Not only is no state deducible from the premises, no state is consistent with the premises. — Michael

But no state being consistent with the premises doesn’t create a contradiction. At two minutes, the lamp becomes a duck and flies away. That doesn’t contradict the premises, because the premises never touch the lamp at two minutes. Two minute lamp is utterly a new whole scenario, needing new premises to start being discussed at all.

The state of affairs does not exist yet, however. You can always say, "How can you prevent a state of affairs that is not existent! That situation has not come about yet.. In fact, we don't even KNOW which person might be harmed by the situation, but we know that in all likelihood, a person WILL be harmed, if YOU (the person who is doing the action) does X". — schopenhauer1

This is different than the theoretical potential person that is discussed pre-procreation. In the above scenario, not knowing the identity of the particular person who will be put in harms way doesn’t mean the present existing state of affairs does not include already existing people who are actually putting people in harms way and actually going to be harmed.

The above is just not helpful here.

Leontiskos methodically demonstrates that antinatalism turns on the premise that, if there is any human suffering, there is enough suffering to justify ending the human race.

When thinking ahead for the unborn-yet-to-be-procreated persons, the potential ones antinatalism is trying be ethical toward, couldn’t we just as easily instead think of those unborn persons and make the rule “one cannot deprive someone of happiness without their consent.”

Is there no happiness in the world?

If that is our new rule, it becomes ethical to ask everyone to procreate as much as possible. Which would also be absurd as it would tend to deprive everyone of happiness if everyone was cranking out and trying to manage babies all of the time.

This highlights something else. There is not really any duty one way or the other to non-existing potential people. Antinatalism is good for potential people who will by design never exist. Ethics arises between two existing, actualized people. We can act today thinking of its impact on future people, but until those future people are actual, our present actions can’t be seen as ethical, or not ethical. The ethics of the actions only arises where the people arise, actually.

Also highlighted and not addressed in antinatalism, the world isn’t just suffering, or even enough suffering to contemplate a need to end all human beings. It’s just not compelling.

We don’t need to solve the problem of any suffering. We will want to solve the problem of the individual actual person who is actually suffering greatly. But because of that person’s existence, and because other people experience happiness at times, we don’t need to end all people.

Your argument is something like this:
"If there are no humans, the ethic cannot be followed". — schopenhauer1

No. My argument is if there are no humans around there are no ethics around. Your argument is if the ethics is antinatalism, there would be no humans around. You just just don’t see the absurdity of keeping the ethics in place without the humans to place it there.

Why must there be humans there to uphold it in place? — schopenhauer1

Because as you said “Ethics is present because humans are around.”

Not only is no answer to the second question deducible from the premises (unlike the answer to the first question), no answer consistent with the premises is possible. — Michael

That’s what I was saying about the lamp a couple weeks ago and you were disagreeing with me and telling me how time works and how lamps work.

If we are using a limit within which there is an infinitely decreasing time interval, or infinitely decreasing distance interval, then, regarding a question about some state of time or some state of position at the limit, “no answer to the question is deducible from the premises.”

That’s it. No one can give a crap about the lamp or time or lights on or or off at 2 minutes, at 7 minutes, because it is nowhere in the universe of the premises. You don’t even need to fix the limit at precisely 2 minutes. It can be slightly before two minutes and the premises will still not admit of the existence of that limit.

Any discussion of the bottom of an infinite staircase, of the state of the lamp at two minutes, or whether Achilles can beat the tortoise, cannot be deduced from the premises.

It’s like we are approaching agreement, but you are quibbling about half of what I say, and then we approach agreement again and you quibble about half again.

Or you are very simply not explaining yourself.

You clearly understand the facts - time in minutes and seconds, halving fractional functions, the difference between on and off. You do understand infinity.

But you seem to disagree with how these facts must clearly relate to one another in order to make some point about “completing super tasks” and “contradiction”.

If you are saying the lamp must be on or off at two minutes because that’s how time works, and that’s how lamps work, then you are not recognizing that “no answer to the question is deducible from the premises.”

You are assuming something that you are not stating, not stating something clearly, not defining supertasks, or wrong about one or more of these things if you think the lamp has to be on or off at 2 minutes because that’s how lamps work.

And because lamps are either on or off at all times, but you can’t deduce the state from the premises, we don’t have a contradiction. The premises of switching a lamp on and off at ever decreasing intervals of time simply do not speak to the state the lamp will be at when two minutes or more elapse. It just means that from your infinite fractional function “no answer to the question is deducible from the premises.”

As a side note, you’ve proven that reasoning with you about how infinity works is a supertask.

