This is from an episode of Scientific American Frontiers. You can watch the full episode here. This clip is from segment 3 - Tough Choices.

Diverting the train doesn't make you a murderer as far as I see it. The fat man doesn't have anything to do with the train situation, which is why it feels wrong to push him over the edge in front of the train.

I'd divert the train, but not murder the fat man.

Fatty was in no danger, while the 1 plus 4 workers knew the risks.

I wouldn't push the fatty or pull the lever. I don't have the right to decide that one person's life is worth less than the lives of the other people just because of where he happens to be standing. It's more than just a mathematical issue of 1 death > 4 deaths. You can't just say to someone "I'm going to kill you because it will save the lives of others that you've never met" and not give him/her a choice in the matter.

I don't know anything about the men involved; maybe the fatty or the lone worker is a good-hearted guy, has a family to take care of, etc., whereas the other four could be criminalistic or just plain selfish assholes who make life difficult for others. I simply don't know enough about the people to judge whether they deserve life. And like quantumushroom said, the workers knew the risks of being on the tracks, whereas the fat guy was just a bystander, one who didn't want to instantly sacrifice himself for four unknown people (which is perfectly understandable). In either case, I don't believe a witness has the right to choose who gets to live and who gets to die.

Kuga, you're changing the premise. The quandry assumes you know nothing about any of the people and you have a split second to decide. Meaning you knowingly have no time to get to know the people. Is 1 life worth less than 4? That's the ONLY thing you have time to decide in the first scenario, and the second is where the rub is.

For my part, flipping the switch vs physically pushing the man is a huge difference. Flipping the switch means you make just change the situation and the situation caused the death. Pushing the man makes you directly guilty and the situation is secondary.

Also, people who are physically closer to me are more important to me inherently, not sure why.

Flipping the switch makes you equally as guilty of murder as pushing the guy over. It just seems easier because you're more detached; you aren't using your own two hands to physically push someone directly into the trolley's path, you're just pulling a lever that isn't directly connected to a human being.

In either case, the trolley is what's going to kill the people, you're just in charge of deciding who it gets to kill, which I don't think a bystander who knows nothing about the victims has the right to do. The video said that the fatty doesn't want to jump - now if he had said to me, "I want to sacrifice myself to save those guys down there" then I wouldn't have a problem in helping him over the edge - but forcing him over the edge against his will is murder, just as much as forcing the lone worker into the path of the trolley is.

I think the basic question here is, "Is it okay to kill innocent people in order to save other innocent people?" And if you think it is okay, do you feel that you personally can shoulder the weight of knowing that you killed an innocent human being and were fully responsible for their death, even if it saves the life of another person?

Fat guy's got a death wish anyway, what with all those hotpockets he's been eating. I say let it ride.

As a philosophy student, I'm somewhat ashamed by the logic of this. First you have to ask : "How do you know pushing the fat man will indeed stop the train?". That's far from being obvious or commonsensical, and thus many people will find lots of non-ethical problems with that course of action. A better way to put the problem would be to say that there is an activist that you neither like nor dislike (i.e. he's not protesting against you or something you care about, the term "activist" is only used to provide plausibility to the situation) attached in some way to the lever so that if you pull it you will kill him. Both the four men and the activist presumably, as far as you can know on the spot, know the risks of their actions (we can think the activist attached himself to this particular lever because of the danger it could possibly entail to his life). Will you then pull the lever and kill one person to save another four? Most people would find no qualms doing it, even most of those who would be biased towards the activist before the situation occurred.

A more difficult and appropriate question in this case would be : "Would you kill with your own hands a "helpless" person (one who can't physically stop you from killing him), in a similar situation, to save four others?" (I'm sure you can think of a scenario on your own). As long as the person making the decision must base their decision on a purely utilitarian/arithmetical reasoning (for want of more information about the five persons in jeopardy), they will kill one to save four. When you introduce matters of feeling, as of guilt or fear of killing someone in cold blood, then the decision process is "tainted" and not purely ethical, unless your ethics is somewhat based on feelings, but even then one wouldn't be able to tell if the real decision, on the moment, was based on ethical grounds (logical reasoning) or on an aversion (a psychosomatic feeling) to killing the one person in cold blood. By the way, putting a "fatty" in the mix might allow prejudice in some people who hate "fatties" so the situation in the video is even more inadequate at setting the problem. That's what you get when you ask a professor of philosophy at a technological institute .

