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).

↪Apustimelogist


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?
— Fire Ologist

I agree with your simple breakdown and I think your claim brings up good points. People will argue about the distractions, but I believe its possible they do because it works for their tailored liking, or it works for their reasons. If you have to be particular in acknowledging a distraction, I think the ground standing on those distractions is not going to be solid enough. Distractions do not alter, "the heart of the problem" like you said. While it appears that those who want to favor the distractions lose sight of the more important considerations here. Fire Ologist continues, "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." -- I do think this point is more relevant than the distractions, but I want to clarify. Do you think those "watching 5" are actually KILLING? Allowing them to die, those who got themselves in this situation in the first place. BUT pulling the lever is, to me, actually deciding that KILLING 1, by literally pulling lever (hand aiding the death) VS ALLOWING / WATCHING 5 people die....hm, what if no one was there at all, the train was going to follow the track and kill the 5 anyways. The lever option to me, is involving your self in this scenario and by wanting to make that call because of (BLANK)[insert reason why]--it says a lot about the character behind the choice.

Those who chose the lever everytime to "save lifes" offer an interesting perspective. I wonder how they see value and worth in life and if the placing of it is done properly. Do they see people as numbers? Do they have to in this case? ...kill 1 instead of letting 5 die... I believe although still horrid that, watching 5 die leaves your involvement out of it in and at justifiable distance, while on the other hand-- aiding in the outcome, you forced the direction change and killed a person...you saved nothing. You showed us yourself.

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?

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

Yes you are right. I considered an omission to still be an action—as a conscious choice refraining from intervening. By not pulling the lever, you are actively deciding to let events unfold.
But yeah :up:

↪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!

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). — Fire Ologist

I posted my comment before I saw this addition, you touched on some things I was getting at. You bring up the responsibility and willingness in participation, thats important. I agree with your contributions, I underlined your quote above that I didnt think about really before. Great point.

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)

Decision making moments: TIME factoring is worth acknowledging...quick thinking- what/how fast comes the reasoning after the act?, how is the acceptanceor responsibility held accountable or acknowledged for being that? With the self? Or with a witness? (think of people who could be / would want to be observing) (observing and gathering intel without your awareness)
like you said responsibility but also to be valid i think credibility, and justifications need to be observed for further judgments (comparing to what? required?) and), or enough time to decide with reason A CHOICE is taking ACTION comes in these particular decision making moments.


"Now we look for freedom in this, freedom versus forcing a choice (by controlling the options) or forcing your consent (by commanding participation" freedom vs choice - now were talking! Ill be back, just wanted to get this out now.

EDIT: I read and saw you clarified "consent" further here, No need to get into it from my comment. Leaving comment as is.

The trolley example has to judge what the person is consenting to in their act — Fire Ologist

:up:

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).

what if i dont feel forced, just scared?

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.

Sorry I am struggling hard with quoting right now lol trying to fix by editing but feel i am jumping around.

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. — Fire Ologist

Very nice, I like this!

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.

I still have to consent to one among this other in order to act and MAKE the choice — Fire Ologist

Hm, interesting...

But you are consenting to the rules by participating in this "problem" that is constrained by limits placed on participants by the initiator. So, if you chose to participate, you still are free to make decisions without forcing anything except rules that are required for the problem to exist at all. While inside the problem, your options are of 2 choices (1 or 5 human deaths) kill or watch- but since the rules have been made up and laid out for others to decide, those still in the problem after knowing rules are consenting to participate? Am i missing something else? I feel like if you are in this problem, you cant use consent as an excuse to get out of making a decision but you can get out of this hypo. freely, right?

I mentioned earlier when I responded to your question with another," What if the chooser is the force?" ---What comes from the force that this person caused from their decision? Whats the power of different impacts? Does the impact of the force after choice / act play out and the outcomes of the event are final depend on anything? Does it depend on a person to get involved with something that was already in motion to occur.

Would you agree that, one might experience this scenario with courage, like you said before and one might also experience, as I imagined, out of fear. I am thinking further, to be brave here (courage) sems to be an attribute of the individual whom must have enough strength (or thinks they do) to overcome and focus in a situation. More strength then the fear based person in the same position..
---Can they or do they reason after they decide and without valuing life at all, just a natural reaction or instinct? Are they self aware enough to make the decision while already weighing the consequence of causing the death of 1 person? They are willing to do what they can, whether it is dealing with the families and friends grieving the loss of loved ones, how are they planning on dealing with problems to come, like being blamed or accused of doing the wrong thing by those who are in NO PLACE TO JUDGE...HOW are they able to begin dealing with life after this type of tragic experience and their role in it.

