what is the answer to the trolley problem

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Could In that location Be A Solution To The Trolley Problem?

Omid Panahi finds that finding a solution is not the problem.

The Trolley Trouble is a thought experiment first devised by the Oxford moral philosopher Philippa Human foot in 1967. In her paper titled 'The Trouble of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect', Pes wrote "it may rather be supposed that he is the commuter of a runaway tram [trolley] which he can simply steer from one narrow rails on to another; v men are working on one track and one man on the other; anyone on the runway the tram enters is bound to be killed." And and then the Trolley Problem was born. (We should annotation that Foot presented this thought experiment equally ane among many others, and there is no evident reason why this one has received and so much attention from the philosophical and scientific communities.)

In 1976, nine years subsequently Foot published her original newspaper on the Trolley Problem, the American philosopher Judith J. Thomson wrote a paper called 'Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Trouble', in which she introduced a 2nd version of the Trolley Problem, making information technology all the more interesting:

"George is on a footbridge over the trolley tracks. He knows trolleys, and can see that the ane approaching the span is out of control. On the track back of the bridge there are 5 people; the banks are so steep that they will not exist able to get off the track in time. George knows that the but manner to end an out-of-control trolley is to drib a very heavy weight into its path. Simply the just available, sufficiently heavy weight, is a fat man, also watching the trolley from the footbridge. George can shove the fatty man onto the track in the path of the trolley, killing the fat human being; or he tin can refrain from doing this, letting the five die."

In contemporary ethics, Thomson'due south second scenario, involving the fatty human and the footbridge, is viewed as an indispensable office of the Trolley Problem, and is included in most all presentations of the thought experiment. After all, the 2nd scenario makes the trouble interesting – and incredibly puzzling.

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Various Solutions

I have noticed that when showtime presented with the Trolley Problem, many people tend to think of the different ways in which the obvious tragedies, namely the expiry of one or of 5 individuals, depending on one's choice, could be avoided altogether. For instance, in a real world scenario, i might be able to loudly warn the workmen on the tracks of the approaching trolley, in anticipation that they will motility and save their lives themselves. Only that would be to miss the point of the thought experiment. The Trolley Problem sets up a moral dilemma in which one is to determine whether to steer the trolley in the first scenario, and whether to push button the fat man off the footbridge in the second, so that one person dies as opposed to v. Those are the simply options bachelor. So, what is one to practice?

Foot's own response to the Trolley Problem was that the morally justified activeness would be to steer the trolley to kill the one workman, thus saving a internet four lives. In order to demonstrate the morality of this, she made a stardom between what she chosen 'negative duties' and 'positive duties'. In the broad sense, she defined negative duties as the obligation to refrain from harming others and positive duties as the obligation to actively practice good – in this case, to save lives. She argued that, as a matter of principle, our negative duties to refrain from harm are ever more urgent and counterbalance more our positive duties, so that one is not justified in violating a negative duty to not harm others in social club to fulfill a positive duty of helping someone. Using this line of reasoning, Foot's version of the Trolley Trouble can be said to present a conflict betwixt 2 negative duties. In other words, the driver of the trolley tin ask the following: "Is it my duty to non damage one individual, or to not harm five individuals?" And the answer, according to Foot, is obviously the latter, since it leads to less harm.

In the footbridge scenario, notwithstanding, ane faces a conflict between a negative duty and a positive duty, namely the negative duty of not harming the fat man on the footbridge, and the positive duty of saving the lives of the five workmen on the runway. In this case, Human foot would debate that, since saving the lives of the five workmen requires doing significant harm to (indeed, killing) the fat human on the footbridge, i is not morally justified in doing it.

Thomson had a different betoken of view. Although she agreed with Foot on just what the morally superior action is, she disagreed as to why one should act that way. In Thomson's view, the existent distinction lies between "deflecting a threat from a larger group onto a smaller group," and "bringing a different threat to affect the smaller group." Using this premise, she argued that it is morally justified to steer the trolley onto the track where there is one workman, since that would be to deflect the threat from the five workmen (larger group) to the one workman (smaller group); and that it is morally unjustified to push the fat man off the footbridge, since that would be to create an entirely new threat for him. In response to the Trouble, philosophers influenced past Kant take argued that i ought not to utilize human being beings equally a means to save others, so it would be morally right to steer the trolley away from the five, but morally wrong to push the fat homo. And some have questioned the very assumption that one is morally obliged to minimize damage, or to bring nearly the death of as few people as possible. But the question remains: what is the solution to the Trolley Problem?

No Solution, No Problem

The reply, in my view, is that there is no definitive solution. Like most philosophical problems, the Trolley Trouble is not designed to accept a solution. Information technology is, rather, intended to provoke idea, and create an intellectual discourse in which the difficulty of resolving moral dilemmas is appreciated, and our limitations as moral agents are recognized. The ongoing discourse over the Trolley Problem is non a discourse about solutions per se – after all, in both scenarios of the problem, there are only ii ways in which ane could deed – but one that places significance on reasons. This is not to say, nonetheless, that every opinion on the Trolley Problem is perfectly legitimate. We should acknowledge that there are more than or less justifiable resolutions to the Trouble – or any moral dilemma, for that thing – and that it is simply through reason and rational argumentation that nosotros can converge upon them. Equally nosotros saw in the agreement over the right response between Foot and Thomson, well-nigh of us differ only in the reasons for which nosotros prefer i solution to the Trolley Trouble over the other: virtually people agree on the solution. That is what has kept the Trolley Trouble alive among philosophers for nearly five decades.

I practice not believe at that place volition ever exist a perfect solution to the Trolley Problem, nor a consensus as to the best possible solution. All we can promise for – and should promise for, equally I have argued – is to employ the tools of philosophy too as the scientific method to go along this discourse. The Trolley Problem does non take to be resolved; it but needs to exist contemplated, and to be the topic of our conversations from time to time.

© Omid Panahi 2016

Omid Panahi is a freelance scientific discipline and philosophy author. Follow him on Twitter (@OmidPPanahi) and Medium (@OmidPPanahi).

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Source: https://philosophynow.org/issues/116/Could_There_Be_A_Solution_To_The_Trolley_Problem

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