Trolley Problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it's pretty clear that all but the incredibly weak-willed or self-deluded recognize that we *should* pull the lever. Refusal to act is an act in and of itself. (Whether we actually could is a different story.) What makes the trolley problem interesting are the endless variations, such as:

- What is the one person is a baby, or a child?
- What if you are related to the one person?
- What if the five people are white collar criminals?
- What if the 5 people are violent criminals?
- What if the 5 people are 4 child molesters, and one child?
- What if the 5 people are out of your line of sight and hearing, but the one person is 10 feet from you?

And so on.

What makes you think actively killing one person is morally superior ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is this under religion? It’s a philosophy Q.

DP - normative ethics which has many overlaps with religion as it explores what is good and what is true via different lens
Utilitarian
Virtue ethics
Personal Duty ethics
Etc

And what is right

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A runaway trolley is speeding down the tracks. If you do nothing, it will kill five workers. You the option to pull a lever, diverting the trolley onto another track where it will kill one person instead. Do you pull the lever ?
Why or why not ?

I turn around and walk away. I am not responsible for the 5 people's death. If I pull the lever, I am responsible for causing a person's death. I could live with the choice to do nothing and comfort myself by saying there was nothing I could do. I couldn't live with pulling the lever.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [sic] to do nothing" Edmund Burke

I'm neither good nor bad. If I could switch places with hem, I would. Since I can't, I have to find a way to live with myself. Doing nothing makes that possible.

Agree.
Doing nothing is not doing evil in this situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A runaway trolley is speeding down the tracks. If you do nothing, it will kill five workers. You the option to pull a lever, diverting the trolley onto another track where it will kill one person instead. Do you pull the lever ?
Why or why not ?

I turn around and walk away. I am not responsible for the 5 people's death. If I pull the lever, I am responsible for causing a person's death. I could live with the choice to do nothing and comfort myself by saying there was nothing I could do. I couldn't live with pulling the lever.

You absolutely are responsible for killing the 5 people.

In the immortal words of Neal Peart,

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice . . . I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill.

- "Freewill" by Rush

Don't get me started about "free will."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's pretty clear that all but the incredibly weak-willed or self-deluded recognize that we *should* pull the lever. Refusal to act is an act in and of itself. (Whether we actually could is a different story.) What makes the trolley problem interesting are the endless variations, such as:

- What is the one person is a baby, or a child?
- What if you are related to the one person?
- What if the five people are white collar criminals?
- What if the 5 people are violent criminals?
- What if the 5 people are 4 child molesters, and one child?
- What if the 5 people are out of your line of sight and hearing, but the one person is 10 feet from you?

And so on.

What makes you think actively killing one person is morally superior ?

Your attempt to justify yourself is with "active" versus "passive" is a distinction without a difference. What your physical body does is irrelevant. You have to make a decision - does one person die, or do five people die? You are deciding to kill 5 people, and then trying to justify four additional lives lost by saying that it's important that your mind didn't tell your arm to pull the lever. That's just rationalization - the important decision was already made.

It's also incredibly narcissistic, assuming you are the PP who based her decision on the fact that she could convince herself she did nothing wrong if she didn't pull the lever. If your primary consideration is how to plausibly argue that you avoided responsibility, you need a refresher course on what is "morally superior."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A runaway trolley is speeding down the tracks. If you do nothing, it will kill five workers. You the option to pull a lever, diverting the trolley onto another track where it will kill one person instead. Do you pull the lever ?
Why or why not ?

I turn around and walk away. I am not responsible for the 5 people's death. If I pull the lever, I am responsible for causing a person's death. I could live with the choice to do nothing and comfort myself by saying there was nothing I could do. I couldn't live with pulling the lever.

You absolutely are responsible for killing the 5 people.

In the immortal words of Neal Peart,

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice . . . I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill.

- "Freewill" by Rush

What kind of logic are you using?
Doing nothing in this case is not killing.
Death happened by accident not by pp.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A runaway trolley is speeding down the tracks. If you do nothing, it will kill five workers. You the option to pull a lever, diverting the trolley onto another track where it will kill one person instead. Do you pull the lever ?
Why or why not ?

I turn around and walk away. I am not responsible for the 5 people's death. If I pull the lever, I am responsible for causing a person's death. I could live with the choice to do nothing and comfort myself by saying there was nothing I could do. I couldn't live with pulling the lever.

You absolutely are responsible for killing the 5 people.

In the immortal words of Neal Peart,

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice . . . I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill.

- "Freewill" by Rush

What kind of logic are you using?
Doing nothing in this case is not killing.
Death happened by accident not by pp.

And how dare you judge without stating what you'd do?

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A runaway trolley is speeding down the tracks. If you do nothing, it will kill five workers. You the option to pull a lever, diverting the trolley onto another track where it will kill one person instead. Do you pull the lever ?
Why or why not ?[/quote]
I turn around and walk away. [b]I am not responsible for the 5 people's death.[/b] If I pull the lever, I am responsible for causing a person's death. I could live with the choice to do nothing and comfort myself by saying there was nothing I could do. I couldn't live with pulling the lever. [/quote]

You absolutely are responsible for killing the 5 people.

