Trolley Problem

[Tomdstone]

What I know is that you have thrice refused to answer the very simple question I asked. The answer to the question is either yes, or no. And answering it does not require you to declare anything about what you would actually do in the scenario described. It does not require you to consider the wife and children of the one man (who it turns out was a fraud), nor the wife and children of the 4 men (who it turns out are Nobel laureates who have devoted their lives to peace and disarmament). You do not and could not know any of this - it has never been reported. You are simply asked to answer:

“Would an observer concerned for the good, act morally by flipping the lever to save the 4?”

[Note: The observer has judged he is unable to save all 5.]

As soon as you answer my questions as given in the above posts, I will do my best to try to answer yours. I am working under the assumption that you would pull the switch (if that is wrong, please disregard the following). I need to know how you feel about destroying the lives of a good mother and her seven children before I can answer your question truthfully and completely.
What will you tell the children when they quote Proverbs 6:17 to you?
What are you going to tell these children when they ask you why can’t I be with my father?
How do you feel about wrecking the joy and happiness of a wonderful mother and her seven children? Do you still believe it was right to brutally kill an innocent man, a wonderful Catholic father?
Why did you not check out who was on the track before pulling the switch?
Should you have checked around and read the news about the four mass murderers who were rumored to be chained to a RR track and the kidnapping of a man who was awarded the medal of Catholic father of the year? Why didn’t you check the news first before pulling the switch? It was on the news which you did not read for some reason or another.
Do you agree with Sacred Scripture Proverbs 6:17 which says that God hates the hand that sheds innocent blood?
Do you believe that you should have questioned and rejected the hypothesis of only two alternatives and tried to work around this hypothesis and seen it as totally unrealistic and improbable?
Wouldn’t the best decision have been to save everyone involved so that these seven children and their wonderful mother could live in joy and happiness with their father?

 

[dshix]

Although the name James Bond is fictional, the character James Bond is based, at least partially, on the British super spy, Commander Forest Yeo-Thomas whose dangerous real life missions are strikingly similar to those of Ian Fleming’s character, British secret agent James Bond.

That detail aside, I hope you will desist objecting to the idea of conforming to the parameters of a hypothetical question.

 

[Rau]

As soon as you answer my questions as given in the above posts,

I cannot imagine what I would do in the real world when confronted with such a situation. BUT, it is easy to answer the question I put. viz: Flipping the lever to save 4 is a moral act in the situation described.

Now Tom - I put this question to you long before you delved into all the speculation about good and bad men, grieving families, and so forth. So your turn to answer now.

 

[Tomdstone]

So your turn to answer now.

Not quite, because I need detailed answers to the questions raised in posts #35, #39 and #41. I will need to know in detail the answers and what you would do before I can hope to give a straightforward and honest answer to your question. I need to think about the implications of the question and of the answer since human lives are at stake. I wouldn’t want to make any rash or imprudent decisions that would affect innocent people for the rest of their lives. I would want that any decision I made to be reasonable, fair, honorable, legitimate, justifiable and principled.
To sum up, at this point in time, without your detailed answers to questions raised in posts # 35, #39, #41, I would tend to find the original problem both too narrow and too ambiguous.

1. It is too narrow, because the assumption that there are only two alternatives is highly improbable in the real world, so the question is an empty one. Contrary to the conditions of the problem, the hypotheses of a theory can always be questioned. The assumptions of phrenology, the aether, Martian canals, phlogiston, were once believed, but later discarded. The Euclidean hypothesis on parallel lines was questioned and led to the discovery of different geometries. Where would science be today if scientists blindly accepted the hypotheses of these now discredited physical theories and where would mathematics be today if mathematicians declined to look further than Euclidean geometry.
2. It is too ambiguous because there is a lot of information about the problem which is missing and which is necessary if you are going to make the correct decision. How are you going to react if it turned out that you made a mistake by pulling the lever and killing the innocent man, while letting the guilty go free? Who were the people chained to the RR. How did they get there? Who took the brakes out of the train? Did the supervisor know about this? Were the reports in the news about four escaped murderers related in any way to those chained on the tracks. Why were people chained to the tracks? Were the people sickly or were they in good health? Were they criminals or Nobel laureates? etc.

 

[dshix]

You’re really overthinking it. The question has been correctly answered in my first post which covers the topic of double-effect.

The question is neither too narrow nor too ambiguous to answer from the point of view of Catholic morality.

 

[Rau]

Not quite, because I need detailed answers to the questions raised in posts #35, #39 and #41. I will need to know in detail the answers…

Nah…none of that is relevant to answering the question put, Tom. I had no idea how desperate you were to avoid answering the question.

 

[dshix]

Nah…none of that is relevant to answering the question put, Tom. I had no idea how desperate you were to avoid answering the question.

We really don’t need to press him to answer; it doesn’t matter. I only mind if he tries to give others the idea that there isn’t a valid answer.

 

[Rau]

We really don’t need to press him to answer; it doesn’t matter. I only mind if he tries to give others the idea that there isn’t a valid answer.

That’s the point isn’t it - he introduces factors having no bearing on whether the specific act described is moral and claims that, absent more information about these factors, it is impossible to say. He has in other threads argued equivalent acts are immoral; he seems to favour a pacifist kind of approach.

 

[vz71]

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.

I use my heat vision to burn away the ropes holding the people to the tracks.
Then I move ahead of the trolley and make sure the people are out of the way.

After all, if you are allowed to alter reality to force some imagined ethical dilemma, then I can provide myself with super powers.

