I think there is a tendency in most people to make decisions that will minimize the level of unwanted suffering in others. Being forced to make a decision quickly, with no information other than the number of people that will die, the odds are that there will be less suffering if you choose the track with one person on it.

Of course, having more information may change the decision... For example, the three workers on one track are convicted murderers that show little chance of rehabilitation, and the single worker is a hard-working father of three.

There are two options: you do nothing, and your not responsible for the death of the three workers because it's not your fault that the break malfunctioned. Or you choose to save the lives of three workers and commit murder by killing one worker. Do most people think it's okay to commit murder to save three innocent lives?

There's no murder involved - it's simply minimizing the damage that will occur in the circumstances. It's kill three, or kill one. Not kill three, or murder one. For it to be murder, you would have had to intentionally sabotage the brakes, or know the brakes are malfunctioning, and intentionally arrange for there to be people on the track.

Not to de-rail (no pun intended) this discussion at all, but a noteworthy point here: these sorts of thought experiments are under fire by some contemporary commentators. The arguments tend to center on the idea of practical ethics and that the mis- or over- use of these types of problems create an unnecessary distance from the actual practice and content of ethical decision making. For instance: while it might be sort of a fun puzzle to try and solve - the trolley problem is not a situation most of us are ever likely to encounter in the bulk of our ethical determinations. The further problem being: the trolley problem alters our view of how we think or think about thinking about ethical issues.

A potential third concern is that the trolley problem (like most thought experiments) is structured in much the same way as a mathematical problem. I mean just look at how many variations there are from Foot's original set up, how different parameters are established, how the numbers change for intended effect, etc. And yes, we might say something like, "well the alterations of the variables themselves are irrelevant, what's more important is that we are able to extrapolate some type of broad ethical norms from the scenario." Which might sound good, but probably doesn't accurately reflect the actual business of doing ethics or being in an ethical conundrum. Instead of 'feeling' ethics we just problematize it, and instead of practicing or considering the practice of more real world situations which demand ethical attention we shift our efforts toward a puzzle-solving motif where the focus becomes theory construction and the categorization of ethical attitudes based upon a seemingly unrealistic hypothetical.

Again, I don't say this to de-rail anything. Just to add a potentially useful consideration point to the discussion.

There's no murder involved - it's simply minimizing the damage that will occur in the circumstances. It's kill three, or kill one. Not kill three, or murder one. — CasKev

You're not simply minimizing the damage from three to one. You're choosing to kill different people than the ones destined to be killed by the trolley. It's let the trolley kill three, or choose to kill one. And if choosing to kill a innocent bystander is not murder, I don't know what is. (I'm just playing devil's advocate, I don't necessarily believe this.)

Good point.

With Kant, you get to try to figure what your universal maxim would be for your situation, then you act on it.

I would do nothing.

If I face a problem like this and am well aware that if I save them I kill another worker it would seem like it is in my responsibility to save them, because I am the only one that has the power to do so. However, in this problem where someone will die no matter what, the question is, who will or should die? Now, because I do not have any information about these workers the question remains unsolved. Even if I had some information (like in the case where the 3 of them are murderers), I do not believe I have the right to decide who should live and who should die. Either way it is not my fault that the incident happened and so I do not have any responsability.

Plus, I think that when people say they would turn, it's mostly just talk, if they were actually confronted to that situation they would probably freeze.

I would use the emergency brake; and if that failed, yell for people to get off the tracks.

I would throw my own body in the way to stop the trolley.

It's worth to consider different competing views on what you ought to do in the Trolley case. One view states that you should pull the trolley because it leads to the best consequence (e.g. maximal happiness). This is the consequentialist view. Second view is the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing which states that doing harm is worse than allowing harm, so you don't pull the lever.

Third view is the Doctrine of Double Effect, so you intend to save three people, but the death of one person is simply a side effect of your action of pulling the lever. According to this view, as long as your intended goal is to save people rather than to kill people, it is morally permissible.There's another view by Foot which states that negative duties (e.g. you ought not to kill) trump positive duties (e.g. you ought to help the poor), so since pulling the lever would violate your negative duties you shouldn't pull it. There's also this view that it's morally permissible to pull the lever because you aren't initiating a chain of events, but rather redirecting it.

