The Trolley Problem

[Craig24]

On 2/18/2019 at 9:51 PM, dreadrocksean said:

You action caused the death of an innocent person.  Regardless of the reason.  You intent was also to kill the innocent, so you cannot claim ignorance or accident.

My action?  I'm stuck on a train that will kill 1 person or 5 people no matter what I do.  I can only minimize the casualties.  

[Easy Truth]

On 10/21/2016 at 2:39 PM, epistemologue said:

So you would murder an innocent stranger for the sake of the greater good?

What is this greater good? The greater good must have a relationship to self, to self interest. If there is none, the judgement is arbitrary. There is no difference in value if you do one or the other. One can throw a dice or one can ignore. Same value.

The question "why should I care" has to be answered first to place a value.

[Easy Truth]

On 4/25/2019 at 9:15 AM, Craig24 said:

My action?  I'm stuck on a train that will kill 1 person or 5 people no matter what I do.  I can only minimize the casualties.  

Then minimizing casualties has something to do with your self interest, which is not being mentioned. Otherwise, there is no law in the universe which says 1 is better than 5.

[dreadrocksean]

On 4/25/2019 at 11:15 AM, Craig24 said:

My action?  I'm stuck on a train that will kill 1 person or 5 people no matter what I do.  I can only minimize the casualties.  

That's not the topic though.  The Trolley problem has, at its core, the fact that your action makes a difference - "minimize the casualties".  "No matter what I do" - is incorrect.

[Easy Truth]

On 10/21/2016 at 4:49 AM, StrictlyLogical said:

I think it reveals an implicit premise of their kind... people and their lives can be reduced to arithmetic.  After all, in order for them to argue the sacrifice of the highest value of an individual, his or herself, to any number of others, they HAVE to attempt to argue a reduction of that highest value (of the one) and an increase in the value of the others (how ever many) and what is easier than a mere equating with numbers of people, which is concrete and easy to calculate.  That way sacrifice for the group can start to "make sense" to anyone...

I don't know the origins of the Trolley problem analogy, but I assume that it refers to what the government should do i.e. do nothing. Going against the common thought process which is: do what is best for the "most". Keep most of them alive. There is some merit to that thought process, as it is used in the military and in triage situations. But a country is not a military organization and we are not in a triage situation where you ignore the ones you think will die.

The hardest part of the argument against utilitarianism is to articulate what a society, or country is vs. an organization, as in the military organization. Communicating the fact that: as a country, although we have a president, we are not a business enterprise, with the president being the organizational president trying to do arithmetic calculations about which department to destroy to save others. In that situation, sins of omission do count, the CEO is fired for things that are not in his or her control. Similarly a president is not voted in sometimes because of "not doing something". Nevertheless, the two relationships, president of a corporation vs. president of a country are two different roles with different ethical guidance.

The nature of "government to individual relationship" is the crux of the matter.

The greatest threat to individualism currently seems to be utilitarianism, i.e. based on the arithmetic (or statistics) … because it can make sense to anyone. I would also hypothesis that it has something to do with herd mentality which has had tremendous survival value, therefore the attraction to it. Doing what most of the herd does is frequently  or "usually" the best course of action (until it's not). In that way, the herd can seem to have an interest. The "most" seems to have an evolutionarily caused emotional significance.

I also suspect that the solution to the trolley problem is to be a guide in going against a herd mentality bias.