Let’s start with a scenario:
A trolley is out of control, barreling down a track. A mad philosopher has tied 5 people to the track. On an alternate track, he has tied 1 person. You can pull a lever, which will divert the trolley, and it will kill 1 person instead of 5.
What do you do?
Now, most people say it’s okay to pull the lever.
How about this one: The same trolley is barreling down the track, only a very heavy weight placed in front of it will stop it. There is a very fat man standing on a bridge over the track. You can push him onto the track, causing his death, and it will save the 5 people.
Now what do you do?
The very same people who said it was okay to intervene in the first scenario, typically change their answer.
I’ve always considered it wrong in both scenarios. Even if I can’t fully articulate the reason.
Here’s another variant similar to the first one:
A trolley is barreling down a track, on it are 5 people. You can divert another empty trolley onto its path, causing both to derail, saving all 5 people. However, the trolleys, upon leaving the track, will kill a man who is sleeping in a hammock in his backyard.
What happens here? If presented with this scenario first, most people will say it’s wrong to intervene. Somehow, people don’t want to be responsible for this man’s death, but feel okay diverting the trolley in the first scenario. I generally take a non-interventionist approach to any such scenario. Ensuring that my hands are clean.
What about this one:
“A brilliant transplant surgeon has five patients, each in need of a different organ, each of whom will die without that organ. Unfortunately, there are no organs available to perform any of these five transplant operations. A healthy young traveler, just passing through the city the doctor works in, comes in for a routine checkup. In the course of doing the checkup, the doctor discovers that his organs are compatible with all five of his dying patients. Suppose further that if the young man were to disappear, no one would suspect the doctor.” (from Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Trolley Problem, 94 Yale Law Journal 1395-1415 (1985)).
Now what? Near universal agreement that it’s wrong for the doctor to do such a horrid thing.
Of course, on a factual level, all these scenarios ask people to trade 1 life for 5.
Feel free to join in on the debate in the comment section.
