The trolley
problem is one of the most discussed cases in analytical philosophy. Readers
who find its description in my last blog too vague or are not good in
visualizing written texts can watch this only 97 seconds lasting video that
explains what it is about:
There are
several versions of the case and last week I discussed the “tunnel version” in
which the five cannot escape because they are in a tunnel. Your only choice is either
turning the switch and lead the trolley to another track where a man is walking
or doing nothing. However, there are alternative versions in which you perform
another action instead of turning a switch in order to save the five people.
All involve different, though related, ethical problems. The most treated
version is one in which you can push a fat man onto the track, so that the
trolley will be stopped, but the fat man will be killed. People may think: Be a
hero and jump yourself onto the track. However, because you are as meagre as I
am, you will simply be knocked down by the trolley or it will push you aside. Therefore
the only options are pushing the fat man onto the track or doing nothing.
Most people
judge that it is allowed to turn the switch to save the five but not to push
the fat man onto the track, even though in both versions one person is killed
and five persons are saved. Philosophers have written a lot about why this is
so (and also most philosophers think that it is not allowed to push the fat
man), but here I have to bypass their reasons pro and con. The essence is that
sacrificing the fat man is a means to save the five, while sacrificing the
single walker on the track is a side-effect of turning the switch (while the
latter action is the means). In terms of my last blog we can also say that
killing the fat man is done, while killing the single walker is enabled
(actually I should say: that the single walker is killed is enabled).
For a
non-philosopher cases like the trolley problem (if not its more complicated
versions) may look weird. You might think that cases are the playthings of
philosophers. This can be so, indeed, but these toys have often serious meanings.
By analyzing the trolley problem it becomes clear that it is important to
distinguish between means and side effects. But the case also exemplifies the
question whether we are allowed to do the lesser evil in order to get the
bigger good. To answer such questions is not always easy. Therefore it makes
sense to rack your brains on simple cases, which in the end appear to be not
simple at all. Here are some practical examples that are actually trolley-like
problems:
- Many will
say that in a war it is allowed to bomb a munitions factory of the enemy. But
what if the factory is situated near a residential quarter? For the factory
will explode and it will kill many civilians. What if only a few civilians are
likely to be killed by the explosion? What if we need to drop hundred bombs for
destroying the factory and it is sure that about ten bombs will not fall on the
factory but will directly kill civilians living near the factory?
- Stalin
and his co-communists thought that it was allowed to kill the “kulaks” for the
bigger good of communism. It’s an extreme case of what often happens.
- Is it
allowed to demolish the house of an old woman if we destroy her happiness –
because she has lived there her whole life – since we want to build a road
there, even if this woman is compensated in all ways possible?
- Sartre
tells somewhere that an ex-student of his asked him for advice: He wants to
join the Free French forces in order to fight against the Nazis. However, then
he must leave his mother alone in difficult circumstances, while it might also
get her into trouble with the Germans.
Big and
small problems are often kinds of trolley problems. The existentialist
philosopher Albert Camus dealt with trolley-like problems in his work. His
standpoints in such questions made him controversial, so Sarah Bakewell, also
because it made that he didn’t support the rebels in the fight for independence
of Algeria in the 1950s (Camus was from Algeria). But when he received the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, he explained in an interview: “People are
now planting bombs in the tramways of Algiers. My mother might be on one of
those tramways. If that is justice, then I prefer my mother.” Philosophy is as
practical as philosophy can be.
Sources
- Bakewell, Sarah, The
existentialist café. London: Vintage, 2016; pp. 7-8, 246.
- Kamm, F.M., The
trolley problem mysteries. With commentaries by Judith Jarvis Thomson, Thomas
Hurka, Shelly Kagan. Edited and introduced by Eric Rakowski. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016.
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