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Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

Enter here to explore ethical issues and discuss the meaning and source of morality.
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animist
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Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#1 Post by animist » November 16th, 2010, 6:59 pm

I have started this thread even though the last few pages of the one called "Atheism versus agnosticism" were in fact devoted to utilitarianism (Emma - this is especially aimed at you. I have longer replies to your last posts on this subject waiting, but cannot be arsed to tidy them up for posting, at least for now - we got bogged down over empathy, over which I don't empathise too much, and I don't think I will make a utilitarian out of you anyway!)

Anyway, to revive this thread, I recently read an obituary of moral philosopher Philippa Foot, in which the word "trolleyology" was used. Foot pioneered this ethical dilemma, and it is covered by Dawkins in "The God Delusion" on pages 254ff, where he discusses statistical research on people's ethical attitudes by Marc Hauser which implies that we have, all of us, evolved to think in certain ethical ways - despite the huge varieties in human cultures. The idea of trolleyology arose because of interesting ethical tests in several related hypothetical situations, as follows. Imagine you are on a control bridge at a railway station, and you see a rogue trolley careering towards a group of five people (you have to accept that somehow they are immobilised by some fiend!); you can throw a switch to save them, but this will send the trolley towards someone immobilized on another siding. Most people would say that you should save more people rather than fewer in this scenario and that you therefore should throw the switch. However, if the only way to stop the trolley was to push the fat man next to you off the bridge (and in the way of the trolley) most people would say this was not acceptable. The reason behind the difference seems to be that the person in the other siding is somehow more connected with the trolley, and less with you, than the fat man whom you directly kill; you are actually using the fat man, whereas the death of the immobilized one is "collateral damage" resulting from your decision to throw the switch.

As such, these results appear to inimical to utilitarianism: in both cases you have saved five people at the cost of one, yet the one outcome seems ethical and the other not. The crucial point is that letting someone die is, though often morally wrong, not the same as killing them.

I wonder - do I actually agree? I think that, if physically able and absolutely certain that the sacrifice would actually save the five people, I would want to push the fat man off the bridge. But anyway, at least this is a genuine ethical dilemma of life and death, despite its somewhat artificial character. In contrast, I imagine that many people find moral philosophy boring because it does not end up with any real advice on how one should behave. This may be because in a settled society there are in fact fairly few occasions when a real moral choice is involved. Of course, that is not true in the sense that one can always be more or less generous (eg in charitable giving, or just being nice to others at the expense of one's ego) but that is not really a decision about moral SYSTEM choice. I suppose that there are conceivable cases where one can see conflicts between, say duty/rights based and utilitarian/consequentialist principles: for instance, if you lent me some money on the understanding that it would be repaid in a certain time, and in fact I gave it to a beggar because he seemed to need it more than you did, this would be an illustration of my acting on a utilitarian ethic at the expense of my "duty" to keep my word to you. But maybe most of us simply are not powerful enough to have to make big ethical decisions about duty versus welfare.

However, there is at least one area of modern life that all this normality and lack of ethical choice is almost completely thrown aside, and trolleyology maybe comes into play, although I would say that it is overaken on the whole by the exigencies of pursuing one goal only. These are the wars in which we, not you and me but our politicians and armed forces, make all sort of decisions about (we as electors seem to always miss the bus on this subject - the issue of a war just comes up, someone in power decides to engage in it, and then it becomes a matter of "our boys at the front" - but , I digress). One of the basic moral dilemmas is that of means and ends: when does the end justify the means? In war, and the lead up to it, this must be a constant issue: first of all, do we get into a war in which we inevitably "lose" our troops, and kill both civilians and "enemy" (ie those who we have decided are an enemy because they do not act as we want); once in it, how ruthessly do we pursue it, and when do we exit it? I'm suggesting that utilitarian considerations are more likely to be followed in wartime, both on the battlefield and in the more elevated decision centres, and that niceties like those shown up in the trolleyology situations are likely to be ignored. This is basically because, unlike most peacetime situations, decisions in war are usually about life and death, and more particularly numbers of deaths (with "our" deaths the ones to avoid and theirs to maximise, on the whole) and the exact mode of killing or letting die will seem of minor importance. (When I call the decisions ones based on utilitarian considerations I am using the word in a rather restricted way, since it does not have the normal ethical meaning of the greatest good/happiness of the greatest number, but simply the greatest good to "our" side; really, I am talking about consequentialism rather than utilitarianism proper.) The above is obviously an exaggeration, and we have rules covering various aspects of conflict which, if followed, do temper the one-dimensional pattern I have indicated.