Imagine the courageous one that pulls the lever killing the single person, while saving the 5 others. Do they have character and respect that aligns with that attribute? Do they show signs physically, emotionally, mentally of how this impacted their lifes? Or how strength was acclimated leading up to this event? They should align, and make sense in order to be valid in justification here. Do they express how hard it was for them to chose one vs the other 5 and DOES anyone believe this killer? OR do they see this person as a hero?

Perhaps, how much they seem to accept their part in this SHOWS how much they thought about it, its possible to measure how much they premeditated an outcome...

THEY BOTH, the courageous hero (act) and the shocked bystander (omission) HAVE TO BE PREPARED to deal with their own mind and the consequences they brought to self moving on from the occurrence. Do they have to revalue their values, ethics, beliefs, standards, etc? Do they each deal with the consequences accordingly to how they thought they would right after decision? How do they stand in their choices? We can judge that eventually. The degree of self awareness present in the act and after using info from the past to confirm can and will be brought to light.

Some might say this is a high stress, emergency, panic inducing event, where the power of authority, while in reasonable position to take action, but to be able to recognize what is going on and decide to take charge I might argue involves more complexities within the human mind and our capabilities using it...that type of attribute linked to courage or bravery might be personality based even, how could we determine that or otherwise? (another topic, another time)


Also, like @Captain Homicide originally brought up from the start, "For those who would let the five people die by not pulling the lever to kill one person is there a minimum number of people on the track that would make you choose to kill the one person? 50? 100? 1,000? 10,000?" Capt is on to something with this, i think because people CAN change their minds. Before, during and after the act of choosing---Intentions can change in decision making moments and be repurposed...trust is built and broken here and we will see this happening before judgement should occur, those judging wrongly will be also eventually held accountable and it forces almost naturally with or without authority, people to wake up and look in the mirror.

TIME thinking about what I should do, includes weighing out some sort of consequence or outcomes and still leans in favor of being the hero and saving the 5, sacrificing another life. Does it not force the decider to LOOK at the life and value it against the group of 5? How is the decider valuing and placing worth on/in life itself, on themselves and on others? How is the decision affecting them? What if there is a case of regretting the choice immediately after. What if after time, you disagree with that choice?

The reaction to the scene may cause the act of thinking about what is going on, what can i do, am I capable of dealing with the consequence of taking a life with responsibility or more capable of dealing with the trauma of witnessing and being blamed for the death of 5. I have to live with my decision from this event...and the action of the body after decision was made up in mind is swiftly if not happening/occurring together.
--Mind and body are in agreement and taking action together but separate to make a whole outcome by using force of authority to intervene or force of authority to allow time to continue as it was already in motion.

The force is especially significant in the chooser that is in no place to make these types of decisions...BUT there can be times where, they happen to be in the right place to use that authority...by not using that authority (it still exists), or deciding to watch (not use authority) and instead of involve self further, i can see how in some cases that is the best move and vice versa other times its the wrong move. It depends.

Is it worth considering after the fact, the explanation that came from the person justifying authority that claim they believe they were doing and did "what they believe is right" by pulling lever killing a person just because they could? I feel like, that would mean that they see/saw and hold true their values and how they place it and they considered themselves in this situation before acting but after they already decided. Mind to motion...I said in my first comment, think mind over matter. Perhaps, they may be misplacing value and worth even though doing the right thing is justified to them? I think because time still needs to be considered before judgement. I said that already too, right from the jump...read my first comment...Glad I am ending with this, its full circle for me now and I didnt know that was going to happen until here in this closing sentence. Just look and see, I said it before and I am saying it again. TIME is determining the measure of how long they (person with choice) had to reason...justifications can be predictable or foreseen from around here.

https://hai.stanford.edu/news/designing-ethical-self-driving-cars

"In recent years, automated vehicle designers have also pondered how AVs facing unexpected driving situations might solve similar dilemmas. For example: What should the AV do if a bicycle suddenly enters its lane? Should it swerve into oncoming traffic or hit the bicycle?"

Even if one assumes it is moral to literally murder someone in order to save others, why would there be an onus on the bystander to get involved in this type of business?

If one argues the bystander is morally obligated to get involved, then I suppose whoever argues this has a massive to-do list, and the question is why they are wasting their time on this forum when they're supposed to be getting involved!

