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.

just the fact that you are making a decision for someone else — schopenhauer1

Having a child, feeding a child, etc. are as much making a decision for someone else as deciding not to have a child, or aborting a child.

If it is good to have no children because life is suffering, than life isn’t all bad since we get to make this good decision to have no children. Aren’t we brave and honest and considerate. Such wonderful compassion for the suffering of future generations - we should build ourselves some statues for thinking so compassionately and reasonably so that all future generations will remember our sacrifices. Oh wait.

We all have to be born and have to live before we can stumble upon the idea of anti-natalism. Seems self-defeating to think much of it. Trying to subvert the nature that brought us to this idea.

If life is ever good enough to allow one to ponder whether to have a child, life must be good enough for the child just the same.

If life is so bad to ponder whether to have a child, don’t have a child. But should no one be allowed to have a child? Death is still coming for all so what does it matter if you do or do not have a child? No one, not even your children (if you have any) are going to be there long enough to justify any judgment of it.

Maybe take a philosophy class. Night class. It’s a win/win opportunity. Could be cheaper than the sites Outlander found too.

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

Couldn’t you just as easily say “I would never sit still on that trolley, 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 (sitting still in the knowledge that by doing so five people will die) to avoid a morally bad outcome.”

What’s the difference? You are killing someone mo matter what you do. So if you wanted to uphold “one cannot commit an immoral act to prevent a morally bad outcome” wouldn’t you have to pull the lever? Just like you would have to sit still?

Which points to the non-agency of the choice, and therefore the a-morality of choosing to kill one or five.

I refuse to add premises until someone gets somewhere with the basic scenario.

I agree one cannot commit an immoral act to prevent an immoral outcome, because by committing an immoral act you have already facilitated an immoral outcome, avoiding nothing you intended to avoid.

But in the scenario, if you are part of the game, you are not permitted to avoid killing. So it’s no longer about the morality of killing since we all want to avoid killing anyone. You are not free to avoid killing so, if you are playing the game, you cannot be held responsible for committing an immoral act to avoid an immoral outcome. That’s not what you did. You simply choose one or five deaths. You didn’t choose death or no death. That choice was made by the trolley master and lever trainer.

The only world where freedom is possible (but not always actual) is in the mind. Aside from the mind, everything is determined. And the mind itself can be determined. And the mind’s structure is conditioned, and its behaviors determined. But the mind can ignore all, ignoring time, space, matter, and motion, and just sit itself still, free, thinking of the impossible, constructing what cannot be constructed by hands. And this mind can give its free consent to rejoin with time, space and matter, moving as it is moved once again with it, in it, determined once again by it.

It’s kind of stoic, but with an existentialist awareness.

Freedom and determinism are both there. We don’t prove it exists by causing some effect and placing our free selves between these two. We are the cause when we are the freedom. We are its existence by claiming something as a cause in the first place, or consenting to something as my effect, something I claim responsibility for.

Freedom is in the thought of freedom, born in the thinking.

But absolutely “no” ownership? Seems impossible to imagine.
— Fire Ologist
It's impossible for some people — Vera Mont

Have you known anyone who could describe a coherent picture of a society of people where there is no ownership?

I haven’t seen it on this thread for instance.

What does a community look like where there is no ownership of anything?

Does everyone have a share of everything, or no one have a share in anything?

Who is in trouble when someone forgets to take the trash out? Anyone given ownership of failed trash duty?

Two months later Michael is still stuck in the same infinite loop. — Metaphysician Undercover

I posted a bit earlier in in the thread, then noticed recently it was up to 23 plus pages so I was curious if everyone had gotten to the bottom of the staircase.

But found out we are still counting the same steps over and over again!

I think I’ll give it another two minutes then I’m done.

Possibly done for an infinite number of minutes.

At that point I might post again…apparently.

at successively halved intervals of time within two minutes — Michael

Then stop talking about at two minutes or after two minutes. That’s some other scenario.

Don’t you see that?

Two minutes or more is outside the universe of “at successively halved intervals of time within two minutes.”

The question “is the lamp on or off at or after two minutes” is talking about some other lamp.

Maybe you are really picturing a person pushing a button? Do you think you could push a button to work the premise of switching the lamp at successive half intervals? A lamp switch like this would have to be automated, and it would not need any instructions or programming at or beyond two minutes to function.