There are many other different (and equally important) views, but the above ones are ones I can think on top of my head.

Is there a theoretical scenario that is more realistic than people being strapped to tracks?

See modern variations (7 of them) of the trolley problem.

Thnx

Damn fine first post! Nicely summerizes why I reckon the trolley problem is basically toy ethics - fun to play with, but almost entirely unilluminating.

Ah, so the article is just updated tech vs. trollies.

The real issue with the dilemma that no one seems wiling to address is the issue of more loss of life versus less. More pain vs. less. And of course, there's no morally sacrosanct answer. Pain and death are equally incomprehensible, regardless of in what quantity.

I think a real-life example of the trolley problem would be the general who has to decide whether or not to launch a strike against an enemy that would entail civilian casualties. Is it better to not get involved or to intentionally kill a few to save many?

I suppose that's true, but only in a sense. Again we're mostly back to square one if we're talking about generals and civilian killing zones, eh? How many people talking about trolleys are, in fact, also generals in war-time scenarios where they are required to determine whether to kill civilians or not? We're still left with the same problem(s) we started with, but now with an extra layer that seemingly makes it slightly less hypothetical. And to really drive this point home, let me just ask: how many of us - in our frequent ethical determinations - really need to to talk about intentionally vs unintentionally killing persons? Let me be honest with you: I've had a lot of moral and ethical dilemmas come up, but none that have ever had those types of immediate life or death stakes.

One thing that might be worth acknowledging is that puzzles like the trolley problem are flashy and relatively simple in terms of structure, yes? If you had magical powers to stop an asteroid from hitting earth but only insofar as you could divert it away to a less densely populated alien planet would you? And then we sit around and muse how exciting it would be to have magical powers and what it means to save planets. But aside from the three problems I listed in my first post we have another, more common sense issue here: I don't have magical powers, and even if by some minute chance I ever had something resembling magical powers, why would I be in a situation where I would need to decided between two planets for a potential asteroid impact? It sounds a little silly right?

A real ethical dilemma may not be as exciting. Let me give you a genuine ethical problem I faced last night: it's quite cold in the city I live in. My wife and I were walking our dogs through one of the parks last night and we saw a homeless man under an awning and against the wall of one of the buildings in the park (presumably to protect himself from the chilly wind and potential rain). It was fairly late, and he was trying to sleep but his sleeping bag looked thin I didn't get the sense he had any additional blankets. He appeared to be tossing and turning in the near freezing temperature.

I live approximately six city blocks from this park. Should I go home, get a few old blankets from our closet and run back there so he has some additional layers? I have an arctic rated sleeping bag that I barely use any more - should I just give it to him? Then there are other potentially mitigating thoughts: e.g. it's not as cold as it has been - he obviously survived the snow and ice we had, surely he can survive a twenty degree increase from those conditions? Or is it really my responsibility to provide blankets to the homeless and otherwise indigent? Where does it end? Technically I have lots of non-perishable food I could also give away - should I also give that to him? If I help him out should I also help out the cold homeless man on the street a few blocks away who sleeps near the bagel place? It's only a bit further and I have extra blankets after all. Of course at what point should I just canvass and donate for more homeless shelters in my city? What sort of financial commitment can I afford to make and still support my family? I make enough money to alright, but I likely do not make enough that I could prudently support a large homeless initiative as well.

That's not a flashy problem. It's not an easily structured problem that really allows us the categorization potential for ethical determinations that are typically generated from puzzles like the trolley problem. It's not simple to categorize all the divergent thoughts that run through our minds in those situations, and the nuances alone make it a bit less simple to think about in the types of terms we often partition out when dealing with something like the trolley problem. But it stands that this was a very real ethical question I had to think about with my wife, and it's a type of question that many in my city face on daily basis (from one side or the other) in the winter.

How do the solutions where you actually change tracks deal with the scenario of the fat man? The scenario where you can throw a fat man off the bridge to stop the trolley hitting five workers.

The idea that ethical interventions shouldn't interfere with "destiny" undermines the very idea of ethics. And why shouldn't a Jury consider it "destiny" to have pulled the lever?

