would you kill one person to save five?

As an afterthought : I've never seen any variation of the trolleycar problem wherein you know everyone involved and have to choose which of your mates get splattered. Since we all share humanity with anyone who could be involved in such an accident, it lays out pretty clearly how disarmed we would be in a situation like this. Indeed, most of us (I feel) would be utterly paralysed in such a plight -- again, morality would not be at the forefront of our minds.

It is a lovely puzzle, this one. It shows us the limits of our reasoning and just how screwed we really are as would-be moral agents. :laugh:

Isn't the trolly car example just a Squid game episode ?

No, Carlos, it is a well-conceived thought experiment by Philippa Foot, an English philosopher, in 1967. :huh:

What the hell is the squid game ?

C'mon... :dry:

So my initial post on this thread was a single word…..yep. Having read all of your comments, my statement stands. It may be the soldier mentality I carry around, or the leader mentality I’ve developed through my experiences in life. But the answer to my mind is both simple and obvious. 5 is more than 1. Math is never wrong. The greater good is always what matters most to me, even if it means I have to live with something terrible on my conscience. The greatest sacrifice always belongs to the one pulling the trigger.

Unless I’m missing something….it’s either 1 person dies or 5 people die. That math is always easy to me.

Zero wrote: So my initial post on this thread was a single word…..yep. Having read all of your comments, my statement stands. It may be the soldier mentality I carry around, or the leader mentality I’ve developed through my experiences in life. But the answer to my mind is both simple and obvious. 5 is more than 1. Math is never wrong. The greater good is always what matters most to me, even if it means I have to live with something terrible on my conscience. The greatest sacrifice always belongs to the one pulling the trigger.

:huh:

The problem with thought experiments like this is the time factor. Here, you get to read the problem, look at it through whatever lens you choose, bounce your morals and ethics off of it, research it, then carefully craft your answer.

As a combat veteran who’s made real word decisions that has resulted in real people living and dying, I can tell you first hand that this isn’t a decision. It’s a reaction. You don’t get an hour to figure it out. You don’t get a friends answer to read first. You don’t get time to proofread your answer. You get seconds to make a decision and a life time to live with the results. Now, do you want to live with the fact that you saved 5 people, or the fact that you let 5 people die?

That's what I was alluding to in the 'afterthought' :

Since we all share humanity with anyone who could be involved in such an accident, it lays out pretty clearly how disarmed we would be in a situation like this. Indeed, most of us (I feel) would be utterly paralysed in such a plight

Indeed, I don't know what I would do as per my initial response, but would lay a month's paycheck on freesing up - the paralysis. Indeed, I'd wager it would be like that for basically everyone who has not been a combat soldier (I have never been, thank the Maker).

Nevertheless, thought experiments and other hypothetical puzzles are not merely mental onanisms. Everything from the pyramids to life-saving surgical techiques and medicines to the Webb telescope - not to mention your smartphones and computers - have begun with hypotheticals. In terms of moral philosophy - otherwise known ad 'Ethics' - they are designed, either well or badly (not all philosophers are bright people either) to give us an idea of whether we 'ought' to do particular stuff. They show us more about how we are than anything else and they sure as hell do not point to concrete solutions to harder concrete problems. More often than not, they show us the fragility of our reasoning and can only inform us remotely.

Anytime we use the words would, could, might, may and even why, we are engaged in a rudimentary form of thought experiment. They are valuable for letting us communicate possibilities. And pondering these possibilities is basic metaphysics.

In Ethics, there are three main avenues : deontology (duty, rules) which, like I said above, keep us from having to think about stuff very much when deciding what to do (in combat situations, there isn't time for that, having to distinguish between friendly or deadly in a microsecond), consequentialist ethics wherein if the outcome is good, it's morally alright, and virtue ethics which is even more hypothetical because it's based on what a virtuous person 'would' do. The trolleycar problem stretches itseof out over all of these at once, which is why it doesn't have any one, right solution. It is even morally sound to freeze up, paralysed by the horror before us - we just wouldn't be given a medal for it. Nor though would we go to prison for manslaughter.

It is not morally sound to kill one to save five, no matter what. But then again, in these situations, morality doesn't apply. It would apply however when deciding whether or not to lay off 5000 people and keep on 1000 to make a shitload of profit, the trolleycar being the economico-political situation of the day (talk about a runaway train ! ) So, let's think of things in along that model....

I would say that the question is too vague, are we talking about one person who is for exemple sick and extremely contagious, so they would be killed to save the five people next to become contaminated. Or is it a demand by someone to have that one person killed otherwise 5 other will be killed in their place, i guess there re countless situation where that one person could be or a danger, or totally innocent, or that one person is an aggressor. Each situation has it's own problems and ethic. To answer YES, is simply deprive of sagacity and this question is not any better.

Leor Hal wrote: I would say that the question is too vague, are we talking about one person who is for exemple sick and extremely contagious, so they would be killed to save the five people next to become contaminated. Or is it a demand by someone to have that one person killed otherwise 5 other will be killed in their place, i guess there re countless situation where that one person could be or a danger, or totally innocent, or that one person is an aggressor. Each situation has it's own problems and ethic. To answer YES, is simply deprive of sagacity and this question is not any better.

Yes

I have always found these types of scenarios unrealistic and overly simplified. That these are used as some kind of thought experiment or “morality gauge” is disgusting. And this is why I think this.

First, except for psychopaths, no one is going to pull a lever or push the person or what ever and just stand by and watch events unfold. Unless the individual freezes they are going to scream, flail their arms and do any number of the imaginable and unimaginable to try and prevent the events from unfolding as initially perceived.

Second, when presented with actual emergency or dramatic situations almost no one reacts the way they thought they would. That is one reason almost every person that reacts to stressful situations trains as much as they do. To program in a response and develop muscle memory so that the response is almost automatic and doesn’t have to be thought about.

But more importantly, as a Jedi I believe all life has intrinsic value. The first line of what Jedi believe is, “In the Force, and in the inherent worth of all life within it.” Thought experiments such as this teaches the individual to assign differing levels of value to and importance to life. That depending on how many, what your skill set is, what your background was, what you could contribute, how old you are…, or any number of factors could be used to determine if one’s life is valuable enough to save of worth sacrificing for the benefit of others. There were other groups of people that thought like this… slave owners, NAZIs and multiple other groups that have been deemed immoral or evil by society and history.

In my opinion, the only reasonable a Jedi should give to a question like this is, “I can not know what I would do until faced with the actual situation.” And if pressed I would inform them that it would be impossible for me to “know” because it hasn’t happened and my beliefs do not align with assigning varying values to different people based on arbitrary factors.