I feel like I just suggested ham and eggs again.

And that's precisely why supertasks are impossible. — Michael

And that’s precisely why the question of whether the lamp will be on or off at two minutes will never present itself.

If you want to talk about how lamps and intervals of time work in an alternate universe why are we using any premises from this universe about lamps and so on?

The three stooges were hungry and looking for ideas on what to eat. Larry says, “if we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.” Mo hits him on the head.

If we want to ponder what a lamp will be doing at two minutes time, we could just hook it up to a switch that switches every half of the interval of time prior, if we had a universe where such a switch existed.

This conversation (and not your fault) is starting to feel like a descent on a bottomless staircase.

Given that the lamp must be either on or off after two minutes — Michael

How is that? How is it on or off at or after two minutes?

It cannot be a function of a switch that operates by switching every half of the prior interval. Some other function needs to be introduced into the picture to ask about the state of the lamp at 2 minutes or beyond.

Why is it given by this switche’s function that the lamp will be anything in particular at or after 2 minutes? You are just assuming something exterior to the premise about time and lamps.

In that case, if the lamp must be on, or off, at two minutes, is that state caused by the switch?

So what are we disagreeing about?

Whether this is paradox, or whether there is an answer to question 3?

I don’t think there is an answer to question 3. Because the switch is not designed to ever present the question.

Is the lamp on or off after 2 minutes?

In all three scenarios the switch is "designed to function within two minutes." — Michael

Not if you want to answer the question in scenario three. Or more precisely, not designed to function at or after two minutes.

If you are talking about these terms in a moral sense, I think they need to be explained in more detail. When is one morally culpable? Negligence implies a failure to do a duty - what duty are we talking about here, and when can one be said to be morally negligent? — Tzeentch

Exactly the point I am trying to make. The moral questions in the trolley problem are more about the trolley builder, the trolley driver who abandoned his post, the person who rigged the whole scene, the story of the five guys tied to the tracks, the circumstances that thrust someone to make this awful choice - not the person who picks one or five deaths. In the person who picks the one or five deaths, I think the moral question is, should he or she do anything at all - is it right for them to trust someone teaching them about levers in the moments before certain death around the corner?

This isn’t about whether it is better to let one person die or let five people die, or put another way, to kill one person or kill five - that’s easy. And none of that can be murder under these circumstances, and the single lever puller or ass sitter should not be the first held accountable in this scenario. They might be last to be held accountable. Where are the brakes anyway? It’s the big trolley corporation’s fault! This is basically a James Bond villain scenario. It’s all practical considerations here. The ethics is not on the table.

My take is the most ethical thing to do would be to refuse to participate. You can call that choosing to kill five, but that’s not what I said. That is choosing to leave the responsibility for creating this scenario where it lies before you were told about the lever.

There is no duty here.

The same is true if the lamp switches just the once — Michael

No, that’s a different equation. That switch is more easily predicted. The switch on Thompson’s lamp requires some serious calculation to determine its state after say one minute fifty-nine seconds. It can be calculated though. But it can’t be calculated at 2 minutes time, because it was designed to function within two minutes. Once two minutes lapse, the switch’s function has no relationship to whatever would be the state of affairs (which I’m telling you would likely be a fire, so in a sense, I’m guessing the lamp would be on).

So we resolve the paradox by accepting the metaphysical impossibility of supertasks. — Michael

I’d say we never had a paradox. There is no paradox at 2 minutes, because by the time we get to 2 minutes, the initial switch and algorithm it functioned by are no longer in play, unable to be held at odds with whatever might be the case at 2 minutes.

That's how the world works. — Michael

Haha! Ok, so the switch clicks at 1 minute, then it clicks again at 30 seconds more, then it clicks again at 15 seconds more, then again at 7.5 seconds, etc.

What will the switch and light be doing at 2 minutes?

Nothing in relation to the switch as described above. Something beyond the parameters the initial scenario set in motion.

It may be on. It may be off. It will probably be broken or melted. But in relation to the switch described above those possible outcomes have no bearing because the switch was designed to serve a function before two minutes time can elapse.