War is an extreme situation, in a sense at the other extreme from everyday life, but the hypothetical situations of trolleyology do, I imagine, take place in certain areas of civilian life, for instance in hospitals and during disasters and emergencies. I have no personal experience to illustrate this, but it seems likely that decisions about whom to kill (yes), whom to let die, and whom to ensure lives, must be regular ones in these contexts. The issues of assisted suicide/euthanasia, conjoined twins and abortion are obviously among those featuring these decisions, while military hospitals would be another area - except, as I implied above, I wonder if the need to get (the most) fit men back into fighting condition might actually supersede the dilemmas of trolleyology. I'm therefore suggesting that trolleyology dilemmas take place mainly in the "intermediate" areas of life - between the blandness of the everyday and the total commitment of wartime.

Anyway, enough for now, and I know the above is not that clear, but I really would like to know how many of you would follow the supposedly "normal" reaction - of being prepared to throw the switch but not the fat man! My old philosophy tutor, Jonathan Glover, has written a lot on the subject generally of medical ethics etc, but there's nothing like getting one's own thoughts down, however muddled. I remain a utilitarian, so fat men, watch it!

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#2 Post by Wilson » November 16th, 2010, 9:47 pm

I think the answer to the trolley scenario is that the moral implications are exactly the same whether you are pushing the fat guy or hitting the switch to kill an anonymous person. The difference is the yuck and guilt factors of being more personally and physically involved, which are internal emotional responses, and not intellectual. So we can figure out that the morality of the two actions is the same, but we know that down the road the image of pushing the man - who may turn and try to grab on, and we can see the panic in his fat face - will haunt us more than if we hit a switch, look away, and cover our ears.

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#3 Post by animist » November 18th, 2010, 10:24 am

only one response to this so far. I know my original post was long - just read the second and final paragraphs and say what YOU would do!

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#4 Post by Lord Muck oGentry » November 20th, 2010, 12:40 am

animist wrote:only one response to this so far. I know my original post was long - just read the second and final paragraphs and say what YOU would do!

I'm probably in a very small minority here, but I have never been sure that it is permissible, let alone compulsory, to throw the switch. The difficulty is that throwing the switch converts what would otherwise be the unavoidable misfortune of five men into the entirely avoidable misfortune of one. I don't pretend to have worked this one out, but my starting-point would be that we have not got a right, let alone a duty, to harm the innocent, even to protect innocents.

Still, bearing in mind Bernard Williams' joke that Utilitarianism is more familiar as the doctrine that every man has his price, I suspect that I could be shifted if the numbers were made large enough!
What we can't say, we can't say and we can't whistle it either. — Frank Ramsey

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animist
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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#5 Post by animist » November 20th, 2010, 8:09 am

hmm - interesting! Two responses now, and neither fits the bill as described by Dawkins. Do please look at the section of "The God Delusion" I mentioned, and see whether you think that the supposed convergence of the ethics of the isolated Central American tribe the Kuna with our own ethics is real.

