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RE: Stopping the trolley

Comment comment by gnifyus on 02 February 2008

I was thinking later that the trolley/fat man situation doesn't exactly compare apples to apples when faced with a choice of ethics. One choice is based on actually deliberately killing someone by the results of our own actions, whereas the other 'choice' is doing nothing about something that isn't our fault to begin with.

This thought experiment can have a twist thrown into it: What if one of the five endangered people on the track were a loved one; a daughter or son? Then would we throw the fat man down?

These cases make us wish we were super-human like in the first Spiderman movie where he has to choose between allowing the tram full of people to fall to their death; or allowing Mary Jane Watson to fall to her death. With Spiderman being a superhero of course, everybody is saved.

Although I hate to do it, I'm going to have to quote Star Trek:

As you can see from the above, that's probably not much to be sorry about around here.. :-)

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RE: Stopping the trolley by NomadSoul :: NR6

I think you are right--our sense of responsibility seems to play a big part--which I think goes along with the earlier suggestion of throwing oneself on the tracks instead of the fat man. And it definitely complicates things if a loved one is about to be killed. I'm still not sure I could easily make that choice though--trade one life (other than my own) for someone I happen to care about. I would always be thinking: "the fat man has a family, too"

I guess we have to hope Spiderman shows up. I think it would be interesting to see a hero that cannot save everyone the way it normally happens in Hollywood--and see how he/she comes to terms with that fact.

Maybe the essence of these moral questions is that there usually isn't a right answer. No matter what you did, there would be a good reason for doing it. Even if someone did nothing, people would understand--it's easy to be paralyzed with fear or indecision in such a situation. The exception would be if that person actually caused the trolley malfunction.

LOL--True--I'm sure nobody minds me quoting Trek on OmniNerd. I am only hesitant because it's not always a reliable source of wisdom. Ursula K. LeGuin, on the other hand--she always amazes me with her insight.

Posted 02 February 2008, Hide, Parent, Reply