The Trolley

     "The trolley problem is a thought experiment in ethics. The general form of the problem is this: There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the correct choice?"

And

     "As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by putting something very heavy in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?" (Wikipedia)

     It is my belief that the moral option is to not do anything. It reminds me of Kant's axe, where a sinister looking man with an axe shows up at your door, and asks, "Where is your best friend?" Kant thought that it would not be morally acceptable to tell a lie and would be your fault if you told a lie, and then the ax-murderer somehow found your friend. To connect it with the previous example, the scenario where you told a lie to the ax murderer would be the same as "pulling the lever" or "pushing the fat man," while not doing anything in the trolley scenario would be the same as telling the truth in Kant's.

     By pulling the lever or pushing the fat man, you are involving yourself in the death of the man on the other track or the fat man that you are pushing over, while if you do not do anything, it is STRICTLY the fault of the train. The point where I disagree with Kant is that even if you told a lie, which would still be immoral, my view is that you would only be guilty of telling that lie, and not the consequences that followed. The axe murderer is his own man with his own values, and what would happen after you told him a lie or the truth, would be on him.

     Some might say that you can say the same for the train that you could the axe murderer, which means that the train is its own thing, and what would happen is going to happen regardless. The problem with this is that you would still be directly responsible for the train hitting the man on the other track or the fat man, while if you told a lie to the axe murderer, it can't be said what the axman is going to do or if he is going to find your friend at some point, even though the initial lie is immoral. If the axe murderer came back the next day and found your friend at the house, and then killed him. Would that still be your fault? No, it would not because you would have saved your friend the extra day through the lie and what you told the axe murderer would have lost its immediacy. For all the axe murderer knows, your best friend could have changed locations by that point. My point being that a lie has a certain time limit on it, depending upon the question, while flipping a lever for an oncoming train to hit a man does not have the same luxury because according to the scenario given, the train WILL hit either the five men, or the one man.


     My point of view is that it would be immoral to tell a lie to the axe murderer, and immoral to switch a lever or push the fat man over to save the group, which is called a deontological approach. The utilitarians would disagree and say that to switch the lever and/or push the fat man would give a better outcome.

     My questions to you are: What would you do in this scenario? Do you agree or disagree with my view? Why or why not? Would it make a difference if the five people on the track were farther down on the track, and the trolley had an emergency brake which MIGHT give them enough time to be saved? What about if you had to push a family member over to save the five people or if your family member was one of the people on the track and you had to push someone else over to save them?

Best,
Logan