Enough tomfoolery. Justify not pulling the lever

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Since free will exists and since I did not set the events to lead up to the deaths of these peoples nothing I do here matters, so weather I pull or don't pull the lever my moral compass stays in tact.

Justify doing ANYTHING in this situation.

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Post rare levers

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If you pull the level, you'll either be the hero of the day, or give one guy a ridiculous case of survivor's guilt.

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deontologist pls go

Doing nothing is a choice. How can you justify doing nothing?

Bitch I didnt say I agreed, OP said justify it, so I offered a circumstance in which it was justified

>Since free will exists
Gonna have to stop you right there

Because I did not set up the exercise? I did not put the people on the track, I did not start the train.

Not my fault, has nothing to do with me. Again, justify doing anything. If you want to argue semantics -

Nothing =/= anything like you think it does for some reason. Anything is something which is obviously not nothing.

>inb4 some parrot
Try again, idiot.

>free-will doesnt exist
>only when you take out the moment where free-will is used and look at events in retrospect
Going to have to stop you there.

Should have said "My father isn't home" and then had a picture of the track with one guy

>only when you take out the moment where free-will is used and look at events in retrospect
What?

The exercise is asking what action you would take and why that action would be just. "Not my problem" is a seriously bad justification for inaction, and "Nothing I do here matters" is clearly a wrong statement.

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All star.

blame resides on the person who tied the men to the tracks

why is blame relevant?

Society and law have conditioned me to associate action with risk of punishment. I'm less likely to go to prison if I do nothing.

You think inaction when you have the ability to act is going to save you from the idea that you're responsible for the deaths of 4 instead of 1.

it's part of ethics

on average pulling the lever results in the deaths of 5.5 people, so it's objectively worse than leaving it unless you have a gambling addiction

knock myself unconscious
checkmate

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Fukken saved.

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>not having the track covered in human property

You literally make the same comic with the kid asking why did you pull it.

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It may not BE right, but it is a right we can choose

We're not talking about can or can't, we're talking about should or shouldn't.

Just switch the lever and take the one, unless it's someone we couldn't live without

Jump in front of the trolley.
Since I cannot kill myself, we can assume I can absorb kinetic energy a well enough extent that it would not cause severe damage. Therefore, we can conclude that by doing so, I can stop the trolley and save those people, hereby nullifying the first part of the paragraph. I however cannot prevent the fate of them having to listen to All-Star by Smash Mouth.

That's an odd thing to conclude. You may not die, but you would just get thrown out of the way by the trolley.

But I would absorb some of the kinetic energy from the trolley. We can repeat jumping in front of the trolley until it loses enough kinetic energy.

If you want to kill more people, don't pull the lever
If you want to kill less people, pull the lever

>implying there is a "self" and your ego matters

personally i wouldn't pull the lever to help thin the herd

He didnu nuffin

you are correct, no one SHOULD have the choice, but being that situation is that you MUST CHOOSE, the correct choice is to kill 1 person

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But there very first condition is that there is NOTHING you can do to save them

Ovepopulation.

this is what happens when mods dont ban shitposters

I feel like most of the confusion comes from people confounding lack of material action with lack of responsibility. This is a big problem, especially in West. If this question was preceded by a crash course in not being an egotistic Neoliberal Machiavellian virtue-signaling fuckmonger, I'd wager a lot more people would say they would pull it.

It's such a ridiculous problem. Only a coward or a psychopath wouldn't pull the lever. It's five dead people or one dead person. There is no other consideration of relevance.

People like you always go "Uhmm.. i-i-tt's not the same thing!!!!" when given the fat man variation..

It's different because you don't know when you push the fat guy if he's going to be able to derail the trolley. You're causing one death for a chance to possibly save 5. Throwing the switch will definitely save 5 lives.

It doesn't matter. The whole trolly meme is built on suffering and that takes place in one form or another during any human pursuit.

DELETE THIS

Alright, so you have absolute, perfect certainty that the fat man will stop the trolley. What do you do?

thats identical though
except

you could jump infront of it yourself.

Nothing I can do to save them, but it is via the laws of physics that they would be saved by, not by me.

How would you be absolutely certain of that?

I guess if you're an engineer, and you have time to do calculations that show definitively that the fat guy would derail the train, but jumping yourself would not, then yes. You push him. Show everyone the calculations and say he jumped voluntarily to save the other people.

Really though, I think you'd be able to find another solution short of killing the guy. That's why the fat guy scenario isn't as good. You have to make a bunch of ridiculous assumptions to get to the choice. The choice is still the same, though. 5 is a bigger number than 1.

>How would you be absolutely certain of that?
Fuck, God told you. Or maybe you built that trolley and know what it would take to stop it. Or maybe the fat guy is known for stopping trains with his sheer mass, having set several world records on national television.

