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Trolley problems and experimental ethics
A second experiment developed this idea and showed further that an
action is most morally condemnable when personal force and intention
co-occur. Students judged as most morally unacceptable a situation in
which Joe deliberately pushed a victim off a bridge so that he could
reach a switch to save five others. By contrast, if the victim was
knocked off the bridge accidentally so Joe could reach the switch, or
if Joe killed him by diverting a trolley with a switch, then the
students' moral judgements were not so harsh.
"Put simply,
something special happens when intention and personal force co-occur,"
the researchers said. This prompts many further questions, such as what
counts as personal force. "Must it be continuous (as in pushing), or
may it be ballistic (as in throwing)?" the researchers asked. "Is
pulling the same as pushing?"
Here is more.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 27, 2009 at 07:36 AM in Philosophy | Permalink
Comments
On the surface at least, the paper seems to take intuitive ethical reactions as a guideline to real ethics. As my son pointed out to me: "our intuition is wrong again. No surprise there."
Posted by: tom s. at Jun 27, 2009 8:59:24 AM
But in Civil Law countries , you can not be punished if among the five is your relative or close friend.State of necessity .
In Germany, the Constitutional Court declared void the order to take down planes kidnaped that can be used like 9/11 attacks,
Posted by: k at Jun 27, 2009 11:01:40 AM
Everything I've read on the trolley problems seems to be missing a major component of moral reasoning. The issue really isn't about intent, proximity, or the type of action. The key point is the degree of "culpability" of the victims.
Consider the simple flip-the-lever to kill 1 in order to save five. Rate these three cases:
1. The 5 and the 1 are all railroad workers.
2. As above, but you had observed the 1 carefully checking the lever before he went to work while the 5 had not checked.
3. 5 workers, but the 1 is a young child playing, unaware of the dangers of trolleys.
The cases of pushing a person off the bridge are judged harshly because the victim is innocent/has no culpability.
Posted by: gorobei at Jun 27, 2009 11:52:16 AM
"an action is most morally condemnable"
Condemnable or condemned?
Esse est percipi, I guess. Bad philosophy is so fun!
Posted by: Vernunft at Jun 27, 2009 11:53:46 AM
How about the original pairing of cases, but this time the lone person is someone the decision maker is known to have a grudge against?
He is in the remote switch house and sees the runaway train, and he throws the switch to divert the train from the mainline saving five buddies, and killing one man who:
- stole from the switch operator
- beat up the switch operator
- just grated on the switch operator
- was the rival of the switch operator
- was a distant friend
- was a close friend
- he was unknown to him
He explains his action as "I merely calculated economic trade offs of the liability lawsuits the company would suffer, and chose the option with the lowest legal liability."
How do you rate his morality? Evil or virtuous?
Posted by: mulp at Jun 27, 2009 7:20:50 PM
mulp, interesting, but is only applicable to simple moral systems (the tit-for-tat ones we try to have people outgrow.)
Posted by: gorobei at Jun 27, 2009 7:50:11 PM
Gorobei is right. Under the common law there's a concept of assumption of risk that seems to be missing in the minds of the philosophers or "ethicists" who are perplexed by the trolley problem. In the absence of additional information, people already on the railroad tracks have all assumed an equal amount of risk, and so it makes sense to kill one to save five. The same is not true of an onlooker on a bridge.
We engage in the same distinction when we consider civilian casualties more regrettable than military casualties. The failure to recognize this simple principle is why the trolley problem seems to some people a paradox. It's not.
Posted by: Richard at Jun 27, 2009 8:03:38 PM
Richard,
thank you, "assumption of risk" is clearly the term I was searching for.
Posted by: gorobei at Jun 27, 2009 8:34:25 PM
I agree with gorobei and Richard. Assumption of risk and other factors do make a difference in the moral calculus and cannot be ignored. Otherwise, one could ask why it is not moral to pick out healthy people at random to carve them up for body parts--heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, skin, etc.--so as to save the lives of 3, 4, maybe 5 or more other people who need replacement parts to live, not to mention the ancillary gains this process would provide for those people who have less life-threatening part needs, such as those who then get to use the eyes, cochleae, blood, etc.
Posted by: BobDoyle at Jun 28, 2009 2:35:53 PM
What if the one is a known spammer, like the commenter above?
Posted by: Joshua at Jun 30, 2009 12:22:42 AM
Thank you very much. I am wonderring if I can share your article in the bookmarks of society,Then more friends can talk about this problem.
Posted by: cheap lotro gold at Jun 30, 2009 11:59:21 PM
Stephen Pinker discusses this exact trolley problem at length in his article in NYTimes Mag, "The Moral Instinct".
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html
He looks at what evolutionary steps could have produced such a moral compass, citing the research in the blog post. Fascinating.
Posted by: James Davies at Jul 24, 2009 7:27:27 PM