Therefore, Thomson's lamp proves that all supertasks are impossible. — Michael

Now this conversation can resume towards its ever ever-approaching, but never accomplished, conclusion.

You didn’t really address this:

“The fact that the ethics, summarized as anti-natalism, [only] arises in the human race means the human race must exist for the rule to not inflict suffering to exist, AND the human race should NOT exist because none of our consent to suffering could be obtained, [must both be true and ethical, is absurd.]
— Fire Ologist”

The two sides of the “AND” above defeat each other. So we must exist in order to not exist, by enacting a rule that must not exist unless I exist. This is impossible to live by. I am making a rule that says I should not be making rules.

Why should it matter if the ethical rule disappears though? — schopenhauer1

Because it undermines its enactment in the first place when it results in no ethical beings.

If humans disappear because all humans follow the rule, and with humans the rule disappears, then such humans would be being ethical for sake of a world without ethics.

Maybe it is because of my own limitations that I am suffering to make my point and why I can’t logically show why antinatalist ethics is absurd, but that is because this really boils down to the amount and depth of suffering in the world. If we all thought life was only suffering, and unfulfillable, longing desire, without any satiation or anything else, we would be inventing ethical rules to justify not only antinatalism, but mass suicide, after wars to enforce the ethical rule once and for all (if we weren’t too incapacitated by suffering to act at all).

But life is not only suffering. We generally don’t think that. At least most of us. Often.

And some suffering is good (like right now I’m starving and soon I will be eating). “Hunger is the best sauce. The poor always eat well.” - Sancho Panza, Don Quixote.

It boils down to whether it is absolute that inflicting suffering without consent is always and only wrong. Life is not only the suffering of being wronged, it is also forgiveness. You really can suffer and move away from suffering. There really are both. I will be done eating today. You can give consent after the fact, after you’ve suffered without consent and say “oh well, life goes on.” Because there is not only suffering.

And it is worth some suffering to force a new life to be hungry once in a while, to work hard once in a while, to struggle and fail, in order to also have bread and achieve success, or just sit down and relax.

Most real suffering is self-inflicted. We break our own rules all of the time, and shoot ourselves in the foot, just so we can say “see, life is only suffering” to ourselves, regardless of those around us.

But some of us can sometimes just live life, accepting the suffering, forgiving the inflicters, and see that inflicting this life on another without consent is like giving them a gift, an unexpected, un-consented gift.

I just disagree it is moral or ethical that we should only focus on the suffering when deciding what world is better for any other people, such as any future generation. We need to see what is good in life just as well before we make out ethics and enact it.

Antinatalism upholds ethics high above the life and suffering of the human beings it is designed to promote, and this is absurd to me. If there is to be some grandiose place for any such high and mighty ethical laws, such as “thou shalt not inflict suffering without consent,” then there must be humans there to uphold it in that place. Ending humans ends any good ethical laws protect.

Following our disappearing ethical laws isn’t the only good that is done in the world; life has its own goods just as well.

We are not living for ethics. Ethics is present because humans are around. — schopenhauer1

Being human (or maybe any being with senses) entails suffering.

Human beings are inherently ethical beings - the beings whereby ethics exist in the universe.

And in order for human beings to act according to this ethics that they are, one thing they cannot do is inflict suffering without consent.

Since we cannot get consent from the unborn, and being born human entails suffering, we should be, we ought to be, anti-natalist. As a result of us currently living, suffering, ethical beings acting as ethical anti-natalists, there will be no more humans, but also no more human suffering inflicted unethically, without consent.

Am I with you so far?

However, with no more humans, there will be no more ethics either. As you said “ethics is present because humans are present.” So humans not present (unless some other beings are ethical) means ethics is not present. With anti-natalism, we not only avoid inflicting suffering without consent, we void the ethics that told us such inflictions are wrong.

So the anti-natalist is saying, in order to abide by the ethical rule now, we must create the conditions where this ethical rule will no longer exist, since humans are the presence of ethics and no more humans will be present. The anti-natalist is saying we should eliminate the existence of the ethical rule for the sake of following the ethical rule. Just like they are saying we should eliminate the possibility of human procreation (end all future humans) for the sake of abiding by an ethical rule that is only found in existing humans. The anti-natalist gets to be the last ethical man standing, and the last instance of ethical behavior anywhere in the known universe.

The anti-natalist must admit we’ve evolved to a point where we humans inherently posit “should” and “ought” only to take this power and say “I should not have evolved at all because my consent to suffer was not obtained. And since ethics comes to be only through me, a human, ethics ought not to have evolved in the universe either. But then if ethics didn’t exist until I did, how could it have been unethical for me to be born?”