We both know what's the real question asked here. I understand that these scenarios are stupid, but it's a bit immature to dismiss the fundamental question ("Is it okay to murder one person to save 5, and what makes a person morally culpable?") because the framing device ("le trolleys!!") isn't exactly up to snuff.

Why must I push the fat man? If I tell the fat man he can give his life to save those 5 people then it's his dilemma, not mine.

For some, the justification is that inaction means a lack of responsibility for the outcome.

kek

The only main difference in those 2 situations is physical contact when you make an action to sacrifice 1 person to save 5. Am i wrong? Does it makes a difference in the end? Does it have to do with modern world industrialisation and shit like this?

But you're the one chosing to put those laws of physics into action.

5 people are locked in an airtight room. They're almost out of air and suffocating. The locking mechanism on the door is set not to open as long as the heart of the fat guy is beating. You are in a room with the fat guy, and you have a loaded gun. Do you shoot him?

The answer is yes. You shoot him. Let him say prayers or whatever he wants to do to make his peace, but you shoot him. Letting 5 people die because you were too much of a pussy to shoot one person is cowardice.

I don't see the need to justify it, if I preferred the one person to the 5 for any reason I'd let it ride whether that's the "correct" conclusion or not.

>United
We are united, just because we weren't in the past doesn't mean we aren't now
>States
Alright, this is true, but it doesn't really matter, especially considering that our national capital isn't even considered to be part of any state
>America
Everywhere an American sets foot becomes American by proxy, now get out of my fucking country

Except you're ignoring the possible legal issues of pulling the lever and thus killing at least one person. I'm not touching that fucking lever because I don't want to stand trial for murder.

Being edgy ironically is still being edgy m8

theres only nine people on the bottom track. mean deaths is the same in both cases.

Why do you interpret "absolute moral rules" as meaning only "you shall not take actions which cause a death" rather than "you shall take actions to minimize harm"?

In this situation I'd still say push the fat man. Five lives are worth more than one.

But it doesn't. Is a firefighter who refuses to put out a burning house not responsible for the house burning down?

There is no mention of a legal system in the problem, thus for the purposes of the problem it doesn't exist. Especially since legal systems are supposed to be based on moral principles, using the legal system to make moral decisions is circular reasoning.

Justify tying up people in imminent danger of being hit by a train.

>I didn't, it's just hypothetical.

Exactly. Morality isn't determined by the hypothetical. In an actual situation like this, the one who created this situation would be culpable for the deaths of any of the persons tied down.

If this is real life, I do nothing. For purely practical reasons if I pull the lever i'm a murderer by law and if I don't i'm not.

Morally is a bit more difficult.
This exercise really reveals the importance of decision making and incomplete information.

First of all, what is a correct moral decision?

A correct moral decision is participating in an action that logically is more likely to produce a result that either produces more good or less bad in the world, than another action logically would.

Now what good and bad is is a whole other discussion, but lets assume for brevity's sake you have a "normal" good/bad compass.

If you are behaving logically and you make a decision and an unseen variable changed the outcome to something worse than what was logically to be expected with the information you had, are you making a morally reprehensible decision?

No of course not, you had incomplete information and behaved logically with the cards you were given. You are not omnipotent, thus you do not have the perfect information to decide the true best answer to everything.

Now, in this scenario, we must assume that I am the man at the lever, we must assume that I know for sure the trolly will kill whomever it runs over, we must assume I know none of these people and I have no bias of age, race, religious orientation, IQ, or sex (or I am unable to determine any of this). We must assume I know exactly what the lever will do and the implications of me pushing the lever, but I do not know the implications of letting the one man live VS letting the five men live.

1/?

Now we must factor in time, if I have 10 seconds to decide, am I making a morally reprehensible decision? No of course not, I would decide whichever out of impulse and without the luxury of logic. For this to be an actual moral debate one must assume I have as much time in the situation as I have to reflect on it here.

In this situation because you have this amount of knowledge you have two actions to choose from, pull the lever and kill one person or leave the lever alone and kill five.

If you have however long you need to behave logically, and have enough information to logically conclude that lever push = 1 death, nothing = 5 death , then you become morally responsible for a decision.

Now this situation must come to pass, you are not the person who tied these people up, you are not the trolly driver, you are a variable with a very specific purpose and specific information.

With this exact amount of information, the logical decision is 1 is less dead than 5, and the lever push is the less bad choice.

Are you committing a morally reprehensible act by pushing the lever? No, of course not, you behaved logically with the information given, and made the decision that will logically produce the less bad in the world. There is nothing else that can be done, and the real blame is to be put on the person who put them there in the first place.

