Suppose there is a runaway trolley barreling down a train track towards four adult men tied to the main track and one adult man tied to a side track at a junction. If nothing is done than it will continue on this course and kill all four of those men. However, if you divert the lever than only one man will be killed. There is no third option; you can’t call for help, you can’t untie any of the men in time, you can’t derail the trolley, and shielding it with your own body won’t help. There is no uncertainty in the outcome either; the lever is 100% assured to work if you pull it and nothing is going to happen to stop the trolley. There is also no way to get all five men out of the situation alive; somebody is going to be dead no matter what you choose.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
The Trolley Problem has countless variations but the underlying question is the same; Is it better to do harm knowing your action will minimize the total amount of harm, or is it better to not do harm knowing your inaction will maximize the total amount of harm?
Some (myself included) belief that the former is better because it results in the least number of deaths, arguing that there is little moral difference between doing harm by action and by allowing harm by inaction. Others believe that that the latter is better because harm is not resulting from your action, arguing that there is great moral difference between doing harm by action and allowing harm by inaction.
What do you think? Whichever you think is better, please be respectful and civil.
A moral principle that appears at play here is that “one may not do evil so that good may come”. This is the same principle that is often at play in questions about abortion and the life of the pregnant woman.
This principle makes it clear that we can, under no circumstance, intentionally end the life of an innocent person to save the life of another innocent person. Therefore, you can cut out part of the Fallopian tube were an Ectopic pregnancy has occurred, thus saving the mother, though indirectly, but certainly killing the child.
Some would say that there is no difference between this and abortion, but indeed there is a very real difference. Just because we can predict something with certainty does not mean that we intend all of the predicted result. Additionally, in principle, we do not have the authority to take innocent life.
I don’t think that any of the possible choices are immoral, because people die in either case. If you do not change the path of the train, people die. If you change the path of the train, a person dies. In either case, you are not intending the death of any person, nor are you deliberately causing any person’s death. The resulting death of people is predicted, but not caused or controlled by you. The only control you have is to select the number of people who die. This is not the same as someone “forcing you to choose”- because the train is not a sentient moral agent. It is simply a blind mechanical force. One which you can redirect, but not stop.
Unless someone can demonstrate to me that this is wrong, I would choose to redirect the train so that one person is killed instead of four, unless I had a special relationship with that one person. For example, if that person is my son, then I would not redirect the train. This is because I believe that we have a special responsibility to some people in our lives. We must be protectors first of our children, for example, before others, all things being equal.
Now, if my son was evil and had purposely orchestrated this situation as some kind of test, then I would choose to save the four people, because he is no longer an “innocent life”, but the orchestrater of the situation willing to have other innocent people killed for this own ends. I am not saying that we should judge “who is better to spare”, but rather consider all “innocent” except those who actually orchestrated the situation.
I don’t think that it’s “playing God” to choose who to save or what numbers to save in a situation where it is not possible to save everyone. I think these are tough, but needed decisions. Worse is a situation were more people are killed by our own inaction. “Playing God” is choosing NOT to save someone which you could have or setting up such a situation to begin with.
When you go through the first principles, what is left is to choose our actions via other logical criteria which do not contradict moral principles. Saving more people is preferable to saving less people, thus I would choose the former. If you could save four babies instead of one, would you not do so? I believe that as long as you do not directly intend the death, you are not morally culpable. You did not cause the people to be tied to the rail nor intend for the train to run anyone over. You can only choose whether it kills one or four people. Although your decision results in someone’s death, you did not intend that person’s death, but only the saving of a larger number of people.
