I am not a philosopher, but a military historian interested in how the trolley problem applies to military history.
The trolley problem is not an abstract thought experiment, but a fair approximation to the kind of decisions that are made daily by military commanders and then repeated with the surviving players. Who gets picked to carry out a dangerous task? Is it always the person most likely to succeed or do is there a moral element to sharing the risks? There is more to this than morality, but there seems to be a moral component to decisions than might be approached rationally on a purely utilitarian level. E.g. there are taboos among most armed forces about suicide tactics or targeting a mixture of friend and foe.
I am particularly interested in the extent to which morality and, or psychology of the trolley problem may help to understand historic events where a decision to avoid the risks of friendly fire (killing the one) resulted in heavy casualties from enemy fire (killing the five). I have a hypothesis that this may explain what were in retrospect avoidable high casualties on the Somme in the First World War and on D Day and at Arnhem in the Second.
Are there any articles or philosophers who cover this topic? — Frank Baldwin
Are there any articles or philosophers who cover this topic? — Frank Baldwin
Actually notice the change in contemporary military history to the 20th Century.E.g. there are taboos among most armed forces about suicide tactics or targeting a mixture of friend and foe. — Frank Baldwin
I am particularly interested in the extent to which morality and, or psychology of the trolley problem may help to understand historic events where a decision to avoid the risks of friendly fire (killing the one) resulted in heavy casualties from enemy fire (killing the five). — Frank Baldwin
The problem with the trolly problem is not the trolly, but the track. A train track assumes a fixed route and fixed destination. I think those who apply the trolly problem to real life and dynamic situations are dangerously mistaken in that regard. — NOS4A2
Small but imo integral point. In the US among the unalienable rights is life (the other two being liberty and pursuit of happiness). In the US military you cannot be ordered to your death. There is, then, as part of being an American, a sense of an absolute value on and for life.
Which fits with a quote attributed to Patton, to the effect that battle was not about dying for your country but making the other poor bastard die for his. — tim wood
Military command decisions are not exactly the same as the Trolley problem because the trolley problem presents a choice between two certain events, whereas in the real world there is an element of uncertainty. No one in the British or US Military is ever ordered onto a suicide mission. Uuslaly a few people escape. However, the loss rate of torpedo bomber crews in British service (and possibly US) in WW2 was higher than in the Japanese Kamikazi units. In one of the few real "trolley problems" occurred when a runaway freight train was switched away from station to a branch line in low density housing. No one died even though a woman had a lucky escape.
I am drawn to the trolley problem because it is about people forced to make unpalatable choices. There are several accounts of the stress of the "burden of command" on commanders and he guilt over the deaths of dozens, hundreds or thousands of people on their own side. In 1984 I heard a British WW2 general, Michael Carver, in 1944 a 28 year old Brigadier General talk about how he had to dismiss all three of the commanders of his tank regiments, because they were tired after two years of making these decisions every day.
The thinking about these philosophical experiments may offer an insight in how different armed forces approached the problem of the risk of friendly fire.
It took the French and British armies in the first world war about 750,000 casualties over eighteen months casualties to accept the idea that it was better to take 5% casualties from your own artillery than 30% from enemy machine guns in a tactic known as the creeping barrage. An assault was a rock paper scissors game That became an unspoken doctrine. There were manuals telling soldier that they had to be really close to the barrage, but nothing in writing about the likely cost. The Germans never adopted the idea and even promulgated a myth that the allies were firing dud shells. Even 20 years later in Normandy an SS General repeated the claims. It never seems to have occurred to them that their enemies would be so callous.
In the German air assault on Crete in 1941 Luftwaffe planes were ordered to attack the targeted airfields until "Y" Hour when German paratroops and gliders were landing - amidst cannon fire and bombs.
Three years later in 1944 the Western Allies had huge arguments planning the assault on the coast of France about the risks of friendly fire casualties. The resulting plan left the beach defences themselves un-attacked by allied aircraft and a ten minute gap between the last shell landing on the defenders and the first man ashore.
The ideas provoked by the Trolley problem may help to understand why these different decisions were made, and why previous (utilitarian) experience was ignored. — Frank Baldwin
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