RE: Trolley Problem/Consistency in Ethics
January 24, 2018 at 10:34 pm
(This post was last modified: January 24, 2018 at 10:36 pm by Athene.)
(January 24, 2018 at 7:24 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(January 24, 2018 at 7:03 pm)SaStrike Wrote: I guess neither matters more, we all die anyway. I was just trying to show it could be consistent. But if some people can convince themselves that sometimes it's ok to kill one innocent person for the greater of mankind as a whole then that's fine too. If they genuinely thought they are doing the right thing then can't blame them. It is a dilemma after all.
You're not killing an innocent person in the trolley scenario. You're changing the tracks so that the least amount of people are killed.
Would you find a shoving a large man off a cliff and onto the tracks in order to prevent the trolley from colliding with the five strangers to be a morally correct choice?
Because there's no difference between the two other than one variation giving the false impression that the subject hasn't killed someone, but simply having made a "choice" because he/she didn't have to actually get his/her hands dirty, so to speak. And of course, in the surgeon scenario, the blood on the hands in quite literal, thus making it even easier for subjects to deem as immoral.
I perceive my decisions in both trolley variations as choosing NOT to murder one innocent person in order to save five innocent people from a tragedy that was not of my creation and beyond my control. Precisely the same dilemma that's presented in the surgeon scenario, in my view, which is why my answers are consistent. The only notable difference is the level of detachment involved in the required killings.
If taking an innocent person's life in an act of murder and human sacrifice is that ONLY solution to a given problem, then I would easily consider that a "There was nothing I could do" moment, because the solution is unreasonable and unacceptable to me, on a personal level.
I recognize that others' perceptions of the moral obligations presented in these hypothetical dilemmas differ, and that's fine. I don't deem them or their answers as immoral because there are no "right" answers, as far as I'm concerned.