Scenario 1: For all you know, any one of those people could be the next Hitler. So just to be safe, take out the group of five with the trolley, then wait for the guy on the side track to come over to investigate and strangle him with an extension cord.
Scenario 2: How could they not be matches for each other if they all match a common donor? Clearly, whoever is working in the lab is an incompetent boob and we should harvest his organs, just on general principle. Any remaining terminally ill patients who weren’t a match with him can draw straws to see who gets harvested next. Repeat until everyone’s healthy or dead.
What if he’s terminally ill in some other organ that’s not needed? This is already a problem for some people; in the rush to harvest the organs as soon as possible from a recently dead person, what is the line between that and finishing them off with the extractions?
What if an otherwise healthy person volunteers for the operation? There was a case a few years back where a death row inmate volunteered to give up BOTH of his kidneys for transplant, which would be, well, a death sentence for him. His point was that he was already so sentenced, and wanted to do some good in his life, and meet the people who would benefit from his donation as opposed to simply getting “harvested” after execution. He also wanted to waive the extension of his life via a dialysis machine (at state cost) following the procedure. The doctors and the state were caught in an ethical bind between not enabling/assisting suicide, and determining if knowingly causing him to die from kidney failure were not “cruel and unusual”.
I don’t think the point of the dilemma is whether or not people put themselves in harm’s way. I think that is missing the point. None of the example people deserve to die in any way shape or form. That is where the dilemma comes in.
It’s also because in scenario one, in reality, there is no way to actually KNOW that you will kill the guy. He might jump out of the way at the last second. The impact might not kill him. He might have superior jumping skills. You can at least say that there is a chance that he will survive.
The second scenario presupposes that you are killing the guy, because he ain’t living without his heart, liver, spleen, kidneys and lungs.
But really, both sets of five (the five organ-deficients and the five trolley pancakes) have nearly-expired natural lives. Both sets of five did nothing wrong, and are staring down imminent death (in the form of a disease or a trolley) through no fault of their own.
In my eyes, both situations boil down to this:
Five innocent people are going to die if you do nothing. However, you have the option to do “A”. Doing “A” will cause a sixth innocent person to die, but save the original five. Do you do “A,” or do you take no action at all?
The rest is just details designed to confuse the decision-maker. Remember: my original question was, “Why do people almost always choose opposite paths when different details are applied to the same moral dilemma?”
I can understand why people shy away from this question. It’s a toughie. But for my money, olivesmarch4th hit the nail on the head:
I agree: I think we all come up with the answer to the Trolley Problem immediately, and then try to apply logic to whatever our decision was. The problem fools us into thinking we reasoned it out, when really, we did no such thing. It was all instict.
I’m too literal - I can’t get past the logic of the trolley problem because 1) there is no switch inside a trolley car to change the tracks and 2) if you have time to hit the (non-working) brakes, and time to hit the magical ‘let’s switch tracks’ button, you should have time to, oh I don’t know, HIT THE HORN and warn the people that you are coming.
If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound. I bet you’re one of the ones who argues about there always being a squirrel or a bird or whatever in a forest
I can’t get over the silliness of the original scenario (stupid people standing in danger; crminally negligent companies refusing to do maintenance). It all detracts from the point of examining moral choices.
So let me try this version:
You are piloting a large plane full of fuel (you’ve just taken off), when a terrorist SAM hits you.
The plane is about to go completely out of control (wings on fire etc).
You have a few seconds to pick where you crash:
a farmhouse (one family dies)
a city (thousands die)
What do you do?
Note that you are not at fault, but can make a choice.
I think the whole scenario is about time. In the first case you have to make an immediate decision and in the second you have time to think it through and discuss it with the patient. If I am the trolley driver and my brakes go and I see 5 people standing on the track I will probably veer off in the other direction without even checking for people, the same way someone driving a car will swerve to miss hitting a dog and run into the minivan next to them. If I am the doctor I have the opportunity to try and extend life artificially with iron lungs and mechanical hearts or possibly use medication to address the problem. I obviously have far more options than killing another person and passing out their organs like it is a hospital buffet and quite a bit more time to come up with a more acceptable solution to the problem than murder.
maybe i’m missing the point of the hypothetical, but i don’t see how they’re the same - the first is choosing the lesser of two evils, the second is murder.
Problem 1: Take the spur, hoping that you’re going fast enough that the trolley derails before hitting anyone standing in the way.
#2: Taking organs from the healthy guy is murder. The potential recipients have no guarantee that they will get their operation in time to save their lives anyway.
The crux of the matter, IMHO, is not how the 5 trolley pancakes compare to the 5 organ-deficients, but how the 5 trolley pancakes compare to 1 trolley pancake relative to how the 5 organ-deficients compare to 1 healthy happy human being.
Barring additional details about the victims, one trolley-induced death is pretty much equal in tragedy to another. That makes trolley-whacking five people a greater tragedy than trolley-whacking just one. The trolley scenario pretty much boils down to choosing the lesser of two evils.
In the other scenario, however, I think that most people would agree that the murder of a healthy, happy person with years of life ahead of him is a greater tragedy than a death by organ failure. Not that both deaths aren’t tragic, but there’s a huge moral difference between stealing someone’s life and letting a patient who has reached the end of their naturally-given life slip away. So much difference, that killing 1 person to donate organs for 5 ailing patients just doesn’t add up.
Re the first scenario, is it possible to throw the switch at the very last second, derail the trolley, split the difference between the two tracks, and by so doing, kill all six people?
I agree with NailBunny. The ethics seem extremely straight forward. Under no circumstances would the harvesting of one healthy man to save 5 unhealthy people be ethical to me.
In the case of the Trolley, you make a quick decision and live with it as best as you can.
I’d decide which of the ill patients has the best chance of surviving the transplant, explain the situation to the healthy patient, and let him decide if he wants to donate one or more organs.
As an aside, I found these questions:
“What happens if, on one of the trolley tracks, the President of the United States has been tied by terrorists, and on the other trolley tracks, five average citizens are also tied up. As in the original Trolley Problem, who should you save?”
“What if the trolley is headed towards five average people you’ve never met but on the other tracks is your mother?” “Do you flip the switch and save five or save your mother?”
Several people have mentioned this, now, and I think it may be one of the things that we react to. The duration of our malice* is short, in the case of the brakeless trolley. You pull the leaver, it’s over. You can shut your eyes after that and grit your teeth. You don’t have to experience your malice for long. You don’t have to look your victim in the eye.
Killing the potential donor takes time. You have to actively kill him at least through the organ harvesting.
*Possibly not exactly the right word. Transgression might be closer.
Another difference is that you don’t have to touch the people on the trolley line. You only have to touch the switch. It’s a little more abstract. You’ll have to touch the donor. You’ll have to deliberately cut him open. Opening someone up is really gross. And if it isn’t you, it’ll be someone. The trolley is more impersonal. You can tell yourself ‘I meant him no harm’ and maybe believe it.
Perhaps another difference is that in the first instance, you’re only killing the singleton. In the second instance, you’re killing him and then taking something from him. It’s stealing, if you’re thinking viscerally. He has something that you want and you’re stealing it from him. It compounds the malace/transgression. With the trolley, you’re not going to go through the guy’s pockets afterward and hand out the loose change to the survivors.
And I agree that we probably have a template for morality, rather than deciding morality rationally. So I’m trying to think of visceral ways that the two scenarios differ. So far, I’ve got difference in duration of malice, difference in level of abstraction, and compounding of transgressions. Now I’m going to be thinking about this all night. It’s an interesting question.