If the light clicks on at two minutes, or off, either the switch malfunctioned, or it can do more then switch itself at half intervals of the prior lapsed time.

“When the clock shows 12:02 I turn around. Is the lamp on or off?”

Whichever it is, it wouldn’t be a function of a switch that operates by waiting half the time to switch and then half of that time to switch again, and then half of the half, etc, because such a switch would have no direction or programming to follow at two minutes, because it is designed to operate before two minutes could pass.

It is not just the case that whether the lamp is on or off after two minutes — Michael

I don’t understand. How do you ever arrive at the two minute mark?
1 minute, half a minute later, quarter minute later than that, etc., infinitely…you never arrive at the two minute mark.

Like the endless bottomless staircase that for some reason had a bottom with a dead guy.

??? Two minutes and a bottom step subvert the issue and banish infinity from the math of it.

These are manufactured conundrums mixing what is an actual occurrence (walking down a step, turning a light on or off) with what is not an actual occurrence but a conceptual/mathematical idea that has no weight or influence on walking or flicking light switches.

There no paradox because the lamp can’t be on or off. There is just an endless motion (invented in a mind that can invent things and objects that can’t actually be built and tested).

If you are going to ponder whether the light is actually, physically on, you have to ponder whether a switch can be switched as rapidly as you would have to switch it as you approached two minutes. The light might be off because you broke the switch. I know, to a mathematical/logical student I am missing the point, but then, if we can assume functioning switches to lay out the mathematical intrigue, why can’t we assume the mathematical intrigue of never reaching two minutes and therefore never able to determine an on/off state at the two minute mark? And conclude that such a scenario builds a lamp that will endlessly turn on and off at ever increasing speeds with no limit or single state thereby enlightening or darkening said limit.

As you approached 2 minutes with really small fractions (but never got there if you are being consistent), would the speed between switching the light on and off eventually approach and then exceed the speed of light? (That’s one solid switch!). So how would we be able to tell whether the light we saw was the light from the latest switching motion or light from a few switches ago? We’d need a new measure besides our eyes, and could not watch the experiment in real time anymore.

We can’t mix real things with infinity as a limiter. Real things always include finite limits. The positing of infinite physical steps, or infinite half steps, pose logical perplexities, but not actual paradoxes.

Suppose someone walking by a lake sees a child fall, hit his head on a rock, and start floating face down in the water. They only have to get a little bit wet to save the kid's life. If they don't, can't we judge them? Wouldn't it be wrong to let the kid drown? — RogueAI

Not helping a kid floating face down can easily be wrong morally/objectively, even if they have to get soaked.

That’s not comparable to being given instructions on how to work trolley levers, told people are (for some reason) tied to train tracks, told another person is standing on the other track, and being told you alone have to take responsibility for the outcome.

Does anyone think the people on the tracks (or their families of the deceased) could blame the person who pulled the lever for the death? There is much more to it than the decision to pull levers or not. The ethics lies in those places, not in the lever predicament.

It’s more immoral to ask a person to make this decision than it is for the person to kill 1 or kill 5. The rigging of the outcome - death or more death - that is where the wrong doing occurs.

Nothing which is intended can come about by omission. — Leontiskos

That’s not what I am saying about omission. I am saying there must be an affirmative duty prior to there being an intentional omission of acting on that duty.

If you intend to kill five you can sit still, but you are committing an act of sitting still.

If you see you have a duty to save five and you sit still intentionally, you are committing a wrong because of your duty by your act of omission.

Everyone knows that the death of five is worse than the death of one, ceteris paribus. If it were that simple then there would be no disagreement over the trolley problem. — Leontiskos

Exactly.

So ethics arises not in the practical facts, but in the intentions behind them.

So you are saying the scenario is asking us whether, in these circumstances, a duty arises to act at all, and then complicates it by then asking if you fail to act at all, or pull the lever, are you culpable for committing murder, or culpable by omission for committing the murder of five?

One of the central aspects of the trolley problem gets at the question of whether one is equally responsible for omissions and commissions:

To not-pull-the-lever is an omission. [...] Whether such an omission is wrong will depend on the analysis. — Leontiskos

It just does a poor job of highlighting the omission.

