Tomkow.com

Thrown for a loop

[I don't like blog software's treatment of comments. Reading through a comment thread is like reading a series of footnotes to footnotes, not a conversation.  So my practice will be to try to include good comments in the main body of the blog where they get the attention they deserve.]

Responding to my proposed solution to The Trolley Problem, Richard Chappell writes.

I dunno, the distinction between (directly) preventing the deaths vs. causing them to be prevented (by someone else) strikes me as a bit artificial. But in any case, I don't think it tracks the standard Trolley intuitions. Consider the loop case: (8) You can pull a switch to divert the trolley onto a loop which connects back onto the main track where 5 victims await. Normally this wouldn't help, but fortunately there's a fat man tied to the rails in the loop section, who will bring the train to a halt if it hits him. Should you pull the switch? Presumably anyone who would divert the trolley in the original case would also do so in the loop case. But you would say it's the fat man, rather than the switch-puller, who directly prevents the 5 deaths in this case. So directly preventing the deaths cannot be the grounds for pulling the switch. An alternative candidate explanation would be to appeal to whether Jones brings about the one death (saving the five) by acting on the victim (e.g. pushing him), or by indirect means (pulling a switch). Perhaps our intuitions reflect the principle that only the latter (i.e. indirectly causing death) is permissible.

Thanks for your comment!

Let’s spell out the relevant cases:

DIVERT:  A runaway trolley is coming down the tracks.  It will hit five people if it is not diverted down a different track, but there is one person who will be killed if the trolley takes that route. Seeing this, a bystander throws a switch which diverts the trolley.  The one is killed; the five survive; the trolley continues on its way.

PUSH:  A runaway trolley is coming down the tracks.  It will hit five people if it isn't stopped.  A bystander pushes a fat man onto the tracks.  As the bystander intended, the trolley hits the fat man, killing him but stopping the trolley before it hits the five.

LOOP: A runaway trolley is coming down the tracks.  It will hit five people if it isn't stopped.  A bystander throws a switch which diverts a trolley down a siding.  The siding loops back to the main line and is still headed for the five, but there is a fat man on the siding track who is struck by the trolley, killing him, but stopping the trolley before it hits the five. All as the bystander intended.

Thomson’s LOOP case is a kind of parlor trick that flummoxes everyone when we first encounter it but I think its significance is generally misunderstood...

A Solution to the Trolley Problem

In the trolley problem some people think it is permissible for a bystander to turn the trolley onto the one to save the five. But many of those same people do not think it permissible to push a fat man onto the track to stop the trolley from running over the five.

The Trolley Problem is not to say whether this opinion is correct, but to explain what non-moral difference between these cases could reasonably lead people to these different verdicts in these two cases.  This is a problem even for someone who does not think it permissible to turn from the one onto the five.

In what we may call the standard trolley case a bystander has the choice of throwing a switch which will divert the trolley or not throwing the switch. I take it that people who believe that it is permissible to throw the switch in the standard case believe the following.

It is permissible for you to do something, α, that kills one person if:
        i) by doing α you prevent the death of five people.
        ii) if you refrain from doing α the five people will die.

The Problem is why this principle does not also permit pushing the fat man in front of the trolley. 

To see why consider the following cases.

Trolley Poem

The Trolley Problem

Most people, they say, will turn from the five
onto the one.
I'm sure they're right.

Most people got no idea about railroading.
Don't know how to start one, don't know how to stop.
But they'll turn on you.
Bystanders. Most People.
Standing by to run you down.

Most people will raise your taxes.
Most people will take your house for a ball park.
Most people will send your boy to die in a foreign war just because
they think they might see something,
way down the road,
they'd rather not run into.

Most people stick to the main line.
Most people don't trust the one.
What's he doing out there,
on his own track,
outlying?

So they'll grind that one under
and won't think twice about it.

Most people can do the math.