But it is well within your control. The hypothetical says so: you have the option to divert the train and minimize casualties. That's an objective fact.
Should you kill the fat man?
- Thread starter Lexika
- Start date
But it is well within your control. The hypothetical says so: you have the option to divert the train and minimize casualties. That's an objective fact.
What I meant was it's all an accident, it's not something that you initiated. Whether or not it's your moral duty to act a certain way in circumstances that you are not directly responsible for is a personal choice-- you seem to be assuming that it's everyone's moral duty to act for the benefit of the majority, as opposed to assuming that, say, fate intended the 5 men to die which is why the trolley was set on that particular course, and it would be wrong/unnatural to interfere.
OK, but in the same vein, would it not be fate that the subject of the hypothetical has been given the opportunity to decide who lives or dies?
e: Making the claim that one should not interject with anything happening in their daily life because "It's just fate" sounds like some kind of offshoot of nihilism.
e2: Or determinism. A bit of both, perhaps.
Last edited:
Moral prescriptions for the sake of prescribing them on some kind of attempted rational basis are always problematic since the need for them is itself not rational.
We feel and are subject to internal pressures which aren't comprehensible in any absolute way. If you don't feel, then it doesn't matter, but we do feel which is what makes it matter. This is probably why people came up with God, and then proceeded to kill him - people wanted a comprehensible reason for their feelings and then they killed God when they realized that it was still incomprehensible.
It's a fight for life through confusion and suffering where no side is ever entirely the winner - certain aspects simply become predominant for a time. What becomes predominant is entangled in a complex web of cause and effect.
Ultimately the only way to escape it is to go back to your source.
We feel and are subject to internal pressures which aren't comprehensible in any absolute way. If you don't feel, then it doesn't matter, but we do feel which is what makes it matter. This is probably why people came up with God, and then proceeded to kill him - people wanted a comprehensible reason for their feelings and then they killed God when they realized that it was still incomprehensible.
It's a fight for life through confusion and suffering where no side is ever entirely the winner - certain aspects simply become predominant for a time. What becomes predominant is entangled in a complex web of cause and effect.
Ultimately the only way to escape it is to go back to your source.
But you already have the opportunity to decide who lives or dies almost every day. How many people are on waiting lists for liver, heart, face, kidney etc.. transplants? You could donate all of your organs to these people-- people suffering through no fault of their own-- thereby improving their quality of life at the expense of your own. Why do you think you're powerless to stop their suffering?
This is exactly one reason why I don't get into things like maximizing happiness as a rule because there's always something like this if you look for it.
However I will still say that torture itself is wrong because doing the act itself will darken you or possibly cause other psychological or social effects. Call it bad karma if you will.
It's not absolute in the sense that it should always be punished from some sense of justice. I just think that cause/effect wise that the person who has to do it, and really everyone around or connected to them, is not in a good position in the long run.
your post seems a bit condescending, but i'll bite.
of course it's a shitty situation. it's an accident. my definition of morality is not always based on outcomes, so it it has nothing to do with being absurd. i absolutely don't care that lots of people would choose to save the five people.
the failing brakes on the train are not the engineer's fault. i'm assuming the engineer did not tie the five men to the track, so why should he be responsible for the accident? why is the life of one innocent less important than five? ten? a million?
try to consider the people on the end of receiving end of such a deal if you were to divert the train and kill the one man. would you like to explain to his family that you by your own hand killed this man because his life was worth less than the other five? that seems like a slap in the face. you should be charged with murder because the moment you decide to switch tracks and kill the innocent man it is no longer an accident.
random bad shit happens to people everyday. i don't think that anyone gets to mitigate that damage by harming others. now if there were no one on that other track i'd feel the engineer was obligated to switch directions.
there would be no reason to tell the single man that five people died to save his life because that just isn't true. the five people were in the wrong place at the wrong time not him. if the men were to switch places in the loop back diagram and only if the engineer were to decide to switch tracks would the five men "be saving his life."
since we've decided to get personal, i'll say that i am only willing to take responsibility for the things i actually do. i try not to take responsibility for things beyond my control or for conscious inaction. otherwise it would be my fault for not feeding seventeen starving children in Africa, and all billionaires would be required to donate all their money to the masses. just because you can do something doesn't mean you're morally obligated to do it.
to me killing the one man to save five is using an innocent person as a means to and end. i got into a huge fight with the husband over this because he claims that it's not the case. how is it not?
I wouldnt divert the train to save 5 lives because I am not going to go out of my way to save the lives of people who are dumb enough to be getting stuck on train tracks. I am not going to take positive actions to run over the man on another track, he just happened to be lucky enough to not be on the other tracks. Killing 1 or killing 5, it all feels about the same in the end.