So the other guy on the trolley who is just sitting there unaware of anything, omitting to do anything at all, does he have a duty to choose a lane and save some people? Is he omitting his duty of vigilance over what lane the trolley should be in?

The whole reason there might be a duty to save the right people is because you were given the responsibility to do anything at all. Or you take responsibility to do anything at all. But the raw facts of the scenario don’t address any duties at all. There is no reason to blame someone for failing to act when they had no duty to act.

So if we are allowed to bring in exterior facts, like a duty to save anyone, we can rework the scenario any way we want. The scenario as it stands, to me, doesn’t present a moral question about saving or killing human lives, it presents a moral question about whether there is a duty to make any decision at all, to take any action at all, to participate and consent to one or the other committed acts (5 or 1) dying.

not-pull-the-lever is an omissio — Leontiskos

It’s not an omission if you intend to kill five people. It’s how you carry out your intention. It’s a physical act to stay seated in order to kill five.

You said you can omit pulling the lever. If you omit pulling the lever, are you omitting everything then, or choosing and physically enacting the killing of 5? If you can omit pulling the lever, are you committing to staying seated? Or are you merely omitting all acts? Which goes to participating in the whole rigged experiment.

Yes, it is. Just as you can be culpable for an omission, so too can you effect some outcome via an omission. Your claim that because someone can achieve an intended outcome by not-doing something does not invalidate the fact that not-doing-something is an omission. — Leontiskos

If I had a duty to save the most people when riding a trolley that had no proper conductor, than sitting still would be an immoral act of omission.

But do I have any duty to participate in this situation at all? That has to be addressed first.

To not-pull-the-lever is an omission. — Leontiskos

No it’s not. What if in this situation I want to kill five people? My choice is killing five people. How do I actively effect that choice - by actively refusing to pull the lever, but intentionally sitting still. These are not omissions.

There is stuff to ponder in the trolley problem but the difference between a wrong of omission and a wrong of commission is tough to find here. There is first, the act of the trolley trap builder who commits an act of murder of either five or one person. You can’t build this scenario to be a moral problem without knowing the intention (or negligence, or just life’s predicaments) behind it.

If the whole situation arose innocently, and for some innocent reason five men were tied to the trolley tracks, and one standing on the other, and you innocently knew how the lever worked the tracks, and you innocently knew no one else was going to take responsibility for what happens, then you might be forced to decide whether your own participation in things will help improve the outcome, and quicker save five and kill one. But I don’t see how given the innocence of every other aspect of this scenario we have to all of a sudden focus on the morality of the person thrust into that fast moving scene. It’s not a moral question - it’s a practical one, and whatever happens isn’t the driver’s fault whether he chooses to switch lanes or chooses to stay in one lane.

So, you reframe the problem to be not about making what is best for others, but about what is best for your self-image. — SophistiCat

Not self image.

Just trying to locate where the moral question really is, where the moral issue really arises.

The moral question is why does ANYONE have to die here? Did someone rig the whole situation intentionally? The driver certainly didn’t. They are just forced to pick a lane. Is this a case of negligent brakes on the trolley and no trained trolley driver to make the decision? How is a bystander any more responsible than any other person in this situation?

If it is wrong to kill people, it is wrong first and foremost to build this situation. Period. Whoever rigged the whole scenario is doing the intentional killing. The driver forced to pick a lane is incidental to the trap builders intentional act.

So when the driver intentionally chooses one lane or the other, they are probably going to recognize that mathematically, saving five is better than saving only one. But I don’t see holding them responsible for killing anyone.

for caring itself is transcendental, mystical, as Wittgenstein would say. — Constance

Could caring instead, or also, be the most immanent, most intimate expression of the one who is being religious (or just being)? The place where instead of finding the essence of religion, you find the one being religious. By caring for something, one brings that transcendent thing (the “world”) into one’s immanent care. Still maybe mystical, but a mystery buried inside instead of beyond.

Little confused here, "I must consent to the choice as I act. That consent, can only be freely given. Home of radical freedom. Maybe?" if you care to, could you expand any more on this? what do you mean when you say that consent can only be freely given? Consent is the voluntary agreement or approval of what is done or proposed by another...I dont think consenting or approving the choice is necessary BUT IF ONE HAS TO BE MADE, (extremeness in this manner make the problem not realistic (to me),BUT I find this problem can be wildly interesting) — Kizzy

I may have gotten ahead of myself a bit. So we distinguished between the choices (1 or 5, good or bad) and the consent (I pull the lever, or I stay seated), and then I say consent can only be freely given.