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#6 Post by Emma Woolgatherer » November 29th, 2010, 1:16 pm

Oooh, sorry, I've been a bit distracted and haven't visited the forum for a while. I will respond to this properly (and get back to the free will thread, too) after I've reread this article in Prospect, but for now I'll say that I've always disliked the trolley problem and its variants, and have refused to commit myself to answering them, because of their fundamental implausibility. I cannot accept that one might be in a situation where one has absolute knowledge about a problem and how it can be solved, but very limited time to try to solve it any other way. I can't imagine the circumstances in which I would know for certain that the trolley is not going to stop; that the five people on the track or the one person on the siding cannot possibly get out of the way; that by throwing the switch I would save five lives or cause one death; and that I couldn't do any good by doing anything else. Perhaps it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I need the whole thing to be filled out, with lots of detail, perhaps into the form of a movie starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. (Something better than this, then, where the men on the tracks haven't even been "immobilised by some fiend".) In particular, I can't imagine the circumstances in which I would know that by pushing the fat man off the bridge I would stop the trolley from ploughing into the people. Hell, I cannot even imagine having the strength to push a fat man off a bridge, even if he put up no resistance (which seems unlikely), let alone doing it quickly enough to be sure that he would fall in front of the trolley and not on top of it. In fact, I'd have thought that it would be pretty reasonable to assume that if he was heavy enough to stop the trolley he'd be too heavy to push off the bridge. I know it's a thought experiment, but I like my thought experiments to be ... well ... thinkable.

If you think you might push the fat man off the bridge, animist, would it make any difference if he were your Uncle Sidney or (assuming a fat woman would do too) your Cousin Beatrice? Or someone familiar off the telly, like Robbie Coltrane or Dawn French. And for those of us who are pretty sure that they wouldn't do it, would it make any difference if the fat person were the criminal mastermind behind the problem of the speeding trolley and the incapacitated people on the track? Hmmm. Not sure about that one. But again, I can't imagine the circumstances in which one would know such a thing. Or would it make any difference if the fat person were so morbidly obese that his or her life expectancy was a matter of months? I think for me it wouldn't. Though I might be tempted to shout "Jump!"

Emma

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#7 Post by Marian » November 29th, 2010, 1:36 pm

Emma, thank you ever so much for putting into words exactly what I thought. Brilliant! I totally agree that the scenario is fabricated. It's about you having no imagination. It's just way out there.
Transformative fire...

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#8 Post by animist » December 2nd, 2010, 1:46 pm

Emma Woolgatherer wrote:I've always disliked the trolley problem and its variants, and have refused to commit myself to answering them, because of their fundamental implausibility. I know it's a thought experiment, but I like my thought experiments to be ... well ... thinkable.
well, I said in my first post that it is somewhat artificial (or fabricated as Marian put it). You've gone to town to show this, but you maybe are losing the baby with the bathwater. I think Foot was right to try isolating a moral dilemma from the inevitable fuzziness of real life, and this is after all what philosophers habitually do. (BTW, I'm counting you as an abstention on this but a no on the fat man). I have not read the Prospect article, but will do, thanks. In my longish paragraph, I indicated that there were more realistic situations than Foot's where the trolley dilemma might come into play, and so at the end of this post I have tried to devise one
Emma Woolgatherer wrote:If you think you might push the fat man off the bridge, animist, would it make any difference if he were your Uncle Sidney or (assuming a fat woman would do too) your Cousin Beatrice?
I don't see that this is relevant. This is an ethical dilemma, not a realistic question about one's own impartiality - ie, the question is not whether you actually would do what seems to be the morally correct thing but whether the morally right thing is to push or not to push.

ok, my alternative "do nothing or do something?" dilemma. Imagine that you are in charge of a hospital department which has five patients on life support machines which depend on electricity supply. For some reason connected with his particular needs, one of the patients is on one machine power supply and four are on the other; and there is no spare capacity. Suppose the power suddenly goes irretrievably for the machine supporting the four patients. Do you disconnect the other patient from his power supply and so save the other four, or do you do nothing and let them die? Seems to me that this is a sensible question, and is at least a bit more realistic than Foot's trolley in that you are sort of in charge (but with a serious unexpected problem) and not simply responding to an incredibly unlikely combination of events, as the trolley story is.

