Put another way, the weakness you're referring to, in each case, isn't a weakness or inconsistency of any of those systems, but a weakness of the people who employ them.  

It is only by, as jorg put it, focusing on the immediate and obvious that a person fails to consistently express consequentialist ethics.
It is only by a failure to accurately odentify virtue that a world full of hitlers consider themselves virtuous.

That;s why moral theorists invoke an ability that no person has to assess the system, rather the interactions of people trying to employ the system.  Superationality, for example. That, not for nothing, is the virtue of deontology. We aren;t always able to perform this exhaustive moral calculus. The poor fuckers under the tolley would have been hit by now. So we make rules that express what we think would be the product of such a calculus. This is also why divine command fails - because theres no calculus, just a command, where the social contract succeeds..because there's an exhaustive calculus.

(January 25, 2018 at 11:59 am)vulcanlogician Wrote: You have a point there, Khem.

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(January 25, 2018 at 11:50 am)polymath257 Wrote: Now, how would votes change if the lone person on the other tracks was a brilliant scientist that had just figured out a cure for cancer? Does that affect the moral decision?

That would obviously warrant not pulling the switch, regardless of one particular ethics.

OK, now suppose the 'organ donor' is a convicted criminal sentenced to death?

Hey, what if you just don;t like the guy, right?  What if the one person in the trolley example is your own kid?

There are a great many things that compromise our moral agency, that make it seem to us as though doing the wrong thing is the right course of action.  We even ake allowances for that sort of stuff in determining how we should assess the actor after the fact.  No one would be surprised If I killed five people to save one of my heathens, most would understand. The families of those who died are likely to empathize even as they hate me.....but I would still face consequences for having done so, no matter how virtuous the act is perceived to be.

(January 25, 2018 at 12:39 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Hey, what if you just don;t like the guy, right? 

There are a few people I know who, if they were on the alternate track, would make the trolley problem far less of a dilemma. One or two, in particular, and there wouldn't even need to be five people on the main track for me to still pull the switch

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(January 25, 2018 at 12:29 pm)polymath257 Wrote:

(January 25, 2018 at 11:59 am)vulcanlogician Wrote: You have a point there, Khem.

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That would obviously warrant not pulling the switch, regardless of one particular ethics.

OK, now suppose the 'organ donor' is a convicted criminal sentenced to death?

Same deal. Gimmie dem sweet, sweet kidneys so I can save five people. Why are you making it so easy?

(January 25, 2018 at 12:45 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: There are a few people I know who, if they were on the alternate track, would make the trolley problem far less of a dilemma. One or two, in particular, and there wouldn't even need to be five people on the main track for me to still pull the switch

For some people, there wouldn't need to be -any- people on the other track for me to pull the switch.  I'd see the trolley going down the unobstructed track as a wasted opportunity.

-and that's why I'm not in charge.

(January 25, 2018 at 12:45 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote:

(January 25, 2018 at 12:39 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Hey, what if you just don;t like the guy, right? 

There are a few people I know who, if they were on the alternate track, would make the trolley problem far less of a dilemma. One or two, in particular, and there wouldn't even need to be five people on the main track for me to still pull the switch

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(January 25, 2018 at 12:29 pm)polymath257 Wrote: OK, now suppose the 'organ donor' is a convicted criminal sentenced to death?

Same deal. Gimmie dem sweet, sweet kidneys so I can save five people. Why are you making it so easy?

It shows that the societal position of the person who would die is a significant aspect of our moral judgments. A brilliant scientist who cures cancer is valued more highly than the average and a condemned criminal less so. So it isn't just the humanity of these people, but their status that we use to arrive at our conclusions.

Their status being derived from what?  Why would it be a better idea to choose the doctor who cures cancer than a mechanic, 1/1?  Consequence.  OFC, we may not think a better world would amount from people being selected for life and death based upon their professions or abilities, and we do need mechanics and janitors and whatnot.  Consequence strikes again.

How about the doctor who cures cancer, or a witchdoctor who cures....nothing? Careful, I've got a boxcar waiting to fill up with priests and holymen. I'm going to use it to run over religious extremists once it's full..and there aint anybody on the other track.

Put Larry Nasser on either track and the trolley goes that way.

We call that collateral damage. It's not that we wanted to kill those people...didn't really know them from adam...it's just that the fucker we were aiming at was deep in the soft cover.

(January 25, 2018 at 1:35 pm)polymath257 Wrote: It shows that the societal position of the person who would die is a significant aspect of our moral judgments. A brilliant scientist who cures cancer is valued more highly than the average and a condemned criminal less so. So it isn't just the humanity of these people, but their status that we use to arrive at our conclusions.

In no way was societal position a factor in my choices for your variant thought experiments.

You said that the doctor on the alternate track had a cure for cancer. Consequentialism would be the only reason to actually pull the switch in the first place. But when you add the "cure for cancer" caveat, consequentialism says that it would save more lives to let the five people die. With the other example, you said the organ donor had already been sentenced to death. Why not, in that case, make use of his organs because he is going to die anyway?

If you wanted to make societal position the focus of your examples, you should have worded things differently.