"How do the solutions where you actually change tracks deal with the scenario of the fat man? The scenario where you can throw a fat man off the bridge to stop the trolley hitting five workers." — Purple Pond

Consequentialism would say that pushing the fat man is morally permissible since it yields the best consequence (e.g. saving more people). However, the Doctrine of Doing vs. Allowing, Doctrine of Double Effect, Positive vs. Negative Duties, and Foot's distinction between initiating vs. redirecting causal sequence would all say that it's morally impermissible.

Since the Doctrine of Doings vs. Allowing states that doing harm is worse than allowing harm, pushing the fat man counts as doing harm and thereby it is morally impermissible. Doctrine of Double Effect states that if the intended goal constitutes harm (e.g. pushing the fat man in order to stop the trolley), then it is morally impermissible. Since your goal is to stop the trolley by pushing the fat man, it is morally impermissible. The view that negative duties trump positive duties would say that pushing the fat man violates a negative duty, so it is morally impermissible. Foot's distinction between initiating vs redirecting causal sequence would say that since pushing the fat man is initiating a causal sequence (e.g. pushing him leads to his death), it is morally impermissible.

Thinking about how the Trolley Problem might apply in the world.

It seems that many if not all cars in the near future may have automatic controls (some cars already have versions of this option) so that a person may, or perhaps must give up control of the car and hand it over to an on board computer system. The computer probably will face situations similar to the Trolley Problem....where multiple dangerous courses of action are possible and that it must make a split second decision.

Two possibilities
a) The car have a mandatory values system that common to all autonomous driving vehicles which is built in, and that regulate its normal as well as its course in extraordinary cases.
b) The owner gets some say in the ethics of the car, perhaps by prioritizing the car's occupants welfare over the welfare of those external to the vehicle.

My guess, option a is the only one that I can envision insurance companies accepting. Autopilot is expected to reduce accidents and injuries, so if it works as advertised, insurance companies will go along with it, but my guess is that they will want say in any ethically auto driven procedures.

I think a real-life example of the trolley problem would be the general who has to decide whether or not to launch a strike against an enemy that would entail civilian casualties. Is it better to not get involved or to intentionally kill a few to save many? — Michael

Especially when it comes to warfare, real world "ethics" are totally different starting from laws and jurisdiction of a nation, the international laws on war and ending with military doctrine, strategy an objectives of an armed forces. After all, in many wars even today civilians are deliberate targets themselves. The legal and social maze that humanity has built especially around conflict between nation states shouldn't be underestimated.

An unintensional accident (where likely the fault would be put to the builder of the breaks or the maintaner of the trolleys) is a bit different from war. And let's not forget that the workers likely understand the dangers of their work on actively used tracks.

There are a series of variants to this problem.
One is the option of physically throwing a fat guy onto the tracks to save ten people.

Turns out that when you have to get up close and personal people are more reluctant to obey their utilitarianist ideals.

if you have the time to choose between changing tracks you likely have the time to scream at the workers to move off of the tracks but for the sake of the post i think that choosing to kill in any scenario is wrong, it isn't your fault that the trolley failed it's brakes but if you choose to change the track and kill the one worker then you've played a role in the tragedy and it is your fault that one worker died, whether or not you saved three lives in the process

whether or not you saved three lives in the process — David Solman

What if it's a hundred workers?

it still isnt your fault that brakes failed and so your conscious is still clear, if you choose to kill a person then you made that choice. 10000000 people or not

I still say it's better to change tracks and minimize the unwanted suffering. I would change the track even if it were one person and someone's pet lizard, versus one person.

You can think of the tracks as contingent in that the trolley is headed towards both groups of people. Would that solve the moral dilemma?

And let's not forget that the workers likely understand the dangers of their work on actively used tracks. — ssu

Actually, this is a very good, if not ethically relevant point. All railroads, including commuter rail, I've worked for have very stringent requirements for working on the tracks. Those include notifications, signals, watchmen, and derailers. Derailers do just that, if a train goes somewhere people are working, it is nudged off the tracks in a, it is hoped, safe way. The need for worker protection rules, regulations, and work practices is a much more interesting, relevant, and realistic ethical issue than fat guys stopping trolleys.