The fact that the ethics summarized as anti-natalism arises in the human race means the human race must exist for the rule to not inflict suffering to exist, AND the human race should NOT exist because none of our consent to suffering could be obtained.

(It’s not quite a paradox because it holds “is” together with “ought not”, as opposed to paradoxically joining “is” to “is not” or “ought” to “ought not”, but it is certainly absurd.)

Anti-natalism is either a self-defeating way of saying, because of human suffering, it would have been better if humans never existed. Or it is simply passing judgment on God, saying God, a being whose mere existence entails ethics (like humans) was wrong to create humans and inflict suffering on them without their consent.

Absurd or Satanic. Better to rule without humans or their ethics in hell, than to consent posthumously to suffering in heaven.

I don’t disagree with any of your post (which I quote from below.). Good stuff.

Which means I also agree with this:

Thanks unenlightened @Wayfarer

Your answers are very helpful. I need to spend some more — Heracloitus

I also see the following:

specific thoughts arise for a particular individual (and are unique to that conscious individual) indicate the ownership of thoughts — Heracloitus

Ownership of thoughts. My own thoughts. My. Own. So a self buried still in there somewhere, and/or emerges. I see that, but it needs to be developed.

So I agree with this:

But - this is the crucial point, not generally acknowledged in my view - in none of this is agency denied. — Wayfarer

Which I see agrees with this:

I don't think Buddhism denies these facts of individuality. — unenlightened

So we have:

when you speak of consciousness, it seems to me that you are not speaking of any of these things, but rather these are all things that one might be conscious of.

It is as if all the world is a great play that consciousness watches - the life of the hero, told from his point of view. But the performer is always hidden under costume and makeup, and the audience is silent and passive sitting in darkness. — unenlightened

And so we now have to reconcile ”the performer is always hidden” with “specific thoughts for a particular individual” (Heracloitus) and “agency” (Wayfarer) and “facts of individuality” (Unenlightened).

The following, which I agree with, speaks about speaking and naming and how these are not the same as what is spoken of or named, particularly when speaking of the self or Tao.

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. — T Clark

When speaking of or naming the self, we are both the speaking self and the one spoken about. The one spoken about can be recognized as an illusion. But by speaking, a self-certified speaker remains.

To bring this all together, the self is elusive, even to itself; if this is not admitted, the self can become illusion, but if this is admitted, the admitting agent, the facts of individuality, the particular thoughts that show this elusiveness, can be known, as an actual self.

The self is the thing that does not know the self. There is no need to consider mind/body, signifying/ signified, or any distinction to see where the self becomes one of its things and its own becoming at the self-same time.

The self is its own answer when it is questioning itself, and the self is lost the minute it takes up only that answer without the questioning.

Curious if you agree with the thrust here but for different reasons.

If the pilot diverts the plane to kill less people, then they have intentionally sacrificed those people for the sake of other people; just like how a person who pulls the lever intentionally sacrifices the one to save the five. Am I missing something? — Bob Ross

Although I wouldn’t pull the lever, I don’t think we precisely agree on the reasons. So you are not missing something (we do disagree a bit).

I see what you are saying, about the primacy of moral agency, that the moral law (that one can never intentionally kill innocent human life) must be acted upon, so that in any circumstance, if one would be forced to intentionally sacrifice an innocent life (pull the lever), one cannot act. One cannot be an agent of dead innocent lives and have acted morally.

And I do see that the plane example can be seen as the same as the trolley. But it can be different.

I agree that there are moral laws we cannot break and be justified as moral, or good. Not killing innocent people is one of them.

And I would not pull the lever on the trolley example. But the plane and trolley can be viewed differently from each other and used to show why I would land the plane intentionally where there were less people.

You said:

If the plane is out of fuel, and it is not the pilot’s fault — Bob Ross

In the trolley example, the situation is thrust upon me from nowhere and I am shown how to direct the trolley - left or right. I am sitting there, and then I have to make a decision with innocent lives about to be killed.

In the plane example, I am the pilot. There is no scenario where the pilot has not caused the outcome at least in part; the pilot has already pulled the lever so to speak and has implicated himself in the innocent death.

If I was the pilot, even unintentionally running out of fuel and blown by the wind over a festival, I have already intentionally flown the plane into that scenario. I have flown the plane. I have created this danger. And if I know the plane is going down, I already have to take responsibility for innocent death, so I have killed innocent people. It’s done for me the minute I see my plane is going down. I know this before the plane lands because I am the pilot, the intentions and some of the reasons the plane is in the air at all.

So now, being responsible for innocent death, I have a second choice to make; I can choose to also be responsible for killing as few people as possible. This is why I intentionally land the plane in a less populated area.

