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The trolley problem is often misunderstood. The point of the problem is that two actions have the same consequence (pushing a lever and pushing a person off a b

The trolley problem is often misunderstood. The point of the problem is that two actions have the same consequence (pushing a lever and pushing a person off a bridge) but many peoples' moral intuition is that one action is moral and the other not. It is an argument against consequentialism, the belief that what makes an action moral or not is its consequences. The consequential view of morality is that authorizing the use of a vaccine is moral if it saves more lives than it costs. One deontological view might be that the government has a responsibility to completely test all vaccines before it releases them. Thus the early release of a vaccine on the theory that it would save more lives would be correct from the consequentialist view, but not on this deontological view. This would be the reverse of what the trolley problem is arguing.

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
> The trolley problem is often misunderstood. I misunderstood it for so long because I took it quite literally. When you present The Trolley Problem at its most basic level, nearly everyone will say that the most moral thing to do is pull the lever and redirect it to the single person. But then I was watching a TV show that presented it in another way. Imagine you have five people about to die from various illnesses, but that each of them can be saved by an organ transplant, and each one needs a different organ. Would it be immoral to sacrifice someone else's life against their will to harvest their organs to save the other five? Nearly everyone would likely say yes, it's incredibly immoral. But it's really the Trolley Problem. You do nothing, five people die. You take an action, you sacrifice someone against their will to save the original five.
- muzani 5y ago
  That's a good way of putting it. I feel like there's some detail left out of this, but I can't find it. Perhaps when you sacrifice someone, you are the murderer, the knife wielder, but with the trolley problem, the trolley is the murderer.
- exodust 5y ago
  > nearly everyone will say that the most moral thing to do is pull the lever and redirect it to the single person. But can moral principles be a numbers game? I don't think so. Otherwise a serial killer who murders 9 people could claim higher moral ground than a killer with 10 kills to his name.

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago

> The trolley problem is often misunderstood. I misunderstood it for so long because I took it quite literally. When you present The Trolley Problem at its most basic level, nearly everyone will say that the most moral thing to do is pull the lever and redirect it to the single person. But then I was watching a TV show that presented it in another way. Imagine you have five people about to die from various illnesses, but that each of them can be saved by an organ transplant, and each one needs a different organ. Would it be immoral to sacrifice someone else's life against their will to harvest their organs to save the other five? Nearly everyone would likely say yes, it's incredibly immoral. But it's really the Trolley Problem. You do nothing, five people die. You take an action, you sacrifice someone against their will to save the original five.

muzani 5y ago
That's a good way of putting it. I feel like there's some detail left out of this, but I can't find it. Perhaps when you sacrifice someone, you are the murderer, the knife wielder, but with the trolley problem, the trolley is the murderer.
exodust 5y ago
> nearly everyone will say that the most moral thing to do is pull the lever and redirect it to the single person. But can moral principles be a numbers game? I don't think so. Otherwise a serial killer who murders 9 people could claim higher moral ground than a killer with 10 kills to his name.