All of us are after all bystanders in countless numbers of situations which are just begging for a hero. — Tzeentch

Woah, I missed this. I agree here, now. Right on! You said it best and so simply put! I, personally applaud and admire when people articulate a point without using SO many words..My words did though allow me to found my ideas, in the moment. I figured out my grounding, for myself in the moment the only way I know how. All the many words (too many, i can admit) that I have shared, even though you can get to and did get to the a similar point that I did, just before me and with far less words/space taken up...I wouldnt of gotten myself to this place where I can acknowledge THAT and THIS in you (then) and in me (now). I wouldnt have been able to comprehend this, the point of your comment before learning what I eventually did from my long winded comments in this thread. Now looking back, I am pleased to see that I am not too far off in left field... Similarities in what you said in a single comment exist in what I said but it took me 6 comments total, including a few exchanges with Fire Ologist, to figure it out. This only reassures confidence in the stance I have built up on a ground that I have always trusted to begin with. But now I can accept and ought to trust the process itself, equally! Cool! I appreciate all efforts that go into the contributions! Thanks!

Thanks for the kind words! Always nice to hear someone finds my comments insightful.

Well, you were challenging my comment and I worked with what you gave me. — Tzeentch

Yes. I challenge the idea that we have no obligation to strangers. We have a small obligation to do something if we reasonably can to make another's situation better if they are in difficulty. The trolley situation as played out in 's video would be traumatic precisely because one would feel that one ought to intervene and take responsibility, as the the only person able to. But behind it is the real question as to what the train operator's policy ought to be and what the the professional switchman should do or not do in that situation. The stranger would not be blamed for making a wrong decision or freezing in the unfamiliar emergency, but the switchman and the rail company need a policy, based on a moral principle. And of course, the workers on the line also need to know that policy to protect themselves from random track switchers.

So if you work for unenlightened railways, or if you like to trespass on unenlightened tracks, you should be aware that trains will never be switched unless the line is thought to be clear, and no-one who is not in danger should be put in serious danger by anyone else to save others. If you are on the tracks, you are putting yourself in danger, and workmen should always be alert to the possibility of trains, and not stand on the tracks to make phone-calls or have a chat about what an arse the boss is, especially with headphones on.

Having read the recent replies, I still think the trolley problem isn't useful at all and is morally irrelevant. We need agency as a requirement for causality and even when there's agency it isn't a given our (in)action is the sufficient condition for the outcome.

In the trolley problem, save one person everybody knows is a Nazi but I secretly know he's planning to assasinate Hitler or five kids. Save 5 Nazis or 1 old man with terminal cancer. It is only useful where we know nothing about the past or the future, the situation is entirely decontextualised from reality and then we are commanded to chose. It is a game, nothing more and nothing less and we can always choose not to play. All valid moral choices.

Yes. I challenge the idea that we have no obligation to strangers. We have a small obligation to do something if we reasonably can to make another's situation better if they are in difficulty. — unenlightened

Of course there's a moral obligations to help others but when helping means murdering others... I'm totally awesome but not so awesome to decide who gets to live and who doesn't and reducing this to statistics is not a solution as I could save the wrong person. I could save a Hamas leader or Bibi and I'd rather not.

It is only useful where we know nothing about the past or the future, the situation is entirely decontextualised from reality and then we are commanded to chose. It is a game, nothing more and nothing less and we can always choose not to play. All valid moral choices. — Benkei

Yes, I think most moral analogies automatically fail in that they are too simple for being actually valuable in moral philosophy. At best they are a good introduction for people learning philosophy to get them to think critically about morality, but in the end I think that these scenarios tend to get in the way of actually thinking about morality.

Reality is damn messy and the worst that these kinds of simplified scenarios can get is that society tries to judge someone's action based on a similar simplicity; rather than carefully evaluating the situation that happened. It's the prime reason why we don't have a "final" moral philosophy that can be applied everywhere, because it can't.

It's why I'm thinking that the "final" theory of moral philosophy may be in a rigid framework of practical moral evaluation, that can be applied to any situation as a framework of critical thinking, rather than being a conductor of axiomatic oughts. Malleable enough to adapt to any situation involving humans in morally challenging situations.

A while back a concert was bombed by a terrorist in Manchester UK, and there was much criticism because the emergency services (police fire ambulance) did not immediately rush in, for fear of a second bomb or other terrorist act. Some people died as a result of the delay. Emergency services routinely put themselves in harm's way for others, but the senior persons in this case thought the danger for their crews too great to intervene immediately, and crews stood by for some time to see what developed.