It’s not the principal of double effect that permits me to land where there are fewer people. (I don’t really like the principal either.). It’s because the choice is now more or less equally innocent people I will kill, it’s not whether or not I can kill an innocent person, because I know I’ve already done that.

In the trolley example, I didn’t start the trolley. I didn’t put it on those tracks. I am being asked to go from sitting there taking a trolley ride to implicating myself in the trolley ride of death. Either five or one die depending on whether I stay seated or pull the lever. No, I will not do either, because it is wrong to kill any innocent life.

To ask me to treat the trolley ride where drivers disappear, where people are tied to tracks, where I learn what levers do on trolleys - and to then be the cause of five or one innocent deaths? No. No one can be expected to decide which track to take in that circumstance. Who is telling me about the people and the lever? As a moral agent, provided the option to let five tied to trolley tracks die or pull the lever, it would be irresponsible (immoral) of me to just join the scenario. Irresponsible because people are now asking me to participate in the killing of innocent life which is always wrong. . If there is a voice telling me about the tracks and the lever and the people, but not telling me what to do with the tracks and the people and the lever, nothing makes sense and I should not act.

The same could be the case for the plane, say if the pilot dies when the plane runs out of fuel and you, a passenger, are told how to land a plane. Where all things are equal prior to the moment where you are asked to guide the plane or the trolley - the question what would you do then is equal too. You can see the trolley as the same as the plane - but this is how I think we differ. If there is nothing to consider prior to that moment, then you can only be implicated in its outcome if you participate - if you take the yoke of the plane or stand up and pull the lever. Once you know in advance (as when you are told on the trolley that five or one will die, or when your engine shuts off over a festival), it is then a matter of whether you are implicated in that certain outcome. In the trolley example, you can avoid participating in the possible outcomes, and can remain separate from any outcome. It’s not because pulling the lever is you killing one or sitting still is something else killing five. It’s because something else that you are not a participant of is killing any of them. But if you are the pilot (or a trolley driver who knows where he is going and what pulleys to pull to get there), you have to take some responsibility for the outcome already, for the fact that any of them will die, so the choice that is now thrust upon you is how many innocent deaths will you be responsible for, and how many innocent lives can you spare.

Strong Solipsism

We only ever experience Sensory Data. We cannot experience anything that is not Sensory Data. — Treatid

How can we call it “sensory” then? It’s unsourced data that we call “sensory, but not by any causal connection to anything in particular).

Sense incorporates a sense and a separate object being sensed. Granted the experience of sensation (the conscious representation) may be particular and unique to the sense (the eyeball attached to a brain) and distinct from any object being sensed, but for strong solipsism to be coherent, we have to ignore the eyeball and the light that hits it, in which case why call this sensation? We are all just somehow fabricating everything we experience from some function of ourselves. Like a Berkleyan idealist.

Weak solipsism it seems to me is the observation that our senses color and manipulate the separately existing world as it might be in itself, so we are cut off in a solipsistic experience, but this experience still provides some data that relies on the separately existing world exists (ie, there is a separate thing being sensed).

There is no logical way around this that I have discovered (have to revisit Searle).

You may be right: our genetic predisposition to insanity may prove stringer than our reasoning and need to belong, in which case we will destroy ourselves utterly. But I'm not convinced that it's inevitable. — Vera Mont

The greatest hope I see to conquer our insanity is the fact that there was a man like Jesus, and he didn’t own anything, so maybe you are right.

No humanity, no need for antinatalism or any other normative ethical principle. — schopenhauer1

But if the reason to promote antinatalism now while there is humanity is that It is the ethical thing, and its goal is no humans, then “No humanity, no need for antinatalism or any other normative ethical principle.”

Meaning, what is the point of being ethical towards beings that aren’t born yet, if ethics itself is not to be? Why would we humans uphold any ethics above upholding the procreation of more humans, if upholding that ethics means that humans and ethics both equally should no longer be?

Antinatalism is just as much an anti-ethicalism.

life is more than the avoidance of suffering — Leontiskos

Says it all for me on this question.

Anti-natalism doesn’t save anyone in particular from suffering. We are not doing anyone any good by not procreating. There has to be a someone to prevent someone from suffering. Life is ontologically prior as Leontiskos said.

Ownership isn’t the problem.

Getting rid of owning things to make the world better is like getting rid of things to make the world better.

We need food. Sometimes one person has it and another doesn’t. Ownership isn’t the problem. People’s fears, greed, desire for power over others and their own future, gluttony, etc - those are the same problems in any world, at any time, whether sifting through the rubble, or through search results on Amazon.

I’d say fate is the future looking portion of determinism, where determinism includes all past causes, present states of affairs and controls all future outcomes. Fate ignores the reasons why and the causes, or can ignore them, and just points to what will be, what has to be done in the future.