I don’t know if that is right. But I am interested in considering it further.

You said “Consent is the voluntary agreement or approval of what is done or proposed by another.”. That is true, but I also think when I have a choice between at least two things, those two things are the other, they are what is to be done (kill one or five); those choices are what are proposed by circumstances (save 5 or let them die). I still have to consent to one among this other in order to act and MAKE the choice.

Consent it seems to me is part of the picture in every choice.

I think whether it is only freely given is a tangent that I’m not even sure how to address.

what if i dont feel forced, just scared? — Kizzy

That’s why I think it would take courage to do the truly moral thing on the trolley and not participate at all. I guess fear is a kind of force that might also diminish the ability to consent and therefore the ability to commit a moral act.

Those who chose the lever everytime to "save lifes" offer an interesting perspective — Kizzy

I agree with that, and that it highlights the difference between the choice “to save lives” and the consent to make that choice, by pulling the lever. Pulling the lever to save lives shows both aspects of ethics - the choice of five over one, and the willing consent to that choice by acting, by pulling the lever.

It’s right to turn over that perspective to move on to good versus bad in the one or in the five living or dying, as well as turning over the person who acted upon the world to bring about the one or the five or the good or the bad.

But the act of sitting there and doing nothing is not doing nothing - if your will is to kill the five, and if the scenario will permit the enacting of this will (which it does) then sitting there not letting anyone touch the lever is just as affirmative an act as pulling the lever.

The trolley case, for me, just doesn’t set up a strong question of whether your act was one of omission.

To your question (that has no real answer, im afraid), "Who is forcing the choice?" I offer another one: What if the chooser is the force? — Kizzy

You mentioned the person just sitting there, keeping a justifiable distance.

So what do you mean there is no real answer to the question who is forcing the choice? It’s a hypo. Someone has built a hypo. If it was a real trolley, someone else set the whole thing in motion, and put you in control of 1 or 5 deaths. They are the ones forcing you. That is where we search for ethics - between the trolley trap maker and really all the unwilling participants (willing ones would be on the trap maker’s side).

↪Apustimelogist - :up: Essential to the trolley problem is the possible distinction between an act and an omission, and ↪Fire Ologist excluded that distinction from the problem. Regardless of what the trolley problem was to begin with, it has now become a stock argument for consequentialism. It is essentially the cultural reaction to deontology. — Leontiskos

I did address that above but probably badly. But I’ll do better.

Sometimes when you are driving you take your foot off the gas, maybe down a small hill; that doesn’t mean you aren’t driving the car forward because you need not push the gas pedal to move forward. So doing nothing is moving forward at just the right speed..

Or better, sometimes on your Xbox controller you press A and sometimes B or sometimes nothing at all, but yet you are in total control.

Sitting on the trolley may as well be button A and pulling the lever may as well be touching nothing at all on the controller; whether one or five die is completely in your control.

This scenario does not include a sin of omission if you will. Sitting there is enacting the death of five people. You have the simple choice of what outcome, what effect you can choose to bring about.

A wrong by omission occurs when you already recognize an affirmative good deed (saving a baby that falls in a fountain) and omit the action, choose not to act. You might be able to fabricate a trolley scenario where there is a wrong of omission (maybe with babies and pedophiles on the tracks or something), but choosing to stay seated is choosing not to pull the level, as much as pulling the lever is choosing not to stay seated. I only see acts of commission in leaving 5 alive or leaving 1 alive. No acts of omission.

This highlights what I was talking about with .

The trolley case here is a bit more simple and cuts off the element of consent. 5 or 1 will die. There no other options. But in addition, you must give your consent by either staying seated, or pulling the lever. You do not have a choice but to consent to one or the other, unless you can protest the whole thing, denying any and all responsibility.

If we are able ever, to take any responsibility, we are able to take none. So there is no way to judge the one who stays seated ethically, because they could be either participating by actively avoiding the lever, or they could not give a damn what anyone else thinks is going on, they have nothing to do with this.