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#9 Post by philbo » December 2nd, 2010, 3:10 pm

My biggest problem with the trolley example is how one is supposed to *know* these things.

While it seems plausible that you could be fairly sure that flicking a switch would send the trolley down the other track and kill one person rather than five, but as soon as "the fat man" came into the equation, my thoughts were a) why "fat"? If we're talking clinically obese, I probably wouldn't have the strength, anyway; and b) what certainty do I have that throwing him over the edge is actually going to work?
..that last one seems to me the fundamental reason why I can't see myself pushing someone off a bridge to "save" five others - simply saying "it's a thought experiment, you can be sure" ain't good enough.

I'm not going to do something that will actively take someone's life if there is a possibility of it not working, and I'm such a sceptical type I can't see myself thinking "there's no way he can miss".

If you're driving, and see a group of five people blocking one lane and a single person in the other... I'd guess that most people would aim for the single person - is that the same thing (other than wanting to minimize damage to the car, of course ;) )?

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#10 Post by philbo » December 2nd, 2010, 3:30 pm

animist wrote:Suppose the power suddenly goes irretrievably for the machine supporting the four patients. Do you disconnect the other patient from his power supply and so save the other four, or do you do nothing and let them die?
No, you whip out the trusty Swiss Army knife and jury-rig the wires from the power supply
(which then blows, killing all five.. time to think again)

..having said that - given that there is a definite likelihood that the reason the power supply for the four patients died is that it can't support four life supports, you may well be killing all five if you switch power supplies

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#11 Post by thundril » December 2nd, 2010, 4:17 pm

philbo wrote: If you're driving, and see a group of five people blocking one lane and a single person in the other... I'd guess that most people would aim for the single person - is that the same thing (other than wanting to minimize damage to the car, of course ;) )?
I would probably try to stop, or run the car's side along a wall or something, failing which I would probably hit the single person. But this is merely a continuing and unplanned struggle to hurt 'as few people as possible.' Whilst this might be seen as a commendable human instinctual response, I don't see how it fit into 'ethics'.

My take on questions of the trolleyology type is this: that thought experiments in physics, however far-fetched, can be valid, but only under very strict rules, relating to current theories about the laws of physics. These laws are assumed to exist objectively, even though we might not know what they are exactly. Moral values cannot exist outside the human mind, and have, in that sense, no 'objective' qualities at all.
Absurd Hollywood dilemmas about hurtling trolleys and exploding powerplants are one thing: the desperately difficult problems of battlefield hospital triage are quite another.

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#12 Post by animist » December 2nd, 2010, 4:27 pm

philbo wrote:
animist wrote:Suppose the power suddenly goes irretrievably for the machine supporting the four patients. Do you disconnect the other patient from his power supply and so save the other four, or do you do nothing and let them die?
No, you whip out the trusty Swiss Army knife and jury-rig the wires from the power supply
(which then blows, killing all five.. time to think again)

..having said that - given that there is a definite likelihood that the reason the power supply for the four patients died is that it can't support four life supports, you may well be killing all five if you switch power supplies
oh dear, you're all so realistic and sensible. But just imagine that you, as a scientific type, had designed these supplies yourself, and there was no design problem: the event was a freak (eg snow loads due to accelerated and unpedictable climate change??? - trying to make it topical). Now, switching is not itself a problem; the reason why the one man (tempting to call him the fat man) had one to himself was maybe that he was rich enough (but please don't make that relevant either, as this is not about personal characteristics but simply numbers). What would you do?