If science one day identifies all of the causes that account for every current state of affairs, including what we are thinking and what we think we are choosing, science would have confirmed we live in a deterministic world. If, based on that knowledge, science could identify and predict all future motions and states of affairs, science could identify each person’s fate.

Fate is more of a romantic way of speaking of the determined future.

And if all of them were innocent, one should not take hand in killing innocent life by pulling the lever so one would have to let the five die. Is that your take?

I think we can blame people for obvious negligence; so if you are stipulating that a person was informed clearly that they should not be on the tracks, that they have the freedom to easily move off of the tracks, they refuse with no good reason to be on the tracks, and the other five people (on the other tracks) do not have the freedom to move nor are they being negligent; then, yes, I would pull the lever because I am no longer killing an innocent person. — Bob Ross

I appreciate that answer.

In this case, would you have a duty to save more lives, and that’s why you would pull the lever, or does it matter that the people tied to the tracks are innocent?

As a parallel to the airplane scenario, folks who pull the lever tend to see themselves as being in a state of necessity, similar to the pilot. — Leontiskos

So, now factoring in intent, if one refuses to pull the lever because one will never willingly kill an innocent person, they are acting morally; and if one pulls the lever because they see the necessity of reducing death, they are acting morally.

Correct?

So the good pilot will land in the area with fewest people to minimize injury and death. — Leontiskos

Isn’t there an argument that by pulling the lever you are landing the trolley in the area with the fewest people?

Under a general duty to cause as few deaths as possible in the event (one) cannot avoid causing deaths”?

The exigent circumstances remove all intent to kill anyone from the actions taken by the person on the trolley or the pilot.

I agree there is an absolute law that killing an innocent person is never permissible.

The reason killing an innocent person is wrong is because of the unique value of each person.

New hypo: a whole bunch of innocent people are dying, dropping like lemmings off of a cliff. You can’t save them all but you are given a choice and tools (big net and a helicopter) that can save one or save five of them. All will surely die without you, it’s just a choice of whether you take the bigger net and helicopter to save five, or the little one.

Is there a duty to take the bigger net because it is wrong to kill an innocent person? No. You aren’t the cause of any of the deaths so you are not culpable for any who are not saved.

I think the same reasoning may apply in the inverse with the trolley. Whether you pull or do not pull the lever, you aren’t responsible for any of the deaths. You are not responsible for the death of the person alone on the tracks if what you were doing was trying save as many lives as possible to address a situation that was otherwise beyond your control.

That also means that you wouldn’t be responsible for not pulling the lever either - just choosing the smaller net during a time of crisis.

We all realize that people have thought society would collapse into fighting factions and utter destruction for most of human history. And to combat those fears we’ve formed factions and launched wars for most of human history. With some factions turning to religion and others turning against it for most of human history.

Tribalism has always been the norm.

In order to unite the world, we have to admit that tribes are good, and respect each other despite differences we don’t understand.

When it comes to the urge to herd into narrow tribes, we are still basically scared monkeys with iPhones and air fryers.

because both people that I would be lying to have forfeited their "right" — Bob Ross

Could you say the person standing on the track has forfeited his life? I mean, we all know to stay off the trolley tracks. Does that person have any duty to the trolley driver to stay off the tracks and avoid being killed?

I am advocating that it is wrong to kill innocent people — Bob Ross

Couldn’t you say the person on the tracks who wasn’t tied down, has forfeited his innocence?

I’m a huge proponent of virtue ethics. I don’t think anyone could ethically participate in the trolley problem because it wreaks of killers and to kill five or one people because they would then be participating in an immoral scenario.

But if we were stuck on that train and knew there was no trick, no murderer behind the scenario, this was just a horrible accident about to happen, then are you killing anyone or is the trolley killing the people?

A plane is going to crash in a city. The only way to reduce the destruction and death is to quick land on that baseball field with kids playing. It’s either two teams and some fans die, or probably fifty or one hundred or more people everywhere else. But to land in the field one has to commit five intentional moves and aim the nose of the plane at the pitcher and land quickly before anyone can run. Since the pilot has to essentially pull the lever to land on the baseball field, is he wrong because it is wrong to intentionally kill innocent people? Should he just chug past and see what happens, or does he have any duty now thrust in his lap to kill as few people as he can?

Its about killing innocents to save more people. If just sticking to the initial facts, I feel like the only reason to not make a choice is that you object to the idea of not killing innocent people, and that is indistinguishable from having msde a choice - to not pull the lever. — Apustimelogist

That sums it up. It highlights the distinctions between people dying, and people killing people.