The trolley example has to judge what the person is consenting to in their act.

If you strip away everything of their consent and tell them: “

to either watch five people be killed or pull a lever so that only one person gets killed. — Captain Homicide

, then there is nothing to consider of their consent behind either choice.

I actually think the moral choice here is to confront the trolley trap maker and say “I choose neither so all that follows remains your doing.” You could say that I am choosing not ro pull the lever, but no - if we are to judge my lever pulling as good or bad, we have to know what I would consent to, am consenting to as I act.

If I choose to pull the lever, I am choosing to save five people, and I am consenting to this as exemplified in my physical act of pulling the lever. So I am also consenting to participate in the experiment.

If I choose to stay seated, I may be consenting to kill five to save the one, or consenting to kill five with no concern about the one, or consenting to save the one, with little concern about the five, but if I choose to stay seated I might also not be consenting to any of this at all. This heart, my consent, that I alone can generate, must be considered in ethics.

Maybe consent is in the trolley case, by omission. And I’ve been remiss in failing to give it credit for spurring the conversation.

Speeding trolley and you have kill five arguments in favor of the trolley case or kill just one argument, what would you do …go!

On the other hand, does forcing really exempt you from moral responsibility? — Apustimelogist

I don’t know about exempting, so it’s a good question, but force certainly creates a distance for responsibility to cover.

I'm inclined to think that framing it this way makes the situation different to a simple choice of 1 vs. 5. Viewed this way you could also argue that there is not so much a forcing element here. — Apustimelogist

Maybe I did over simplify. Well, I see there is a choice between 1 and 5, “I can save or kill five or one” and in that sense am not forced. And after giving me the instructions about the pulling the lever or not, no one forced anything further to happen, the rest is up to me. And that’s where the trolly case starts.

But isn’t there still a third element in any situation like the trolly vital to the conversation? There is also my willing participation in the choice and its effect enacted (as with the one person being hit by the trolley). The choosing act, about which we say “I am responsible.” And it is in that willingness, that consent, that we find something vital to ethics, but greatly diminished in the trolley case.

The trolly has clarified for me that, my consent, and my choice are two different pieces; I can choose to kill the five or kill the 1, and we can debate goodness among those choices, but to do either, to act, to kill 5 for instance, I must consent to the choice as I act. That consent, can only be freely given. Home of radical freedom. Maybe?

Only in a world of willing consent, (better, a world of many willing consenting ones), can there emerge an ethics. Not just a world of choices and options like one and five.

Now we look for freedom in this, freedom versus forcing a choice (by controlling the options) or forcing your consent (by commanding participation).

But mixing up actual stairs with models of stairs just produces a confusion, so the paradox is just an illusion - in my opinion. — Ludwig V

Exactly. There is no paradox caused by an infinite staircase, because an infinite staircase is a square circle, barely conceivable if conceivable at all.

What if every time I bit an apple and ate it, in the time I chewed the bite, the apple grew in size bigger than the bite I just took? Do I need to figure out the math here to see how to prevent the apple from eating me?

Despite the staircase being endless, he reached the bottom of it in just a minute. — keystone

Staircases are always, and only, actually, finite, as any object is. The endlessness of the staircase is brought to an end at the bottom, so it is not endless, so there is no sense to the word “despite”.

This is not a paradox, but a confusion of concepts (like the number 1 or infinitely) with actual things (like a one step down one stair, and never reaching the bottom or doing so in a minute).

The heart of the trolley problem is this:
“Without any context or explanation, if you were forced to kill either 1 person or 5 people with no other options, which would you do?”

Everything else is a distraction. Trolleys, levers, instructions given to force you to make a decision, no brakes or time for brakes, etc) allow you to start to picture the scene, but these facts introduce the real world, which introduces many new questions. These questions influence what the basic hypo actually is, so they have to be answered before one could say whether they killed 1 or 5 people was right or wrong.

So to avoid the creeping presence of real world questions, and stick to the hypo, the question becomes: is it worse to kill one person or five people.

Depends on what you think of people. If it’s bad to kill a person, then, since you are forced to kill either one person or five people, it seems a no brainer. And since you are FORCED to kill one or five, neither choice is immoral or moral for you. One might be better or more practical, but it’s not your fault someone has to die.

