University, developed a famous counter-example to classical utilitarianism that nicely illustrates this replaceability problem.

Harman asks us to imagine a hospital transplant unit run by a zealous classical utilitarian doctor. The doctor needs five different organs for five different patients, each of whom will die unless they receive the transplant. There is a shortage of organ donors and the doctor fears that his patients will die if they do not receive donor organs soon. He therefore devises a plan to kidnap a healthy passer-by and harvest her organs to assist the five needy patients (assume for the sake of the example that her organs provide a compatible match for the five different patients). The cost of this procedure is the loss of the life of the unfortunate passer-by, but the gain is that five patients who would have died are now alive. The total quantity of pleasure has been increased and so it would seem on the classical utilitarian view that the doctor's plan produces the best outcome and is therefore morally right. But this conclusion seems completely counter-intuitive. Most people would think that even if five lives are saved this could not justify the kidnap and murder of the woman whose organs have been harvested.


Classical utilitarians tend to respond to counter-examples such as this with objections based on the bad side-effect consequences that would arise from actions like those of the doctor. Thus, they would argue that the pain and suffering to the murdered woman's relatives must be factored into the calculation of consequences. So too must the deleterious social consequences (increased community fear, widespread distrust and fear of the medical profession and so on) that would arise were hospitals to routinely engage in such practices). Once these kinds of consequences are properly factored into the utilitarian calculation, they argue, any benefits that might arise from the doctor's actions would be outweighed by all the harmful consequences of his actions and thus his actions could not be justified by utilitarian reasoning. The problem with this response, however, is that it seems to miss the point of the objection, which is that the proposed kidnap and murder of the innocent passer-by is not just wrong because of the bad consequences that it is likely to cause, but it is intrinsically wrong. The classical utilitarian criterion for determining the rightness of wrongness of an action, namely whether or not the action increases or diminishes total happiness, cannot explain the intrinsic wrongness of the doctor's actions.
Click to expand...
 
I don't have time to read the entire thread right now.


But to me, this is a simple problem with a simple solution.

Divert the train, kill one. 3 - 1 = 2. Save two lives.

That is, if you value human life. If you don't, then ethics go out the window.


Also, to those who say that diverting the train would be murder, frankly, they're wrong. Making the choice to let the train follow its original course would be a conscious decision to KILL two human beings.


Or you could just decide that the world is overpopulated, and take advantage of the opportunity to murder without reaping legal consequences.
 
^What, then, do you make of the case of the surgeon who harvests the organs of the few for the good of the many? (It's in this thread somewhere in more detail).
 
I think it would be easier on my conscience to sacrifice the bystander in order the save the three lives of the others. In a split second decision I'm almost certain thats what I would do.

As for the doctor scenerio I wouldnt support the idea of premeditated murder in order to save the three dying people, for a few different reasons:

1. The dying people wouldnt be instantly killed on the spot from their illnesses.
2. There are plenty of organs on the market
3. Even though in the trolley scenerio I would still be killing one to save three, I'd be much less likely to do so if it involved butchering an innocent person to harvest his organs.
 
It's not difficult to imagine a situation where three people desperately need organs and will survive a very short time without them. As for the "plenty of organs" thing, that's just not true, there are long waiting lists for organs and people frequently die before they receive one. Demand certainly outstrips supply. So all we're left with is the difference between directing a train into someone and killing them some other way, which doesn't seem that significant.
 
My point being the three ill people would have a chance to survive without slaughtering another person to harvest their organs, which can't be said about the trolley situation as the three individuals will face certain death. There are alternatives. In the trolley situation there are no alternatives.

And the preference between the two causes of death are entirely personal. It would just be easier for me personally if I could just pull a lever instead of ripping apart another human being to harvest his organs.
 
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