"That's what you get when you ask a professor of philosophy at a technological institute."

You must be a beginning philosophy student.

Initially, I had a similar reaction as Bidouleroux to how the question was framed - too many open variables to assess the situation. But I think that's part of it. There's always going to be unknown factors. Who knows - the fat guy could be the key to a lasting peace settlement between Palestinians and Jews, or maybe has the solution for a true Unified Field Theory. That's the point - you can't know these things in advance.

Ultimately, I agree with Kuga. It's homicide in both cases - someone dies as a direct result of your actions. It's kind of like the difference between strangling someone vs. shooting them (killing with your hands vs. pulling a lever). The question for me comes down to your personal belief structure. Most people will apply the "utilitarian" approach, i.e., saving the lives of 4 people is better than causing the death of 1. But again, most people can only take that so far, and struggle with becoming more "directly" involved.

(side note - I put this in the science channel because I was under the impression that the study used fmri to show the areas of the brain active in answering each situation (cingulate cortex?). This may not be the case. I'm still looking for references to this, but if anyone feels this doesn't belong in science in the mean time, go ahead and knock it out.)

jonny, you made the same mistake as Kuga did. You say both die as a direct result of your actions, then say later that one way is more directly involved than the other. Direct and more direct aren't the same thing. Legally they can be and the soccer moms surely think they are, but morally it's much more harsh to kill a guy with a blade than to snipe him from a 100 yards for example. Even in law one will get you a harder sentence than the other because one is more personal and takes a far more morally corrupt person.

Flipping the switch takes less guts than pushing a guy, I think that's the crux here.

>> ^Enzoblue:
jonny, you made the same mistake as Kuga did. You say both die as a direct result of your actions, then say later that one way is more directly involved than the other.

No enzoblue, I put directly in quotes the second time exactly because of that. I personally don't think there is a difference, but I realize that many people will see a distinction.

morally it's much more harsh to kill a guy with a blade than to snipe him from a 100 yards for example.

I very much disagree with that. Killing is killing, whether you do it with your bare hands, a knife, a gun, or by dropping a bomb. If anything, I may be inclined to find those who kill from a more removed position as more morally repugnant.

Even in law one will get you a harder sentence than the other because one is more personal and takes a far more morally corrupt person.

You sure about that? I don't know of any statutes written that way. Now, if you mean using a knife specifically to inflict great pain before death, maybe so, but that has nothing to do with the instrument or proximity.

Flipping the switch takes less guts than pushing a guy, I think that's the crux here.

I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you're saying because one action requires less "courage" than the other, it is seen as more morally acceptable?

Poor video if you ask me, for reasons already stated but i'll clarify:

Scenario 1 -
The train is on the track that it's on. The track splits into 2. All 5 men are in danger. You are near to a lever and presumably you know what the lever does otherwise you'd not have a choice. So there you have it. You are in charge of 2 potential outcomes and it's solely on your head to choose the lesser evil. Maybe my moral code or logic is twisted, but that's exactly how it lays out in my head. Neither is your fault.

For me, this is the same as saying "2 buttons 10 feet apart, red button saves 1 guy, blue button saves 4 guys, you've got 2 seconds to press a button". That's just how it works out in my head, and i bet a lot of other people feel the same.

Scenario 2 -
The train is on a track and the track leads to 4 people who are in harm's way. 2 things come to my mind here. Firstly, it's the question "would you kill 1 innocent to save many?" and the answer is no, i wouldn't.

The second is that the question is not similar at all to the first one. By my logic and my mind, either 4 people are gonna die or 1 person is gonna die, it's not your fault, you didn't put the train on that track, you were simply given the control to send the train 1 way or the other, and that's the only choice you have.

>> ^dannym3141:
Poor video if you ask me, for reasons already stated but i'll clarify:

I don't think you clarified at all why you think the video is poor. You provide your analysis of the two scenarios and why you find them distinct. That's good. That's the point of the video -- to elucidate how different people view the different scenarios, and thus how they form their responses in each.

I'm not sure why people are missing this. The question is intentionally vague because the investigators are trying to look into how people analyze ethical situations. They are not trying to invent a pair of exact scenarios in which there is a right or wrong answer.

^ That's because most people don't understand (yet) what the role of thought experiments is in moral philosophy, and how they are supposed to illuminate and challenge our fundamental moral intuitions. As this stuff starts to get more popularized, people will become a bit more savvy.

*engineering

Adding video to channels (Engineering) - requested by oxdottir.