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#13 Post by philbo » December 2nd, 2010, 4:38 pm

animist wrote:
philbo wrote:
animist wrote:Suppose the power suddenly goes irretrievably for the machine supporting the four patients. Do you disconnect the other patient from his power supply and so save the other four, or do you do nothing and let them die?
No, you whip out the trusty Swiss Army knife and jury-rig the wires from the power supply
(which then blows, killing all five.. time to think again)

..having said that - given that there is a definite likelihood that the reason the power supply for the four patients died is that it can't support four life supports, you may well be killing all five if you switch power supplies
oh dear, you're all so realistic and sensible. But just imagine that you, as a scientific type, had designed these supplies yourself, and there was no design problem: the event was a freak (eg snow loads due to accelerated and unpedictable climate change??? - trying to make it topical). Now, switching is not itself a problem; the reason why the one man (tempting to call him the fat man) had one to himself was maybe that he was rich enough (but please don't make that relevant either, as this is not about personal characteristics but simply numbers). What would you do?
If I know what the freak event was that killed the one power supply, that there's plenty of spare capacity.. then I'd probably get busy with the swiss army knife and splice in the other one. Yes, there's a risk that I short the whole lot out, but it's a risk I'm completely in control of (if you see what I mean).. it's also something I've done before :).


Would I unplug one in order to save more people? Probably not. Though a lot of that boils down to being unsure of the outcome: ain't convinced I can be *sure* that unplugging one life support would save the four people who've been without for however long.

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#14 Post by animist » December 2nd, 2010, 5:10 pm

philbo wrote: If you're driving, and see a group of five people blocking one lane and a single person in the other... I'd guess that most people would aim for the single person - is that the same thing (other than wanting to minimize damage to the car, of course ;) )?
The scenario you have mentioned is interesting; no, I don't think it is the same thing at all as the trolley/life support dilemma. It is not a dilemma at all, IMO, from an ethical point of view, simply a dreadful choice which is inescapable - you are going to kill someone, and almost everyone would agree with what you say. The point of the trolley/life support dilemma is that you can reasonably do nothing, which is what many TH people seem to be saying - it is just (if you allow the scenario to stand despite its faults of realism), you have failed to save more lives than you have "saved" by doing nothing. The fat man dilemma is different again, but I'll leave that for now.

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#15 Post by animist » December 2nd, 2010, 5:16 pm

philbo wrote:Would I unplug one in order to save more people? Probably not. Though a lot of that boils down to being unsure of the outcome: ain't convinced I can be *sure* that unplugging one life support would save the four people who've been without for however long.
well, to repeat, as this is all your own work (apart from the problem) you could be pretty sure, and just how sure do you have to be? (BTW, you have warning systems inbuilt, so the four are not without power but will soon be unless you act now). Are you sure you won't hit someone next time you drive? Also, suppose we increase the numbers involved - imagine it is a couple of people to be unplugged in order to save 100?

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#16 Post by Nick » December 2nd, 2010, 5:19 pm

Based on my experience at Morrison's the chances of controlling a trolley with any certainty are virtually nil........







(OK, I know. Different type of trolley.... :wink: )

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#17 Post by animist » December 2nd, 2010, 5:59 pm

thundril wrote:
philbo wrote: If you're driving, and see a group of five people blocking one lane and a single person in the other... I'd guess that most people would aim for the single person - is that the same thing (other than wanting to minimize damage to the car, of course ;) )?
I would probably try to stop, or run the car's side along a wall or something, failing which I would probably hit the single person. But this is merely a continuing and unplanned struggle to hurt 'as few people as possible.' Whilst this might be seen as a commendable human instinctual response, I don't see how it fit into 'ethics'.

My take on questions of the trolleyology type is this: that thought experiments in physics, however far-fetched, can be valid, but only under very strict rules, relating to current theories about the laws of physics. These laws are assumed to exist objectively, even though we might not know what they are exactly. Moral values cannot exist outside the human mind, and have, in that sense, no 'objective' qualities at all.
Absurd Hollywood dilemmas about hurtling trolleys and exploding powerplants are one thing: the desperately difficult problems of battlefield hospital triage are quite another.
your first paragraph - yes, that is what I was saying to Philbo. Your second paragraph - well, it is an ethics thought experiment, not a physics one. You mention triage in the last paragraph - I imagine that this is just the sort of arena where such dilemmas might occur, but I don't know enough to be able to prove this.