Who is forcing the choice?

there's much better ethical considerations to be had than which 'choice' one would make. The focus ought be upon how we ever got to that point to start with... — creativesoul

Exactly the point of my last post. :ok:

mathematical modelling of movement is infinitely divisible — Heracloitus

Modeling is not physical, so the models built with infinity will never pose a problem when descending stairs. There is no paradox because the paradox seeks to mix actual stairs with modeling.

where there are no other options. — Philosophim

Kill 1 or kill 5. In this scenario, I choose whether the trolly stays left and kills 5 or goes right and kills one. I have the same control in my choice whether 5 or 1 dies, so sitting there and doing nothing is making the this one choice one way (by selecting left towards the five), as pulling the lever and selecting right and killing one. It’s one choice and to effectuate the one choice I either leave the lever alone or pull it. So the fact that I can sit there changes nothing about the responsibility for either choice. If I sit there, I can’t say “it was not because of me that the five died, I just sat there.”

It’s one choice with me responsible for it. That is a very poor scenario (sitting still or pulling lever) to analyze the issue of taking responsibility.

Now 1 or 5. Obviously kill 1 instead of 5.

But, is that a moral choice? Did I choose rightly? Could I have chosen wrongly?

But here is the moral question: did I know which was the wrong choice and yet choose it anyway? Did I act immorally in making my choice?

In order to judge whether choosing to kill 1 or 5 was immoral or good, I need more facts. There is no morality inherent in this choice. Why did I choose to kill 5? Why did I choose to kill 1? Because 5 is greater than 1, killing 1 equals saving 5 which is greater than killing 5 to save 1? So I am moral now?

We need reality here.

In reality, I would hope I would have the courage to say “I refuse to participate at all. If you think that means I am choosing to kill 5, I ask you who set this trolly in motion, who won’t let me stop the trolly, who is trying to force me to participate? Who chose the 5 and the 1 man? Who is giving me this choice of who dies, but made all of those other choices without me?? THEY are killing 5 people and forcing me to see it. They have arranged to save the one person.”

You can’t ignore all of that and seek the morality of me playing along and thinking for a couple seconds, do I sit still or pull the lever? The only morality to question in me is any participation in the trolly ride.

We can try to play along to see if killing one person to save 5 is the right and moral choice, but not in these circumstances.

But if I didn’t think of the sickness of the situation and recognize all of the apparatus and planning that had to be in place to put me here, and I just played along, that doesn’t make me a hero or murderer for pulling the lever. It makes me quick at math under some pressure. It demonstrates the immorality of telling someone to make that choice in that fabricated situation. It doesn’t make me any better or worse if I made a choice that someone else would have made differently.

Truly, anyone in that circumstance could not be held responsible for any outcome. (Sitting versus pulling is how the trolly goes / that remains true. But responsibility for the outcome here, sitting versus pulling is one small act in what is happening here, like the trolly wheel turning is another small act, and the engine racing is another.)

So it produces very little understanding of ethics and morality to think about whether choosing to kill 5 or 1 says something good or bad about the person forced to ride that trolly. Despite the confines of the scenario, I would not be responsible for any outcome. I am a cog in a wheel someone else put in motion. And if you thought about the trolly engine starter who gave the instructions about the lever or the sitting, don’t you think we’d have more to discover about ethics there than in the person nail-biting over whether 5 is greater than the number 1?

Is was just told not to add anything by Philosophim.

So the trolley driver thought that the single person was the son of his neighbor and he hates his neighbor so he intended to hurt his neighbor by pulling the lever.

And he was thrilled that he woke up and found himself in this situation.

Some people are just interested in morality just because they are interested in morality, regardless of practical application.
— Apustimelogist

Ok, but I don't understand. Moral philosophy describes how we should treat other people. How can you talk about that without talking about how it works in the real world? — T Clark

Completely agree. That’s what makes these thought experiments of such limited value. It’s an unreal scenario and doesn’t factor in intent, which is essential to defining an ethical act between people.

Morality has to do with intent.

So is the variable here inaction of watching people die, or affirmative action pulling the lever to kill one of them? Is this inaction versus action?

Or is the question whether it is better to kill one person or five people in this scenario?