But it leaves no room for a distinction between people killing people, and murder.

It asks us to adjudge ethics between people dying, and people killing people, where I think ethics comes into play where killing is distinguished from murder.

I read the paper. Liked it. Agree with it. Think I am speaking in line with much of it.

Much better example of the situation with the tyrant killing five unless you kill one. Avoids the whole ridiculous omission versus commission discussion too. Brings in intent, agency, and duty in much more express and clear way than the stupid trolley.

But I guess you are above all of this, with your intellect surpassing my caricature of an honest conversation. Fairly unjust way to treat someone don’t you think?

It's the intellectual part of the trolley problem. — Leontiskos

Can you lay out the reason it is ethical right to pull the lever, or not pull the lever?

You said you would not pull the lever because then you would be killing an innocent person, and killing an innocent person is always wrong. Is that your position?

Do I need to know anything more to capture your assessment of how to respond riding the trolley of death?

Is it essential to this position, that the circumstances are accidental (meaning no one has rigged the trolley and the tracks to create this situation) or does it not matter whether the situation is rigged or accident, since killing innocent people is always wrong, you can’t justify ever pulling the lever?

I feel like you just pulled a lever on me. Honest conversation over here.

What’s wrong with the doctrine of double effect? But I don’t really know what that is.

“What was your intention?”

“I thought if I pulled the lever I would be preventing a horrible accident that killed five people.”

“Did you know you would be killing one person?”

“Well, yes.”

“So you intentionally killed one person?”

“No I intentionally steered the trolley away from five people - should I have done something else?”

“Yes, you murderer, you should have realized that by sitting still you would not have been called before we moral adjudicators for sentencing your unethical, immoral heart.”

Bring in the next participant.

“What was your intention?”

“I hate you! And all society. I contemplated pulling the lever to feel the power of killing as I killed, but quickly realized I could kill more people if I sat still - so I intentionally sat their on the seat’s edge so that I could know I was the reason four more than just one would spill blood.”

“Ok, as long as you didn’t touch the lever. Good man.”

You are claiming that by refusing to pull the lever Bob has killed five people, and this is a controversial claim on your part. — Leontiskos

No I’m not!

If we are supposed to think that no one set this up, that it is just one of life’s predicaments that we get to decide, then we are further from a moral dilemma. No one can be charged with or accuse themselves of murder of killing an innocent person. No one could be faulted for action or inaction. Pulling the lever is both killing an innocent person and saving 5 innocent people. Sitting still is both killing five people and saving one. Those are just the facts. Why would anyone hold whatever happens against the random person who made a choice quickly to do anything there? Their involvement was part of the accident! Pulling the lever is saving 5 people. Sitting still is saving one person. Or both of these are a rash decision exigent circumstances. If you can assume the whole thing is just an accident that you are caught up in, there is no moral culpability or wrongness.

If you had the poise to think you could make this ongoing accident better and intended to make it better by pulling the lever, you are not intentionally killing one person.

Here is what Bob Ross said (and I agree):

I would never pull the lever, no matter how many people I would save by doing so. Killing an innocent person is always wrong; and one cannot commit an immoral act to avoid a morally bad outcome.
— Bob Ross — Leontiskos

Well, actually, I would not pull the lever either. Because by pulling the lever I would be demonstrating my willingness to participate in the whole scenario at all.

I take the hypo to be an attempt to force you to participate. It assumes you have to make a choice - choose five or one deaths. And under these circumstances, they are all innocent deaths.

Then, now playing along, now playing your role in this scene, you then have to choose how many innocent deaths happen. To effectuate that choice you either sit or you pull a lever.

But a third option that the hypo was trying to block is to instead say “no - I’m not making any choice, I’m not conducting any act towards your goals for my participation in it. My act of sitting here has nothing to do with which way the trolley goes because I have no duty to follow any of these instructions or participate in any way. I take no responsibility for any of these deaths - rightly so.”

That, to me, is the right moral response - to stay out of the whole bloody death trap scenario.

Failing to pull the lever could be wrong by omission, and sitting still could be an act of intentional murder. To answer that you don’t look to what the act is (sleeping in your seat or flipping lever), you look to what duties exist, what intentions exist and then what actions are taken.

You may be right on something I said and meant to say. I’m not sure I agree I was wrong.

But my simple point is, you need a duty in place before you can perpetrate a wrong by omission. It’s omission of a duty. The act is not the point. Sitting still is an act. Sitting still doesn’t tell you anything about whether that act perpetrates a wrong by omission or a wrong by commission, or anything.

The trolley problem, to me, creates a simple switch, if you switch the switch one way, five people die and the other way one person dies. The way you physically operate that switch is by sitting down or pulling a lever.

