Trolley Problem/Consistency in Ethics

[SaStrike]

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.

Sorry, innocent has no place in the dilemma, no idea why i included that, my bad.

If you were standing on a set of tracks that was safe and someone pulls a lever causing a train to hit you, pretty sure it's murder.

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Allowing vs doing.  It may be that we're inventing the dilemma entirely.  Since we're not actually asking about the morality of any of these given acts, but how they modify desert for the actor in question.

Allowing vs doing? What does that mean? Which scenario? At first it may seem that allowing is the trolley scenario and doing is the surgery scenario.

But i want to bring up this point again: you're also doing an act of pulling a lever in the trolley scenario. You're also allowing 5 people to die in the surgery scenario.

Is it because pulling a lever is easier than pulling organs? For a world class surgeon the two might be equally as easy.

[The Grand Nudger]

Allowing vs doing? What does that mean? Which scenario? At first it may seem that allowing is the trolley scenario and doing is the surgery scenario.

But i want to bring up this point again: you're also doing an act of pulling a lever in the trolley scenario. You're also allowing 5 people to die in the surgery scenario.

Is it because pulling a lever is easier than pulling organs? For a world class surgeon the two might be equally as easy.

Those are just the terms we use to describe what we find to be a relevant difference.  You could reverse them any way you like, though.  You could say that the doctor is allowing a death and that the switch puller is doing murder.  The salient point is that no transposition of either the terms or which actor we ascribe them to can present a necessary conflict or inconsistency.

In any and all cases, killing is killing is killing.  Killing one, or killing one person five separate times.  We could even say that killing is always wrong, but we would still use the allowing or doing distinction not to modify the act of killing, but the moral desert of the person who'd done it. It doesn't change the fact that a person is dead, it doesn;t change the fact of how many people are dead. It deosn;t matter how easy or difficult it was. We will see two killers differently depending on the specific of the situation in which they kill. Why they do the bad thing, in essence, or in what circumstance...even if all other things are (or at least are considered to be) equal.

[Haipule]

There isn't enough information. If the five are hot females whom want my body: I will save them and let the Pope , or Donald Trump die--see ya Donny! If the five are innocent children and the one is a hot female then, see ya kids!

You see, that's just how deep I am!

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Get real:

If you had to choose between: The Valkyrie, Astreja, LadyForCamus, Catholic_Lady, J a c k vs. Jesus: would you choose them or Jesus?

I know WHOM I would choose as my bud Jesus will just raise the third day anyway!

[The Grand Nudger]

I've had it on good advice that saving jesus would be to fuck up the whole divine plan and so it can't be anything that any real believer™ would want to do. 

Sucks to be him, I guess, even his best buds want to see him dead. They always have seemed suspiciously happy about his untimely demise. With friends like that.....amiright?

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...and this is yet another example of how religion poisons everything......

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[Cinjin]

There isn't enough information. If the five are hot females whom want my body: I will save them and let the Pope , or Donald Trump die--see ya Donny! If the five are innocent children and the one is a hot female then, see ya kids!

You see, that's just how deep I am!

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Get real:

If you had to choose between: The Valkyrie, Astreja, LadyForCamus, Catholic_Lady, J a c k vs. Jesus: would you choose them or Jesus?

I know WHOM I would choose as my bud Jesus will just raise the third day anyway!

If he can turn water into booze, he gets my vote too.

[Haipule]

There isn't enough information. If the five are hot females whom want my body: I will save them and let the Pope , or Donald Trump die--see ya Donny! If the five are innocent children and the one is a hot female then, see ya kids!

You see, that's just how deep I am!

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Get real:

If you had to choose between: The Valkyrie, Astreja, LadyForCamus, Catholic_Lady, J a c k vs. Jesus: would you choose them or Jesus?

I know WHOM I would choose as my bud Jesus will just raise the third day anyway!

If he can turn water into booze, he gets my vote too.

Oh yeah Dude! I'll follow you anywhere and I'm bringin' my water bottle!

[Athene]

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.

[brewer]

With the trolley, do I get to interview the people on the tracks? Some of them may need killin. (this assumes the tracks are in Texas)

[Athene]

What if the tracks are in Jersey?

You finish your Big Gulp, and keep walking.

[chimp3]

Hey folks!

I was recently musing over two different thought experiments whose purpose is to test the value of ethical consequentialism. For those who aren't familiar, consequentialism is a type of normative ethical theory which emphasizes the results (or consequences) of a given action.

In this paper, Judith Thompson analyzes the famous trolley problem alongside another thought experiment: the transplant problem.

Anyone who is unfamiliar with the trolley problem can find a description of it by clicking below:

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You find yourself standing next to a trolley track when, to your horror, you notice a runaway trolley which is set to hit five hapless individuals who are in the trolleys path. But there is hope! A few feet away from you stands a lever that, if pulled, will divert the trolley from its default course, thus saving the lives of five people. There is only one problem. If you pull the lever, and switch it off its track, it will be on course to hit one person who is on the other track.

So what do you do? Do you kill one person to save five? Or do you do nothing? (I should add that, even though the picture has people tied to the tracks, the original example uses railway workers who are unaware of the oncoming trolley.)

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The transplant problem is a different variation on the same ethical dilemma. In this example you are a world class surgeon whose area of expertise is organ transplants. You currently have five patients under your care who will die by the end of the day if they don't receive organ transplants. The window for any last-minute organ donations to show up has closed, and you are basically watching the clock waiting for them to die.

A patient shows up to your office complaining of mild gastric discomfort. This gives you an idea   .

If you were to subdue this patient and harvest her organs, you could save the lives of all five of your patients. But if you do this, there is no chance that the "donor" will survive. So what do you do? Do you kill one person to save five? Or do you do nothing?



The question here is: are you a consistent consequentialist? If you saved five lives at the cost of one in the trolley example, did you do so in the doctor example? If there is inconsistency, how do you justify it? Keep in mind, both examples are essentially the same: you can either ACT and save five lives (at the cost of one) or NOT ACT and let five people die. I'd like to hear people's reasoning for deciding differently or remaining consistent concerning both thought experiments.

(Even if you don't reply, please answer the attached poll. I'd like to get some raw numbers. I set it up to be anonymous.)

Everybody dies! I will die knowing I am not a murderer. So far!