ethics question - what do you guys think?

[johndoe3344]

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Let's say you were at an interview, and you were first presented with this question:

TROLLEY PROBLEM. A trolley is running towards five
people who will be killed if it proceeds on its present
course. The only way to save them is to pull a lever that
will divert the trolley to a side track. On the side track
stand one person who will be killed.

And for those of you that pull the lever, the interviewer asks the following followup question:

A trolley is running towards five people who will be killed if it proceeds on its present course. This time the only way to save the five people is to push a large stranger off the bridge on which he stands. If he is pushed down, the stranger will die, but his mass will halt the trolley.

Are these two morally equivalent? Is there a "more defensible" answer? I know there are no right/wrong answers, but as an example, if asked what you would do if you saw a student/best friend/sig other/dear uncle cheating, the "more defensible" answer is indeed to report the incident.

 

[Frogmanmike14]

You do nothing to change what is currently happening. The original set of people will die as a result of "fate" but if you change the conditions you are killing someone.

First do no harm.

 

[Evergrey]

You do nothing to change what is currently happening. The original set of people will die as a result of "fate" but if you change the conditions you are killing someone.

First do no harm.

Let's look at it from the categorical imperative described by Kant in the Metaphysics of Morals (in other words: if everyone were to behave this way, would it benefit or degrade society?).

If everyone were to kill one man, and save 5 people in the process, then society would be 500% larger. This is probably good if we think that people staying alive is a good thing.

On the OTHER hand, more people staying alive will represent a greater drain on food supplies. Their share of the food supply could be shunted toward needy children in Somalia. Probably a good thing.

However, more people dying would represent a loss of their contribution to society through taxation. Which is bad bad BAD, especially considering we need taxes to fund the new single payer healthcare system that is all jazzed up. So the REAL question we should be asking is -- are those 5 people we're killing wealthy, educated, and productive, or are they parasitic and on welfare?

Hahaha! Ohhh ethics...

 

[redrower]

You do nothing to change what is currently happening. The original set of people will die as a result of "fate" but if you change the conditions you are killing someone.

First do no harm.

i agree with your assesment of the trolley problem; do you think you could also apply this to the cheating problem??

how do you guys think it would be conceived if your response to the cheating problem was to do nothing because in doing something, you are in a way harming that person.

 

[nabeel76]

That would be a really F'd up question. I would probably dodge it or try and avoid giving him a direct answer if I could find a way to do so professionally. However if you were forced to answer it then give him your opinion and state why you would proceed the way you would.

In my opinion I would not push the guy off of the bridge to save the others. I feel that the unfortunate events that caused the trolley to proceed towards the five people are out of my control and presumably anybody elses - it is tragic, but a misfortune and unfortunately these things happen. If there was any way that I could stop it, without endangering the lives of others, well then I would.

I do not however believe that I have the right to decide that somebody else, whom was not under any particular danger, needs to sacrifice themselves at the expense of the others though. That is a choice for him or her to make. I feel that the person that shoves the other person over the bridge, regardless of how many people it saves, has just commited murder and has now actively dictated the fate of that person. I believe that is morally wrong and also a sin. The alternative situation however depressing it might be, was not your fault and could not be prevented by you so you would not be personally responsible for their ill fortuned fate. If however, you want to play the hero well then you can always throw yourself over the bridge.

 

[johndoe3344]

i agree with your assesment of the trolley problem; do you think you could also apply this to the cheating problem??

how do you guys think it would be conceived if your response to the cheating problem was to do nothing because in doing something, you are in a way harming that person.

It would undoubtedly be looked down upon.

Many medical schools hold academic integrity in highest regard, and if you see someone cheat and don't report it, that can be construed as just as bad as cheating yourself.

Why the double standard then? The fact that it is so unequivocally wrong to "do nothing" in the case of cheating seems to suggest that one should flip the lever to kill one person instead of the five. You are "saving people," what a doctor should do.

And for the second scenario, isn't it morally equivalent? You are sacrificing one person for the good of many more. The only difference is your own personal salvation. You might feel like you "killed" someone, but in the end, what you personally feel doesn't matter.

This reminds me of a scenario I came across earlier. The interviewer asks you:

Suppose you were the editor of a publication at your local college. You need to have something finished by tomorrow, but you also suddenly remembered that you have a physics exam that you need to study for. You can only do one or the other. What do you do?

In this case, the "correct" answer is to finish the publication, because in that case you're benefiting society at the expense of your own personal self. Shouldn't this be applied to the train dilemmas as well?

 

[johndoe3344]

If however, you want to play the hero well then you can always throw yourself over the bridge.

I'm not fat enough 🙁

 

[devilpup]

In your anecdote, I have the option of saving and killing others if I decide to act and change fate, or I have the choice of letting fate run its course resulting in the death of five individuals. Though I have the autonomy to make heroic decisions, I am not God to decide who lives or who dies, I am a human enough however to try everything possible to save the five… just not at the cost of one. Doing so would be self-centered and constitute murder (premeditated death)

If the interviewer keep giving you crap, just turn it around:

Sir/Madam: If you’re a surgeon and had three patients, one healthy needing a lap chole. and two dying from kidney failure, would you take out both kidneys from your healthy patient to save your other two with kidney failure?

Obviously, no.

 

[adeline]

Why are these *******es standing around on train tracks anyway?

 

[vinniekan]

Why are these *******es standing around on train tracks anyway?

 

[zayka]

This is tricky. No pulling levers. This way, you're intentionally killing someone (even though you are saving others). Try to find a way to save the 5 without throwing the other guy. Otherwise, nothing can be done.

 

[siliso]

They are not equivalent. Number one could be justified under the principle of double effect. Your intention is to switch the train away from the five people, and that is what you do. Hitting the guy on the track is an unfortunate, unintended, but foreseeable side effect.

Pushing a guy over a bridge is a direct violent attack which directly intends his death. It produces the good effect directly by means of the bad effect.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/

 

[rigel]

They are not equivalent. Number one could be justified under the principle of double effect. Your intention is to switch the train away from the five people, and that is what you do. Hitting the guy on the track is an unfortunate, unintended, but foreseeable side effect.

Pushing a guy over a bridge is a direct violent attack which directly intends his death. It produces the good effect directly by means of the bad effect.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/

That's a good explanation.

My thought was they are not equivalent because on the bridge, since you're there to push the guy off, you could just as easily jump off yourself and save the people. Not so with the trolley problem.

 

[medicalmatins]

I can't believe somebody brought in Kant....their inner dialogue about the problem just shows how laughable his ideas of ethics are.

Common prudence usually dictates the right thing to do, and no complicated ethical models are unnecessary: lots of people have opined that taking innocent life is objectively wrong, and cannot be done even if some good outweighs it. Even were 100 people standing on the tracks, killing one is unjustifiable.


(Plus, adeline is right. What are all these people standing on tracks for? 😀)

 

[MSSM2013]

my father is an interviewer in the business world. He told me that he weed out people he doesn't like by giving questions that have answers which honestly can be interpreted as bad either way you put it, like this question.

 

[Hemichordate]

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