As it happened the lone bomber was dead. Dilemmas happen, and sometimes even the experts get it wrong.

reducing this to statistics is not a solution as I could save the wrong person. I could save a Hamas leader or Bibi and I'd rather not. — Benkei

I think introducing another calculation as to the moral worth of the individuals is a completely false move. This is what doctors are expressly forbidden to do, but their oath is to do their best for PolPot and Mother Theresa without distinction. The War Crimes Tribunal is the place for such judgements, not the railway line or the hospital.

Yes. I challenge the idea that we have no obligation to strangers. We have a small obligation to do something if we reasonably can to make another's situation better if they are in difficulty. — unenlightened

You're suggesting that you feel a sense of moral obligation to all strangers, are you not? And yet I'll go out on a limb and assume that you don't spend the majority of your time trying to fulfill that moral obligation.

This is starting to sound like "I have an 'obligation', but only when I feel like it."

And that's the thing about moral obligations: whether we feel like it or not, we should abide by them.

I think you're throwing the term around too loosely, and in the process either claiming the existence of moral obligations which are impossible to fulfill, or 'obligations' which are so vague and subjective that they lose all their meaning.

I think introducing another calculation as to the moral worth of the individuals is a completely false move. This is what doctors are expressly forbidden to do, but their oath is to do their best for PolPot and Mother Theresa without distinction. — unenlightened

Which is why the Hippocratic oath and triage have nothing to do with morality either but with survivability of the patient irrespective of moral considerations.

Edit: to add, I think I would be forgiven to not help an attacker, favouring a victim, even when the attacker had a higher chance of survival. Maybe even in obvious ways even to me as a layman at the train station. It would be a moral choice for me personally to decide at that moment the smaller chance of the innocent surviving is more important to me, personally, than that of the aggressor. But I wouldn't condemn the layman for making the other choice either. Whether that's a triage decision or not. There's simply not much good either of us can do.

I think you're throwing the term around too loosely, and in the process either claiming the existence of moral obligations which are impossible to fulfill, or 'obligations' which are so vague and subjective that they lose all their meaning. — Tzeentch

And I think you are confusing moral obligations with legal ones. Of course moral obligations are impossible. And if you try very hard indeed, you get crucified for your pains.

And I think you are confusing moral obligations with legal ones. — unenlightened

Hmm. No. Legality has nothing to do with anything.

Of course moral obligations are impossible. — unenlightened

How so?

"Thou shalt not kill" seems like a perfectly realistic moral obligation, for example.

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. — Fire Ologist

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

(Playing a devil's advocate here, I don't have my own answer yet.)

"Thou shalt not kill" seems like a perfectly realistic moral obligation, for example. — Tzeentch

Thou shalt not kill 1, or thou shalt not kill 5? In this context, that seems a particularly foolish comment. It happens rather frequently to train drivers that people are killed by the train they are driving.

Of the fatalities on the railway in 2019/20:

Six occurred on a level crossing
17 involved people trespassing on the railway
283 were suicides or suspected suicides

https://www.networkrail.co.uk/running-the-railway/looking-after-the-railway/delays-explained/fatalities/

Just "Thou shalt not kill" - most people fulfill that moral obligation without even thinking about it, so that's pretty realistic, isn't it?

Not sure why you've suddenly started linking railway death statistics.

Not sure why you've suddenly started linking railway death statistics. — Tzeentch

Right. Understood.

I think there are layers to agency in the sense that one could be forced to make a harmful choice by someone, in which we might reduce responsibility for the action; but then, within that choice context, if there is room to choose a better or worse option, then I think that is still up to you unless that specific choice was forced on you by someone else. So there is a nuance in the sense that you were partly forced but also had some choice.

Some might even layer it up even further in the sense that some people might argue that in a deterministic world no one has actual responsibillity. But then again I don't think many people strongly commit to that idea, at least in practical ethics.

Nonetheless, that last point brings up the fact that sometimes we just have to make choices. No one may have forced us to make the choice but it seems that a choice had to be made just as a matter of how events unfolded. You keep talking about the trolley problem as if a choice had been forced (commanded participation by another agent); but I don't think there is anything explicit in the trolley experiment saying this. The trolley problen could have a natural cause - a freak train incident due to no ones fault. Maybe this could be forcing in some sense of diminish responsibility... but it is unremarkable and does not especially stand out. Almost all other difficult moral choices are like this and not participating in a scenario like that would be immoral I think most would agree. The way that the trolley problem is set up, 5 people are going to die anyway so refusing to participate is practically the same as making a choice. But even so, refusing to participate in a rescue mission where either one or 5 people must die would not be deemed to the moral thing to do in that context by most people.

