Imagine that you are a passenger in the trolley that is running
on fixed tracks. You notice that the operator of the trolley passed
out and the trolley is running to the right where five innocent
people are tied to the tracks. You also notice that you can switch
the lever and have the trolley switch the tracks to the left, where
only one innocent person is tied to the tracks. Obviously there are
only two possible courses of action you can take (a) to switch the
lever and (b) do nothing. Corresponding to the above courses of
action there are only two possible outcomes (a) if you switch the
lever 5 will live and one will die and (b) if you do nothing one
will live and five will die. What is the right thing to do, and
more importantly, why?
At this point I should warn you that all things must be kept equal.
There’s a common temptation to think of some person in this
scenario being more preferable than others – such as a family
member, a friend, a child, or maybe Mother Teresa on one track and
Hitler on the other. In order to make our moral intuitions precise
such temptation should be avoided. There are six equal people
roughly in the same age group with the same number of relatives who
will miss them equally, etc. In order to make moral decision easier
lets pretend that you in the capacity of the moral agent are not
going to face legal repercussions. I should also mention that
jumping off the trolley is the same as not switching the lever.
Keep the example simple and elegant as it is.
Now, what are your reasons for doing what you think is right in
this example? If you said that it is better to save the five people
over one, you are relying on some type of Utilitarian principle to
be discussed below.
It would be better to switch the lever so that the lives of the five persons are saved, that would cost the of one person for the life of five persons.
The Utilitarian principle behind this is we should do actions that would brings maximum goodness and happiness to maximum number of people. In this scenario, choosing one individual to be killed over five individuals, the mentioned Utilitarian principle of " actions to bring greatest happiness to greatest number of people" works. As the happiness and goodness of five individuals over an individual is chosen as the consequence of this action for saving their life and killing that one individual.
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