If we all have a duty to save the most lives at every opportunity to do so, then sitting still could be wrong by omission of that duty. If you switch the people on the tracks and put 5 on the lever side and 1 on the rolling side, then failing to pull the lever would be a wrong by omission as well.

the premise is almost certainly that, "Nothing which is intended can come about by omission." — Leontiskos

No it’s not almost certainly, because it’s not the premise at all. I’m saying sitting still doesn’t reveal an intention, you have to seek more facts (such as ask the person) what their intention is by sitting still.

A lifeguard sees a person drowning and does nothing and watches the person drown. That is intentional conduct. It is a wrong done by omission of a duty.

How, in a monetized, competitive, profit-driven society, where, if you don't hustle, you end up living in the street and having police clear out your encampment on a regular basis, because the sight of have-nots upsets the haves, are children supposed to learn unselfishness? — Vera Mont

The same way they would in a communal society.

You don’t think anyone can learn of unselfishness in any society?

I think this is a strawman because cleaely what is not interesting about the trolley problem is not the trolley problem on its own, its the underlying reasons that people make decisions on it. — Apustimelogist

I’m not against augmenting the facts to continue the conversation and add more layers. I’m saying that as it initially stands, the hypo has very few layers. The only ethical question posed in the basic formulation of the problem is: should you participate at all in the demand that you make the decision? My answer to that is no - you didn’t set up the scenario, and it would be irresponsible of you to take action on these facts. And I still don’t know that, if you do decide to participate and take action (and so act irresponsibly towards the overall scenario), you could make a wrong decision on who dies or a right decision on who lives. 5 versus 1 living certainly seems better but why did someone give me this choice? Why didn’t they just say “pull the lever, pull the lever!” ?

Do I trust the murderer who set up this predicament for me that pulling the lever will save five people by killing only one? I don’t know how you build that trust - maybe you can see the people coming fast, but are you supposed to know that the lever will effectuate the choice the murderer who set this up is telling you it will?

Before we can judge the passenger, we have to know they heard and understood the instructions, and that they believed them to be true. They weren’t just playing around with levers.

These aren’t incidental facts. These aren’t facts that can just be layered on top. They are essential considerations before you could analyze any moral/ethical issue for the passenger.

If you stick to the raw, initial facts first, before moving this into more layered situations and questions - what do you see as the moral issues?

I see only whether to make any choice at all as the moral question - should you trust anyone who drops this into your lap and do anything they say? Or if you do trust them, are you implicating yourself in a wider conspiracy that you would likely agree you would not intend to be a part of?

Someone may not be blameworthy in some sense that they can't help being forced into a situation where someone had to die. But does that mean there was not a better or worse decision ethically? Not necessarily. — Apustimelogist

So “not blameworthy”, but worthy of a judgment of “worse ethically.” Hmm.

You need to define (so layer into the hypo) some things to clarify that.

If you are forced to either kill one or five people, with seconds to choose, and you had no interest in killing anyone at any point, and you can’t be held blameworthy for the outcome, how is the decision you do make better or worse ethically? I would say the decision (should you decide to risk participation in this death trap) is a practical one, not an ethical one. Less death is practically speaking a better outcome. Why ethically? What is the duty on these facts?

That is why I am arguing that it is metaphysically impossible for an infinite succession of button pushes to end after two minutes. — Michael

Exactly. You don’t have infinity any more anywhere in the whole scenario if you want to talk about 2 seconds and what happens at 2 seconds or after.

What is infinite is the number of switching that would occur before two seconds. Once you are looking at second number 2, you have to ignore all of the premises and activity of the scenario. Midnight is not part of the conversation. It’s a limit that will never be reached so the state of the lamp at midnight is indeterminable because the function of the switching will never be operating at midnight.

that 'absolutely' is a nitpick you can cling to if you're determined to avoid the idea of a communist society. — Vera Mont

I don’t see it as a bit-pick. It’s a massive game changer. If there is any ownership (which I can’t see avoiding) then there is no need or possibility of imagining a world where there is no concept of ownership (which the OP asks). Further if we admit some ownership, we have to address all that would follow, such as ownership disputes, selfishness, accounting for those who share more than others, etc, etc. It becomes the same world we have today just maybe with disputes over socks and whose trash is piling up over there, instead of percentage of owner profits and whose war has to be cleaned up. (And I’m sure there are people who would go to war over socks.). But any ownership (which I see as unavoidable) refutes the possibility of true communism as an economic and political structure.

But I’ll check out Kazohinia.

