#1 Thought experiment - "The Trolley Problem"

[Athene]

I would NOT be responsible for killing the five people. That would be due to a set of circumstances set into motion PRIOR to my arrival, that I was unable to prevent. Committing an act of cold-blooded murder towards an innocent person in order to rescue another or others does NOT constitute saving a life in my opinion; It's simply trading a life. Sure, five people could be "saved" if I murder one. So what? 

See, here's the thing-- you think by not flipping a switch, you are absolved of guilt because you haven't "done anything."  But you have-- you've made a decision to end those  5 people's lives rather than save them.  Making decisions is doing something too.

You're talking about about flipping a switch, and my answers have generally been in response to the "more fun" (as the OP put it) dilemma of whether to push a man to his death with my bare hands. They essentially present the same conundrum in my view, though flipping the switch might be easier in allowing the decider to feel as though he/she would be less culpable in the solitary man's death.

At any rate, I continue to reject your assertion that my answer would be deciding to end five people's lives, when in my view I'd be choosing to NOT to resort to murder in order to save them. If you feel that I'm a monster for NOT being willing to chuck some innocent bastard onto a set of train tracks because he's the closest object available, so be it.

 Thena wrote
Even more people could be saved by plucking some poor schmuck off the street, murdering him, and harvesting his vital organs. Is that acceptable?  Would one be 'letting' potential recipients die or more dramatically put, be 'killing them' by simply leaving this man alone and allowing him to live out the fucking life he was given? I don't think so. 

I already asked you about how things work in hospitals in more realistic scenarios than this, in actual real life.  I'll go back and see if you answered.

I'm a charge nurse, benny; I do patient care and medication management. I'm not on any Medical Executive Committee, nor am I a Hospital Administrator, insurance specialist, or attorney. However, if you're asking if there's a person or persons who arbitrarily decides to kill patients in order to harvest their organs, the answer is no. A patient, family, or POA's consent is required for organ donation in the US, though there has been some debate over adopting a presumed consent policy that would require individuals to opt-out of organ donation.

In the OP scenario, however, either you will "let" 5 people die, or you will "make" 1 person die: there's very little complexity there.  You are required to make a decision-- and once you make your decision about what to do, you are acting with intent.  You INTEND to let the 5 die so you don't have to cause the 1 death.  And death with intent is still murder, even if you don't pull the trigger or administer the poison, or tie the people to the train tracks.

You're playing fast and loose with definition of murder there, aren't you bennyboy? I'm no attorney, but it certainly seems as though some malice should come into play, at least for 1st degree murder. You wouldn't find a judge (in the States at least) who would convict you for NOT pushing a man (actually committing murder, mind you) in order to save five strangers, but you sure as hell could find one who would sentence your ass for shoving a man off a cliff.

Food for thought.

What if I saw a child drowning, and decided I didn't want to get my new suit wet?  Could I say, "Yeah, I saw the kid, but I didn't start the process of drowning, so his death isn't on my hands."  Of course not-- decisions are active process, and actions made on decisions demonstrate intent. . . in this case, criminal intent.

Criminal intent?

Yowsa. And...Yikes.
See my quote above.

So 5 > 1.  One death is bad, but 5 are worse.

As a response, I offer the following from my previous post; Apparently it was 'overlooked'.

Thena wrote

What's the method for determining the worth of people's lives in these situations, anyway? Age? Net worth? Lifetime earning potential? Total number of dependents? 
Or is it just a matter of simple ratios?

If it should just boil down to numbers, then what is the magic number of people that warrants killing one person for the greater good? Is it five? A couple of hundred? 
Why not merely TWO, if doing the "right thing" in these scenarios simply comes down to a matter of math?