“Trolley problems" are thought experiments designed to raise difficult ethical questions, to make those who contemplate them consider how they should use moral principles in real-life situations.
Hopefully, the original “trolley problem,” invented by philosopher Philipa Foot, is never a real-life situation for any of us. In this scenario, a trolley is headed at a great speed down a track with five people tied to it. You can save the five people from certain death by pulling a switch that will divert the trolley onto a different track. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, this other track has a sixth person tied to it. Do you pull the lever, saving the five people on the first track, but becoming responsible for the death of the sixth person?
In another variation, “the fat man” version, there is only one track. However, you are on a bridge above it with a large man, whom you can push onto the track in order to stop the errant trolley and, once again, save the five people but kill the man in the process. Why does the man have to be fat, you might ask? I didn’t come up with this, but presumably, to keep you, the one faced with this dilemma, from claiming you would just throw yourself onto the track to sacrifice yourself for the five other people. Sorry, heroic reader. Whoever you are, you just aren’t big enough to stop the trolley, but the large gentlemen is.
Some versions of these two scenarios add further complications. What if the fat man was a criminal mastermind, and tied the people to the tracks in the first place, for example? What if the five people had terminal illnesses and would soon die anyway? We’ll stick to the basic versions for the sake of this article.
What is the right thing to do in these scenarios? If you chose to kill the fat man, congratulations, you’re in the minority. While most people faced with the first moral puzzle apparently choose to divert the trolley, killing one person instead of five, few choose to push the fat man onto the tracks. What is the difference here? I feel this could be, in part, because unlike in the first scenario, the would-be sacrificial victim in the second is given a trait. This makes him an individual, and not just an abstract “human.” I don’t know about you, but the first time I read about trolley problems, I automatically imagined a specific appearance for the fat man. Mine had a white T-shirt, denim shorts and blond hair. The hypothetical sixth person on the second track in the first problem, however, remains in my mind a faceless human-shaped blob, which perhaps makes them more seem more expendable.
There are other differences to these two versions as well, other than how they may create responses in our emotions and imagination. Philosopher David Edmonds points out a major difference by inviting us to consider what would happen in each situation if we made the difficult choice in favor of the greater good, but the intended victim escaped. In the first scenario, if we pulled the lever and the trolley went down the second track, but the person managed to untie themselves and escape before being hit by the trolley, everyone would survive, the day would end happily, and you would likely feel confident that you made the right decision. On the other hand, if you pushed the fat man and he somehow survived his fall and rolled off of the track in time, the five captives on the track would still die and you, an attempted murderer, would be due for a somewhat awkward conversation with the fat man.
This difference reflects the concept of “double effect,” an idea introduced by medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. Double effect draws a distinction between committing an evil act in the hope of a positive outcome, and making a decision that may be likely to have bad side effects. A common example of this is a military one—while most people would agree it’s morally wrong to, say, deliberately bomb civilians to intimidate an enemy into surrendering, targeting a military base might fall within the range of accepted actions in warfare, even if civilians may die in the process, because the deaths of the civilians would not be an intended part of the action. Going by double effect, it would be best to pull the lever, but not to push the man off of the bridge.
Discussions over trolley problems, and other hypothetical moral dilemmas, are often centered around the conflict between utilitarianism and virtue ethics. Virtue ethics holds that a person should make the decision that best aligns with their conscience in a given set of circumstances, and in this way, gradually improve their ability to see and pick the best option when faced with a difficult choice, like a trolley problem. Utilitarianism argues that the foundation of morality is minimizing pain and maximizing pleasure, and that the morally best action is always the one that will most increase the amount of happiness in the world, even if it seems like an ugly action. At the risk of oversimplifying: virtue ethics emphasizes intent, while utilitarianism is consequentialist, and emphasizes outcome.
It seems that there is no morality without choice, and that one, therefore, cannot be “forced” to be immoral. Even if none of the choices in a situation are appealing, one choice must be the right one. If we are faced with a difficult choice like a trolley problem in real life, I think it would be best to use both virtue ethics and utilitarianism as tools to make the best decision, rather than picking between the two systems. Life is not an equation. If this somehow happened to me, I think pulling the switch, then doing everything I could to free the one person on the second track would be the best way to stay within my moral obligation. What would you rather?