And I do think that if people were more charitable, sacrificed their personal wants more for the good of others, were more compassionate and less selfish, greedy and proud, the society would look more communal and communist. I don’t resist communism. The utopian vision is a good one. I just don’t see it happening as a political or economic structure - instead it would have to be a daily, voluntary effort involving daily sacrifice for the good of others - otherwise if a communistic lifestyle had to be imposed from above, it would only be oppression and additional suffering and less equality and less access to all of the things that are supposed to be shared. Ownership will never go away. We all need to be more responsible for others using the the things we own.

What if it was about their own life and not innocent people? What if it was about tge reward of a tasty cheeseburger: " I didn't intend to kill anyone, I just wanted that cheeseburger so bad". — Apustimelogist

I think the question the hypo poses is: should the person who either pulls the lever or sits still be held responsible for anyone’s death? And the answer is no, under the existing facts. Or should the person be held responsible for anyone’s death and culpable for their murder as a co-conspitator in the whole trolley of death scenario? And the answer is, it depends on their intent and whether they can be held responsible for anyone’s death by participation in the scenario.

If we are going to start changing the hypo and adding intentions and cheeseburgers, we would have to conduct a new analysis of responsibility and intent and actions in furtherance of these.

This is the mistake of the consequentialists that makes it so appealing: they don’t understand the nature of moral responsibility, and how it relates to actions and intentions. — Bob Ross

I’m not a consequentialist.

And I agree that the trolley hypo in general doesn’t account for intention and responsibility, so it misses the mark as a real platform for a discussion of morality.

And the only time the conversation gets interesting is when people change the hypo because it barely presents an ethical issue, if you play along with it as written.

I hate building off of it to make points, but I do see it reducible to this: This trolley can’t be stopped and will kill someone in a few seconds; if you sit there it will kill five people, or if you pull that lever it will kill one person; you get to choose. Go make your choice.

Sitting there is choosing to kill five and pulling the lever is choosing to kill one.

I see people disagree with that but I only see that as people trying to give the hypo more credit than it is worth.

If you play along with the hypo, there is one choice here - five or one die.

But there is no moral responsibility taken for making either choice, because of intention and duty - which are utterly undeveloped in the hypo and why the hypo barely presents an ethical issue.

You need to know the intentions behind all of the pieces here. The moral issues lie with the person or people who rigged the whole scenario. Why isn’t a conductor who has responsibility and duties regarding the trolley making this decision? Did he leave intentionally as part of the rigged situation or was he thrown off the trolley to bring about this scenario? Why is anyone tied to trolley tracks and who did that? Does the idiot standing on the tracks have any responsibility for standing there?

The moral question for the person on the trolley having this choice thrust upon them by other people (other moral agents) is whether to participate in this at all and make a choice. I actually think it would be immoral to play along with the scene and do anything.

That goes to intention. The person on the trolley who plays along still wouldn’t be guilty of any murder. People can kill people without any intent and it’s not murder.

But if the person on the trolley said “oh, wow, I finally get to hold lives in my own hands - I’ve always wanted to kill people so I’m going to sit here and kill the most people I can.” Now, because of intent, I think he he is culpable for murdering five.

But if the person on the trolley said “I need to save the most innocent people I can” and pulled the lever he wouldn’t be culpable for murder because that was not his intent.

This hypo has no analysis of duty (responsibility taking) or intent (what the act is to the actor).

To bolster the idea of omission versus commission (this hypo not capturing the concept of omission properly) here is an example of a wrong done by omission. A lifeguard sitting on his chair sees a kid drowning. He watches and does nothing and the kid drowns. That is killing by omission because he had a duty to act and omitted his responsibility. It could even be murder depending on how additional facts about intent play out.

On the trolley, why would a duty to make this decision arise in some random person thrust into the situation? It wouldn’t. There is no duty to choose a lane for a passenger. And there is no duty when told about levers and people tied to tracks to quickly choose who dies. It’s an insane world that trolley is riding through and to see some sort of duty here we need that person to have some understanding of insane-world trolley rules like “by agreeing to ride this trolley you agree to take control of the lever (whether you pull it or leave it) as soon as everyone else on the trolley magically disappears and some number of people are on the tracks.” Without a duty, whatever action is taken cannot be called an omission of that duty.

And to say a duty to save the most lives arises in this situation is ridiculous. If you want me to picture myself in a real world situation like this, I need the real world. In the real world, the person who pulled or did not pull the lever would be interrogated for his intent before murder charges and moral judgment could be contemplated, and in the real world the person would be saying “I don’t know! I just thought I should save the most people, or I just thought I would be doing the wrong thing if I pulled the lever.” End of interrogation. The deaths are not his fault or his responsibility.

Nice, I like irony. — schopenhauer1

Then why not have kids. Life is good too.