4 ms·
The similarities are only superficial. You have to make careful distinctions. In the trolley example, you aren't choosing to actively cause harm to someone for
by danielam 9y ago
The similarities are only superficial. You have to make careful distinctions.
In the trolley example, you aren't choosing to actively cause harm to someone for the sake of the benefit of others. The trolley is going to kill someone. You may, at best, act to reduce the harm done by a process out of your control.
Where the torture example is concerned, one choice involves the active, intentional infliction of pain on someone for the purpose of extracting information that can be used to save lives.
In general, a fairly important principle in ethics is the principle of double effect. I.e.,
1. the action must be in itself good or neutral
2. the action's good effect must be intended, not its evil effect
3. the action's good effect must not be produced by means of the evil effect
4. the action's evil effect must not exceed the good effect in degree
- emmelaich 9y agoAll those exist on a continuum and usually not well known anyway. The Trolley is at one end of an extreme. The point of such a hypothetical is that you can adjust any parameter to find peoples' limits. It could be the case that you don't actually disagree with one another much at all! But if you never address the Trolley problem or similar you will never know.
- kbutler 9y agoSee "the fat villain" variant in the trolley problem wiki page above. Kill the villain by pushing him onto the track in front of the train to save the innocents, or not. It is explicitly asking if you would harm the villain (evil action, evil effect produces good effect).
- danielam 9y agoThe fat man version is indeed similar. Of course, the fat man version is not analogous to the first version of the trolley problem for reasons I gave above.