 

[dshix]

I use my heat vision to burn away the ropes holding the people to the tracks.
Then I move ahead of the trolley and make sure the people are out of the way.

After all, if you are allowed to alter reality to force some imagined ethical dilemma, then I can provide myself with super powers.

You are the first one who altered reality. Real life situations often occur where the principle of double effect needs to be applied, and this hypothetical is instructive.

 

[o_mlly]

I don’t think so. What if it was found out later on that the four people you saved had been convicted mass murderers and they were all subject to being executed in a month from now, because of their heinous crimes. And the one person who you decided to kill, instead of the four murderers, was the good Catholic father of seven children. He had just been awarded the medal of father of the year by the local Catholic clergy in recognition of his work for the church, for the poor and for his example of what a good Catholic father should be. Then what? You killed the one man who was a hero to everyone, and let the four mass murderers live? What kind of a horrible choice was that? What are you going to say to the wife and seven children of this dead man who you decided, on your own, to kill by flipping the switch?
You say it is a " tolerated evil effect", but how can anyone tolerate saving four mass murderers who were going to be executed anyway, by flipping a switch to murder one decent Catholic father?

Actually, your elaborated position indicates you agree with me as to the importance of choosing the good as opposed to choosing the lesser evil.

Your contrived scenario would only allow the application of the principle of the double effect if you tolerated the death of four as a less than a proportionate evil to the saving of one as an offsetting good with high certainty.

Since death of the four is the immediate effect of this decision, I would encourage such a decider to quickly access a priest for confession as only God knows the future (or the past) with certainty. Goodness equates with being – this decision in its immediate effect eliminates a net of 3 beings. Are you as certain of the guilt of the four as you are to their immediate death? Or of the holiness of the one to be ongoing? Pretty dicey stuff to play God.

 

[Rau]

From prior threads, I believe Tom does not distinguish the “known consequence of death arising from an act” from the “act of killing (murder)”. Thus in his thinking (which is not consistent with moral theology) the act which saves the 4 is identically a deliberate act of (intentional) killing of the one. Thus, for him, double effect arguments are moot.

 

[dshix]

From prior threads, I believe Tom does not distinguish the “known consequence of death arising from an act” from the “act of killing (murder)”. Thus in his thinking (which is not consistent with moral theology) the act which saves the 4 is identically a deliberate act of (intentional) killing of the one. Thus, for him, double effect arguments are moot.

And I suppose he’s not Catholic. Just noticed that.

I assume the OP was asking for the Catholic answer, not some other random philosophy.

 

[vz71]

You are the first one who altered reality. Real life situations often occur where the principle of double effect needs to be applied, and this hypothetical is instructive.

The fiction is made up first, but my answer somehow is considered the first piece of fiction?



In either case, the entirety is contrived and not something I can take seriously.

 

[dshix]

The fiction is made up first, but my answer somehow is considered the first piece of fiction?



In either case, the entirety is contrived and not something I can take seriously.

I was objecting to your effective statement that the hypothetical question was not a valid question. I disagree, because although it is contrived, the question is still instructive.

I don’t see why the fact that a hypothetical question is contrived invalidates it. In this case, it actually helps us to demonstrate the principle of double effect.

If you can’t take it seriously, so be it. But if you claim that your personal ability to take it seriously means it is a completely invalid question, I will continue to disagree.

 

[BornInMarch]

I use my heat vision to burn away the ropes holding the people to the tracks.
Then I move ahead of the trolley and make sure the people are out of the way.

After all, if you are allowed to alter reality to force some imagined ethical dilemma, then I can provide myself with super powers.

Don’t be a jerk. That’s what you are being in giving a response like that, a jerk.

The point of hypothetical scenarios like this is to see how people react in situations where human lives hang in the balance, and by extension to see what they value and what their ethics are.

 

[vz71]

Don’t be a jerk. That’s what you are being in giving a response like that, a jerk.

The point of hypothetical scenarios like this is to see how people react in situations where human lives hang in the balance, and by extension to see what they value and what their ethics are.

The point fails.
A contrived scenario does not reflect reality and people know that.
The question can no more help people see what they would do in a situation any more than watching a batman movie.

The nice clinical atmosphere of a doctor asking you what you would do if you were shot at may give you feelings of confidence in having a plan, but you will still wet your pants when the clinical surrounding is gone and a real bullet whizzes past your head.

 

[vz71]

I don’t see why the fact that a hypothetical question is contrived invalidates it. In this case, it actually helps us to demonstrate the principle of double effect.

In that I would agree.
However there are better ways to teach double effect.
Ways not grounded in fiction that would allow people to see the reality of how this can pertain to them and how it pertains to others.

Case in point: the ectopic pregnancy.

 

[e_c]

In that I would agree.
However there are better ways to teach double effect.
Ways not grounded in fiction that would allow people to see the reality of how this can pertain to them and how it pertains to others.

Case in point: the ectopic pregnancy.

You really can’t see the point of the exercise here? That’s bizarre.

We think through these contrived (albeit still possible) scenarios so that when we come across a real scenario with identical principles at work, there is a ready answer. General so and so shouldn’t begin studying just-war theory while Russia’s nukes are over the Pacific… Similar idea.

 

[Tomdstone]

The question has been correctly answered in my first post which covers the topic of double-effect.

Oh? By pulling the lever are you not taking responsibility for destroying one human being for the sake of keeping others alive? Is it, or is it not Roman Catholic teaching that:
One ought not to willingly destroy an instance of an intelligible human good for the sake of some other intelligible or sensible good?