In today's class, we brought up the
Trolley problem, where there is a trolley heading toward 10 people
who will be killed by the trolley unless you pull a switch which will
save there life, but cause the trolley to kill 1 person. The question
is whether you would pull the switch. For me, this was an especially
confusing moral dilemma, because of the way my religion and thoughts
on human life connect with my reason and logic.
I think there are two aspects of human
life, that need to be consider in the case of Trolley problem. The
first is the value of human life. If all human life of equal value,
then 10 human lives would be worth more than 1 human life. But that
is not the only have to view life. You could say that 10 humans lives
are not worth more than one. If such is the case then, you should
pull the lever, saving the most people. If human life was worth
infinite amount, and it was the
most important thing in the universe, therefore whether one or ten,
you cannot sacrifice another human life. This means you cannot pull
the lever regardless of who the train is initially going to kill.
The
other aspect is your own responsibility to human life. How far does
your responsibility to human life go? Is your responsibility to
preserve human life, or is it to save human life? Is there a
difference? I
think the difference between saving human life and preserving human
life is amount of action you should take.
So
if you are to save human life you should pull the lever because you
are saving 10 human lives. But I think preserving does not require
action. You cannot preserve human life if you are putting another set
of human lives in danger. So inaction is the choose in that case.
Correct me if I am wrong on that, it was just a quick thought that
may be me trying to make both sides equal.
I
am not really sure, what choice would be the correct choice. I do not
think I can say that any choice is more moral than the other. It may
be that one choice is more right than the other, but I am not sure if
can really say that, if I am saying the morality of both choices are
equal. I Would like some feed back, so that I can start getting a
stronger grip on what I think morality is. Thanks in Advance.
I believe you don’t have a clear distinction between preserving and saving human life. Through your example, the best choice should be to kill one to save ten whether you want to save a life or preserve life. In this instance both choices are equal. The only way the choice of sending the trolley to the ten people instead of the one could be morally justified is if you have some preconceived relationship with that one individual. This would really act as an outlier for this case because that decision would not have been made from a morel view point. To complicate the matter further, inaction in this scenario would also not be morally right, because you made a rational decision to let the trolley hit the ten people.
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