FAST PHILOSOPHY: THE TROLLEY PROBLEM

foot’s trolley problem

The trolley problem is a thought experiment that is designed with the purpose to express our moral intuitions. It was first presented by Philippa Foot. Its basic premise is that a trolley is running wildly out of control & it begins to derail from its track. In the present path are five people tied to the track. In this hypothetical, there’s a switch that you can flip that will divert the trolley to second track with one person tied to that track. In this situation, what does one do?

The popular opinion seems to be that flipping the switch is right. If you find yourself following the ethics around utilitarianism, the idea that an action is right so long as it provides happiness, and wrong when it provides unhappiness— where happiness provides pleasure and unhappiness provides pain (in this case, the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people) then surely you’ll find yourself in the right moral domain.

thompson’s trolley problem

A variation of this problem was presented to us by Judith Jarvis Thompson. She laid out a scenario that disproved the reliability of utilitarian ethics. The premise of the scenario stays the same, except this time you’re standing on a bridge under which the trolley will pass by. There’s a large man standing next to you. Five people are still tied to the track with no switch to flip. The only way to save the five people is by pushing the man next to you over the bridge onto the track, thus stopping the trolley. The moral calculus stays the same, one person is sacrificed to save five— but in this scenario, the moral intuition is different. Many would argue it’s wrong to push the man off the bridge, creating a common inconsistency in our moral decisions.

Lesson of this post: Don’t answer the trolley problem.