Thought experiments

[qatarperegrine]

I've been having fun debating ethical thought experiments with my friends lately, and I figured I'd share the love right here on LJ.

Here's the first set of scenarios, often called the Runaway Trolley Car experiment. I'll steal the wording given in a BBC article on ethics.

1. A runaway trolley car is hurtling down a track. In its path are five people who will definitely be killed unless you, a bystander, flip a switch which will divert it on to another track, where it will kill one person. Should you flip the switch?


2. The runaway trolley car is hurtling down a track where it will kill five people. You are standing on a bridge above the track and, aware of the imminent disaster, you decide to jump on the track to block the trolley car. Although you will die, the five people will be saved.
   
   Just before your leap, you realise that you are too light to stop the trolley. Next to you, a fat man is standing on the very edge of the bridge. He would certainly block the trolley, although he would undoubtedly die from the impact. A small nudge and he would fall right onto the track below. No one would ever know. Should you push him?

So here's the major question: was your answer the same for both scenarios? And if not, why not? Can you rationally justify why the scenarios might call for different responses, even though the results (one death or five) are the same in each case?

Comments

[foobart.livejournal.com]

I think this is a cop-out.

I don't think you can escape the dilemma by calling the outcome uncertain unless you believe the uncertainty is inherent in and core to the basic idea. In other words, unless you believe that it's impossible to construct a scenario to ask the same basic question without having the same amount of uncertainty, the issue has been dodged, not addressed.

For instance, let's say the scenario was thus:

Dr. Evil has placed 5 people in a pit, which is slowly being filled with water so that the sharks with frickin' laser beams can be released. Dr. Evil's incompetent henchmen have left a pulley in the ceiling above the pit, which is threaded with a lightweight but strong cable. You have one end of the cable, and the other end is in the pit.

Each of the people in the pit weighs 130 pounds. You weigh 110 pounds. As the pit fills, someone you've never met wanders into Dr. Evil's lair. It's Jared, who has recently switched from an all-subway diet to a diet consisting entirely of deep-fried snickers bars and sugar-coated lard. He now spends his days in channel surfing looking for tv ads in which he appears. As a result of his lifestyle change, he tips the scales at 700 lbs.

You have a choice: do you kill/incapacitate Jared and use his body to pull the 5 people to safety, or not?

[nicodemusrat.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's a cop-out because the original post's question revolves why might we perceive these scenarios differently. I perceive them differently because one seems inherently or intuitively less reliable, even if the scenario asks us to believe otherwise. So the answer is to do with perception.

Given your scenario with attendant assumptions (I know Jared's heavy enough, I know the sharks will be released and kill the people in the tank --why not just shoot him, dad?--, I don't have any emotional favoritism between the people, I wouldn't face legal consequences, etc.), THEN I can say that I would sacrifice Jared. My answers for the two scenarios in the original post would also match.

I just thought that the question of why the scenarios appear different was more interesting.