Again, if there is still wiggle room to make a better or worse choice then I think that one still has moral responsibility for that I think, though obviously people may attribute less responsibility if the choice was unusually extreme or difficult people didn't have the correct information (but trolley problem gives us the correct information). But then that doesn't mean there are not better or worse choices. You may be forced to kill 1 or kill 5 but if you knew you were doing fully in the moment then surely you have to justify the choice. Contrary to what you say, I think morality emerges precisely because "consent" is broken. There is no need for morality if it is just about getting what we want and agreeing to play the game. Morality comes from the fact that we are forced to play games we might disagree with. We wouldn't have all these moral rules if people didn't have conflicting wants.

Edit: some tidying up.

Yes, I think most moral analogies automatically fail in that they are too simple for being actually valuable in moral philosophy — Christoffer

I'm not sure I agree that scenarios like the trolley problem never happen - I think they probably do a lot in a messier way and in some ways the fact that the trolley problem has no perfect outcome reminds of the messiness of reality sometimes.

Nonetheless, I think the value in these analogies is not necessarily in trying to find out what the right thing to do is, but why we have the moral preferences we do and how they differ. Its like an experiment. Scientific experiments need controlled and independent variables to figure out whats going on. If you have a simplified scenario and you change certain aspects of it and see what people think then it may give more clarity as to why we make certain choices or what our preferences are. If you just present a scenario with lots of different factors then its not always clear what is actually guiding peoples decisions.

This is a trolley: — Banno

This is a tram: — Banno

That was informative, thank you. We call the first montacargas and the second tranvía. I thought you were interested to know this, and maybe (just maybe) it can help us to solve the trolley problem.

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. — Fire Ologist

To not-pull-the-lever is an omission. This is what you have left out of consideration. Whether such an omission is wrong will depend on the analysis.

You said that the heart of the trolley problem is, “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?” The trolley problem gives two options: pull the lever or don't. Someone might construe those two options as "kill one or five," but all sorts of people do not construe the options that way, and therefore the trolley problem does not reduce to those two options. In fact, "Kill one or five" is not a dilemma; but the trolley problem is.

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. — Fire Ologist

When you say "consent" what you seem to mean is "intention" or "rationale." In ethics it is common to ask about what should be done. This is not an exclusion of intention or rationale, largely because the question will soon follow your answer, "Why?"

Beyond that, to say, “I don’t consent to the dilemma” is not an option. The question is simply, “What would you do if you were in this situation?” You can refuse to answer the question, but if you find yourself in that situation you will not have the option to avoid it on the basis of consent. Life happens whether we consent or not, and at times it involves tough decisions.

It is only useful where we know nothing about the past or the future, the situation is entirely decontextualised from reality and then we are commanded to chose. — Benkei

The trolley problem says, "If you didn't know anything about the individuals, what would you do?" This is not decontextualized from reality given the fact that there are times in reality when we do not know anything about the individuals who will be affected by our choices. It is a somewhat tidy way to instantiate meta-ethical presuppositions within a simple problem.

I would say that the trolley problem is limited but not pointless. In particular I think it is pedagogically limited. The only strongly principled opposition to the trolley problem that I can see would be on the basis of something like "situation ethics," which is wary of moral principles per se. To speak about moral principles is already to have abstracted away from concrete reality, but it does not follow that consideration of moral principles is morally irrelevant. Most would say that consideration of moral principles is highly morally relevant, and that the trolley problem gets at moral principles. Thus I think it is useful if we were to find ourselves in similar situations (as others have noted), but it is also useful whenever we are in a situation where the moral principle in question comes to bear (i.e. whenever we must choose between two groups of people the principle contained in the trolley problem should be part of our analysis so long as we think the trolley problem is decidable).

I'm not sure I agree that scenarios like the trolley problem never happen - I think they probably do a lot in a messier way — Apustimelogist

If you go to the YouTube channel of <this video> the philosopher has another video on real-life parallels to the trolley problem (I currently have YouTube blocked to avoid wasting time, so I don't have the direct link). Off the top of my head, the case of Dudley and Stephens is fairly similar, and went to English court.