But is it the objectively correct decision? I think most people would instinctively agree. It’s the most harm reduction, after all. But then you look at it more- is personally killing one innocent more moral than watching as five people die?
We look at variations- what if the single person is someone you love dearly? What if the single person is the sole scientist working on life saving research? What’s the most moral option to you? What do you think is the most morally correct? Which do you hold more responsibility for?
There’s the- I did not name or come up with this- fat man variation. You’re standing on a bridge over some train tracks. There are five people tied to them and the train is coming. You are the only one who can do something. You’re too small and too high up to do anything, but next to you is a man of the perfect size and weight to stop the trolley. All you have to do is push him off the edge and into the path to save those five. Is it more moral to murder him, or to let the five die? How different does it feel now? Is there an objectively correct option here?
And another one of my favorites. You are a surgeon. There are five people who desperately need organ transplants fast, or they’ll die. You do not have matching organs available to you. However, there is a perfectly healthy person in your custody whose organs would match all of the patients. He does not want to die to save them. Is it more moral to take his organs and kill him, or to let the five die?
That one has a very different result than the original trolley problem, doesn’t it? Sure, there’s other factors that we’ve created in the medical field, but ultimately, the medical field has decided that it is NOT more moral to save the five by killing one. The “objectively correct” decision would be to let the five die. When people and places do take organs by force, it’s horrifying.
What people see as the “objectively correct” decision changes completely based on context. It would also change based on moral philosophy. Utilitarianism, if I remember correctly, would always say that saving the five is more moral than saving the one… even in the organ donor problem. Some moral philosophies would say that inaction would not be a moral wrong, and that the moral wrong would be to personally take a life.
The trolley problem is wonderful. It makes you uncomfortable, it forces to you to make a binary choice, and more importantly, it forces you to think about why you made that choice. It questions underlying assumptions. If an option is “objectively correct”, why is that? If you’re so uncomfortable that you need to search for another option, why? What moral concepts are motivating that?
I love the trolley problem.