2/?

>There is a man with 5 organs that can save 5 separate lives. He is healthy and conscious, but removing the organs kills him. Do you kill him, against his will, for the organs to save the 5, or do you do nothing?

This is a real awful case of false equivalence.

In reality, I do not harvest the organs, because it is murder to do so, and not to not.

Reality is the same answer, but a trickier solution.

As the man in this position I must assume I am a doctor, capable of harvesting the organs, and replacing them in the other patients. if not there would be no reason for the harvesting to be an option.

As a doctor my function to the community is to provide a service, that is to try my absolute best to provide proper medical care to every person that walks through my door.

This scenario assumes I know for sure the 5 will die and the 1 will live, and the harvesting will kill the 1 and definitely save the 5.

If I harvested the organs, I would break the trust that I have between every patient and myself, and the entire community to the ethics of doctoring. I would cease to be performing the service which I am required for, like a gamemaster who rigs the game for a player unknown to the others. I have no right to perform this breach of trust

At the trolley, I am not a professional lever puller with an obligation between myself and the community to allow the train to pass over the 5, I am an outsider with a very small function, kill 1 or kill 5. Very large difference with quite different variables to consider for a logical moral decision.

If I break the trust between myself and the community, and thus the nature of medical care and the individual, I am creating a world with more chaos than if the 5 die peacefully, as they would have had there not been a suitable donor.

4/5

>fat man

Also a case of false equivalence, in the fat man scenario, I would be the mastermind behind his death, he is not tied to any traintracks by the mysterious other and I am putting him into the equation. In the original problem the one man is already in the equation. That slight difference is enough to change the answer

5/5 sorry for the long wall of text, feel free to argue

The only moral option here is to simply walk away from the lever in the untouched condition you found it in.

You chose to allow the five to die, I hope you understand that

No one really believes in treating lives as statistics. If they did they would donate all their money and possessions to help save others' lives and then kill themselves to let their organs be transplanted. Murder is wrong, regardless of how many people die. Each person has a unique self and no one can judge the value of another person's life. It doesn't matter which track I choose because I have already lost. There is no right choice. Utilitarianism fails because it assumes equality, but things that I cannot assign value to can't be held equal to each other. A moral choice must be made according to one's own will, because it is the only way to know morality in a world where perfect choices do not exist. Using an external morality to choose implies doubt in oneself, and those who doubt themselves to the extent of ignoring their will have no business making moral choices. I chose not to pull the lever because playing along with whoever arranged this event is against my will, and though they can force murder upon me, they cannot force guilt upon me. I will feel upset at the deaths that result but I will not feel remorse for my action. Feeling awful due to the result indicates something is wrong with the event, while feeling remorse due to my action indicates something is wrong with me and I would not be following my self's will.

Congratulations, you killed 4 more people than you would have had you pulled the lever

Hope your self righteous act of "not playing along" really felt good.

Allowing something to happen is not the same as causing it.
I can live with all the things I've "allowed" to happen via non-action. Like the Iraq war. How could I have prevented that? Killing the five people responsible.

If you have the time and the proper information, not acting is a choice that you choose and the consequences are a result of your actions.

You have enough information to logically make a choice, the moral decision now becomes yours (unlike the iraq war, which you couldn't have known)

>see little girl drowning in a river
>do nothing
>feel morally clean

>consequences are a result of your actions.
Causality is not moral culpability
That's the thing utilitarians fail to realize
If I leave my spouse and they kill themselves because of it, even if I know that will happen, I am not responsible for the actions of other parties.

No I feel terrible about murdering five people. I wasn't acting self righteous, I was clearly choosing to kill five people simply to avoid an emotional consequence to myself. My choice was justified to me, but I already said there was no right choice. If other people chose to murder one person and spare the five, then I support them as long as they do it according to their will, because I recognize that they trust their will above others' wills.

>4 more people
But how am I to weigh their lives against the survivor? Aren't all lives priceless? My choice must be based on myself because I can only really know my own judgements. I cannot determine whose life is better than another's but I can determine what's best for me. I have no reason to trust someone else's judgement because they don't know my will.

If you don't report it or take precautions as a rational being YOU are partially responsible for her death.

>let the little girl drown
>let the blind man walk off that cliff
>don't feed the starving dog

I could go on

Those are all examples that provide no cost to myself.

Suppose I cannot swim? Am I obligated to attempt swimming then? I could call authorities, but they wouldn't arrive in time

>my fee fees determine what is right or wrong
>there is no such thing as less wrong between two wrongs
>1 = 5

This is dangerous thinking user

If costs your life than you make the choice to spare yourself, which is perfectly logical.

The 1 vs 5 argument does not equate to this in any way.