In the immortal words of Neal Peart,

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice . . . I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill.

- "Freewill" by Rush [/quote]

What kind of logic are you using?
Doing nothing in this case is not killing.
Death happened by accident not by pp.[/quote]
And how dare you judge without stating what you'd do?[/quote]

I agree with pp who will do nothing.
More people will die of accidental death.

[Anonymous]

There isn't a single answer to this question. The answer you give reveals other things about you. How you think about it reveals things about you.

For example, a lot of people see this as a numbers problem. Because you are stuck with the trolley decision, you will be complicit in 5 deaths or 1 death. Many people believe that it is "better" to be complicit in fewer deaths overall, and so they choose the lever.

Other people see this as a more values problem. If the 1 death is a convicted molester, many people would find it easier to pull the lever than they would if the 1 death was a baby. If the 5 deaths are "innocents" in some way while the 1 death is a "criminal", people approaching the trolley decision from a values perspective would say that it is "better" to intentionally kill one criminal than to save a criminal through inaction and end 5 innocent lives.

There are also a number of conversations about the fallacy of the trolley problem in the first place. Almost no decisions in life are this cut-and-dry or this pressured. I have heard described the 3rd option called "untie the 5 people on the tracks and try to save them" as well as a variation of that one in which the saved people hold the trolley back with their bare hands.

It is supposed to generate conversation, and I assume it was posted here because it's about ethics and values and there's no "philosophy" forum other than this one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A runaway trolley is speeding down the tracks. If you do nothing, it will kill five workers. You the option to pull a lever, diverting the trolley onto another track where it will kill one person instead. Do you pull the lever ?
Why or why not ?

I turn around and walk away. I am not responsible for the 5 people's death. If I pull the lever, I am responsible for causing a person's death. I could live with the choice to do nothing and comfort myself by saying there was nothing I could do. I couldn't live with pulling the lever.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [sic] to do nothing" Edmund Burke

I'm neither good nor bad. If I could switch places with hem, I would. Since I can't, I have to find a way to live with myself. Doing nothing makes that possible.

Agree.
Doing nothing is not doing evil in this situation.

Both doing nothing and doing something is doing evil in this situation.

[Anonymous]

If I know and like the person I am not killing them. If I know they are evil ok. Like Manson evil.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There isn't a single answer to this question. The answer you give reveals other things about you. How you think about it reveals things about you.

For example, a lot of people see this as a numbers problem. Because you are stuck with the trolley decision, you will be complicit in 5 deaths or 1 death. Many people believe that it is "better" to be complicit in fewer deaths overall, and so they choose the lever.

Other people see this as a more values problem. If the 1 death is a convicted molester, many people would find it easier to pull the lever than they would if the 1 death was a baby. If the 5 deaths are "innocents" in some way while the 1 death is a "criminal", people approaching the trolley decision from a values perspective would say that it is "better" to intentionally kill one criminal than to save a criminal through inaction and end 5 innocent lives.

There are also a number of conversations about the fallacy of the trolley problem in the first place. Almost no decisions in life are this cut-and-dry or this pressured. I have heard described the 3rd option called "untie the 5 people on the tracks and try to save them" as well as a variation of that one in which the saved people hold the trolley back with their bare hands.

It is supposed to generate conversation, and I assume it was posted here because it's about ethics and values and there's no "philosophy" forum other than this one.

Agree. As stated upthread, there is no solution, no “right” answer. It’s a thought experiment. The Good Place episode is hilarious, BTW.

[Anonymous]

This is not about the right answer.
There is a question to answer,
Then explain your reasoning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is not about the right answer.
There is a question to answer,
Then explain your reasoning.

+1 people are going with different scenario instead of answering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A runaway trolley is speeding down the tracks. If you do nothing, it will kill five workers. You the option to pull a lever, diverting the trolley onto another track where it will kill one person instead. Do you pull the lever ?
Why or why not ?

I turn around and walk away. I am not responsible for the 5 people's death. If I pull the lever, I am responsible for causing a person's death. I could live with the choice to do nothing and comfort myself by saying there was nothing I could do. I couldn't live with pulling the lever.

You absolutely are responsible for killing the 5 people.

In the immortal words of Neal Peart,

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice . . . I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill.

- "Freewill" by Rush

What kind of logic are you using?
Doing nothing in this case is not killing.
Death happened by accident not by pp.

Neither pulling the lever nor not pulling the lever is "killing," in the moral sense. All the deaths are by accident - there's a runaway trolley. None of it is on you. But absent any knowledge about the six people involved, choosing to let 5 people die instead of one is, in my mind, unquestionably evil.

Think of this variation. You have the same lever, and the same 6 people tied to the track. But there's a third position in the lever - the center position. If you push the lever to the left, the trolley kills 5 people. If you push it to the right, it kills one person. You HAVE to push it one way or the other. You have no choice. (If you prefer, assume that the entire earth would cease to exist, or explode, if you don't push the lever in one direction.) You don't know anything about any of the people.

You have to choose - does one person die, or do five people die? Unless you are a sociopath, you choose the one person. But that is exactly the same thing - you made the choice. That is the part of this to which morality applies. Moving the lever is just implementation.