A moral dilemma
June 23rd, 2008 | Published in Morality, Psychology, Religion | 7 Comments
Put yourself in this situation.
You are at a train track and see five people tied to the track ahead. A switch is in front of you which will divert the train, but as you look down you see a man is strapped to that track and will be killed. Is it permissible to flip the switch and save the five people at the expense of one?
If you are like most people, you said yes.
Now imagine in order to save the five people, you have to push a stranger in front of the train to stop it. You know for certain it would stop the train in time to save the five people tied to the tracks. Is it permissible to push the man and save the five people at the expense of one?
You probably said no. But the results are the same — the only difference is the method (passive vs. impassive). But in both cases you sacrifice one life to save five.
So why do we see one as moral and the other as immoral?
Here’s the answer Michael Shermer gives:
In the first one the subject is emotionally detached by being one step removed from the killing process—to save five lives by killing one person, one has only to flip a switch to detrail the trolley car. The trolley killed the individual, not the subject. In the second scenario the subject is emotionally involved—to save five lives by killing one person, one has to be directly and viscerally responsible for killing another person.
Moral judgment is not calculatingly rational. It is intuitively emotional. (The Science of Good & Evil, p. 177)
Do you agree?
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:52 am (#)
“If you are like most people, you said yes.”
There’s the rub, eh? Apparently I’m not like most people. (I get that a lot, though… and it seems it’s not usually intended as a compliment.)
Flipping a switch and pushing a body make no difference in my mind. If I were to flip the switch, I would be acting as executioner for those five. For all I know, the five are mass-murderers and the one is a faithful husband and father of six.
As I see it, the true “moral” choice would be to track down the person who tied them in the first place, and make sure s/he had a “front row seat” for the next engine to roll down those tracks.
June 27th, 2008 at 1:31 pm (#)
I would never be able to sort through the implications and make a decision before the train tore through the five.
Whether my burger has onions or not is too difficult for me.
June 1st, 2009 at 4:58 pm (#)
This is interesting. We had these questions asked in a Bioethics course in first year university. It comes down to ethics, I think. If you believe in Utilitarianism, you’d flick the switch or push the person everytime because the result is that the most people will live. It is for the greater good. But I personally would find it very difficult to be the executioner, despite the fact that if i do nothing at all 5 people will die instead…
December 21st, 2009 at 1:12 am (#)
There is a distinct difference between the two scenarios. In the first model all six potential victims have been preselected as possible casualties by someone else. These people are already slated to die, you must simply decide if it is better to allow one or many to perish and facilitate your decision. In the second model you are not merely the arbiter over how many preselected victims are killed but you willfully introduce another as of yet uninvolved individual into the equation and kill him with your own hands rather than throwing a switch to redirect a train away from five persons. Consider as well that in the second situation you could have flung yourself in front of the oncoming train thereby saving all six people.
February 25th, 2010 at 10:56 pm (#)
The act of intentionally sacrificing a human being for the greater good of other human beings has a very primitive, cult-like feel to it. In both situations, I answered by emphasizing the value of individualism. If 2 hospital patients could live off of murdering someone and distributing their kidneys, would it be right? I think not. It would be scary to live in a world where sacrificing people to minimize natural injustices is acceptable. Then again, it’s still not an easy answer. If you kept bumping up the number of people on the tracks, I might eventually re-evaluate my position. I’ll have to keep thinking about this but that’s the best I came up with so far.
December 9th, 2010 at 3:58 am (#)
Robert Heinlein used to tell the story of a lady who’s foot was caught in a train switch, her husband was trying to pull it out as the train approached, another man (a hobo) came over and helped, either man could have jumped and save their own life. Neither did and all died. The husband was doing his duty, the other was a hero. Steve L says: consider as well that in the second situation you could have flung yourself in front of the oncoming train thereby saving all six people. That is how a hero lives and dies if need be.
October 20th, 2011 at 12:40 pm (#)
It seems to me that in the second option you have the ability to throw yourself in front of the train, and that makes all the difference.