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#18 Post by Emma Woolgatherer » December 2nd, 2010, 6:48 pm

animist wrote:I don't see that this is relevant. This is an ethical dilemma, not a realistic question about one's own impartiality - ie, the question is not whether you actually would do what seems to be the morally correct thing but whether the morally right thing is to push or not to push.
Well, at one point you did ask the question, "What would you do?" And since I'm a moral sceptic who doesn't think there are any objective moral values, that is perhaps a more meaningful and interesting question for me. Anyway, although I'm inclined to think that there isn't a morally right response to either problem, my feelings about the two are different. I think that if I knew of someone who had been in the first situation and had thrown the switch, resulting in the single person on the siding being killed and the five on the main track surviving, I would not feel disapproving of or uncomfortable about that person. But neither would I feel disapproving of or uncomfortable about a person who did not throw the switch. But if I knew of someone who had pushed a fat man off a bridge, resulting in his death and the five people on the track being saved, then I'd ... I'd probably look at him or her a little differently. I would wonder what sort of person could make that sort of decision.
animist wrote:ok, my alternative "do nothing or do something?" dilemma. Imagine that you are in charge of a hospital department which has five patients on life support machines which depend on electricity supply. For some reason connected with his particular needs, one of the patients is on one machine power supply and four are on the other; and there is no spare capacity. Suppose the power suddenly goes irretrievably for the machine supporting the four patients. Do you disconnect the other patient from his power supply and so save the other four, or do you do nothing and let them die? Seems to me that this is a sensible question, and is at least a bit more realistic than Foot's trolley in that you are sort of in charge (but with a serious unexpected problem) and not simply responding to an incredibly unlikely combination of events, as the trolley story is.
Yes. It is more realistic. But it's different, because we're talking about removing an artificial means of keeping someone alive, rather than allowing someone to be killed. And that's much easier to do. Doctors do it all the time! Of course, there's missing information here, for example about the life expectancy and expected quality of life of all five patients, which in this instance you probably would know something about (unlike in the trolley problem). But I can certainly imagine unplugging the single patient and plugging in the other four to the surviving power supply. That doesn't mean that it's the morally right thing to do. It might simply be the prudent thing to do, since hospitals are judged on patient statistics, and three fewer patient deaths is desirable from that point of view. I certainly don't think it would be morally wrong. The question I need to answer is whether I think it would be morally wrong to leave things as they are, and let the four patients die. But ... ah ... I still don't know. If I made that decision by default, simply through delaying, then I think I would probably chastise myself. But again, that doesn't necessarily mean that it was morally wrong.

What I'm trying to say is that I do think the idea that it's better to save more lives than fewer lives is a powerful one. I'm just not convinced that it's a moral imperative.

Emma

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#19 Post by Emma Woolgatherer » December 2nd, 2010, 6:53 pm

animist wrote:Now, switching is not itself a problem; the reason why the one man (tempting to call him the fat man) had one to himself was maybe that he was rich enough (but please don't make that relevant either, as this is not about personal characteristics but simply numbers). What would you do?
But it isn't just about numbers, is it? It's about people. And people do have personal characteristics. If we make it purely about numbers then surely we're accepting the utilitarian premise. And we might not want to do that.

Emma

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Re: Utilitarianism and Trolleyology

#20 Post by animist » December 2nd, 2010, 7:13 pm

Emma Woolgatherer wrote:
animist wrote:Now, switching is not itself a problem; the reason why the one man (tempting to call him the fat man) had one to himself was maybe that he was rich enough (but please don't make that relevant either, as this is not about personal characteristics but simply numbers). What would you do?
But it isn't just about numbers, is it? It's about people. And people do have personal characteristics. If we make it purely about numbers then surely we're accepting the utilitarian premise. And we might not want to do that.

Emma
well, I do!

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