The Trolley Problem is Not a Moral Dilemma
How some "moral questions" are just personal ones
TL;DR: The trolley problem is not an ethical dilemma, despite its appearance as one. The duty to rescue does not apply since rescuing would violate the duty not to harm innocent others. No party would agree on a duty to be killed. So long as one is not violating a clear moral duty (like pushing someone on train tracks), responsibility rests with the individual—victims and heroes included. Like so many other life dilemmas, pure reason cannot provide a definite answer to the trolley problem. Only the free self can make a choice whenever there are sufficient reasons for either side of a decision.
Should you push a fat man onto a trolley to save five?
Should you smother a crying child to keep yourself and your family hidden from the Nazis?
Should you go to war for your country or care for your ailing mother?
There are many questions like the ones above where ethical thinkers assume the existence of a correct answer. If only we lived in a world with supreme knowledge, we could hold people to account for making the “wrong” choice in these many moral dilemmas.
Some argue that there exists an objective morality that should guide all of our actions. Every decision can theoretically be subject to ethical analysis, thus tasking philosophers with discovering these universal duties that all moral beings must take on.
However, ethics only relate to reason-based principles that free people could not reasonably reject. If these moral principles cannot judge an act, and there are sufficient reasons both for and against the act, then the act rests outside of ethics; it is a personal choice rather than a moral duty.
Many supposedly ethical questions are therefore not ethical questions, but can only be the product of one’s personal decision—including the famous trolley problem.
The Trolley Problem
I’m sure you are familiar with the trolley problem, but here it is:
There is a runway trolley heading toward five people. The only way to save the five is to pull the lever to divert the trolley to a different set of tracks. However, one person on the sidetrack will be killed if you pull the lever.
Most participants say they would flip the switch, killing one to save five.
There is also a second version of the trolley problem, where instead of flipping a switch and killing one, you push a fat man onto a footbridge to block the trolley, thus killing him to save the five.
Most participants say they would not push the fat man, preferring to let the five die.
The trolley problem has passionately divided many along moral boundaries, who each argue for an action based on their own philosophy of what is right. It also presents a dilemma for utilitarians aiming to convert the public to their moral theory. Why are people so sensitive to being used as means rather than a side-effect? They’re the same damn outcome.
Neuroscientist Joshua Greene, for instance, believes that there is an apparent contradiction between a willingness to pull the lever in the first scenario and an unwillingness to push the fat man in the second. One dies in either case, and that person doesn’t care if he was a means to an end or a side-effect.
Greene argues that our evolved minds have created irrational intuitions which prevent us from making coherent ethical decisions. To Greene, the different reactions to the various alterations of the Trolley problem (flipping a switch vs. pushing a fat man) are morally equivalent, and it’s nothing more than our Pleistocene brains that keep us from seeing this.
But this is mistaken; it entirely ignores people’s responsibility.
Pushing someone onto the tracks versus changing the train tracks are two different scenarios, despite their same outcomes. Pushing someone onto a moving train, even to save more lives, is still murder, while the harm resulting from changing the tracks lacks the intent required for murder (or mens rea).
The fat man was forced in front of the trolley; he’s not responsible for his harm. However, the one person killed in the switch case was cluelessly on a trolley track. It’s his responsibility to be aware of incoming trolleys.
The trolley problem creates the illusion of being an ethical question since it asks about an action where lives are on the line. Because our actions might lead to death, they must relate to some moral duty.
But it doesn’t. Anyone driving a trolley or standing on trolley tracks is responsible for the harm caused by their recklessness. People are morally obligated not to cause harm, not become heroes, especially when the act of heroism harms another.
My response to the trolley problem? Don’t recklessly hang out on trolley tracks!
The Contractual Response to the Trolley Problem
Since ethical principles are determined by what free people could not reasonably reject, and any duty to rescue in the trolley problem would require violating one’s duty not to cause harm, neither principle clearly applies, and there is no moral duty. When two principles conflict, the matter is outside of ethics.
However, say you are unsatisfied with my above argument, believing that a duty must apply. Outcomes are outcomes anyway, and the two trolley problem scenarios both lead to the same outcome. If we agree on our duty to rescue in the switch scenario, how could we not have a duty in the footbridge scenario? How can you say that the victims are responsible?
But contractualism has a clear answer: Free people would never agree to be used as a means, but are willing to accept a certain amount of risk.
Let me provide another scenario provided by T.M. Scanlon.1 Let's compare two scenarios.
In the first case, an electrical worker at a television station suffers an accident and receives extremely painful electrical shocks. Unfortunately, he cannot be saved unless the electricity is turned off for 15 minutes and, consequently, millions of people miss out on valuable TV time. Should the worker be saved at the expense of the welfare of millions?
In the second case, a developer is deciding whether to build a television station to provide valuable TV time to millions. However, from examining the accident numbers, it seems like every time a television station is built, at least one person gets electrocuted to the same extent as in the first case.
Despite meeting all the safety regulations and the builders being willing participants, the developer knows that if he goes ahead with the television station project, at least one builder will be gruesomely electrocuted. So should he go ahead with building it? Is there a difference between the two cases, even though the same pain is traded off for the same pleasure?
Yes, and yes! There is a difference between being cruelly used as a means to other people’s utility and freely taking on risks.
No free person would ever reasonably agree to their body being used to emit electrical signals so that viewers can enjoy their show. However, people would reasonably agree to work on behalf of an electrical company whose work poses the same risk of the same harm. Even though the outcome is effectively the same (the equal risk of electrical pain), they are fundamentally different choices.
We accept risks every day, but cannot accept being used for others’ benefit. With public roads, we accept the risk that we will be mangled in a car accident, but we would not accept our mangled bodies to serve as pavement for a highway. We accept the risk that the justice system might unintentionally find an innocent man guilty, but we would not accept a system that purposefully finds the innocent man guilty to appease an angry mob.
We understand that there are risks in the world, and it is our responsibility to deal with them and our right not to be used as a mere means to someone else’s utility. Whether the developer chooses to build the television station in the second scenario is his choice, not a moral quandary, since it respects the choices and responsibility of others. So yes, Joshua Greene, we care if we are used as means as opposed to only bearing the risks of side effects.
Pushing the fat man onto the footbridge is the only wrong answer to the trolley problem. However, the thought experiment itself rests outside of ethics to mere preference. It is about as ethical as the famous “Would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?”
There is no we should to the trolley problem, where reason imposes a clear duty, only an I would.
Freedom as the Residual of Reason
When objective reason can no longer serve as a guide, the subjective self is responsible for the path ahead.
This doesn’t provide an answer to certain moral dilemmas, but it does recognize that the individual is ultimately responsible for providing that answer.
The last of the three above-listed questions (Should you go to war for your country or care for your ailing mother? ) comes from Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay “Existentialism and Human Emotion.” In this scenario, Sartre describes a young man torn between joining the Free French resistance or staying home to care for his mother.
Sartre describes his advice to the dilemma-stricken man:
in coming to see me he knew the answer I was going to give him, and I had only one answer to give: ‘You're free, choose, that is, invent.’ No general ethics can show you what is to be done; there are no omens in the world.
All schools of thought have their own advice for the young man. Utilitarianism, Kantianism, virtue ethics, and religious doctrines each offer their own guidance, and their strongest advocates consider them unequivocally correct. However, the ultimate choice is left with the young man and the advice he consciously chooses to take.
You cannot outsource all your decisions to ethical theorists, religious authorities, or anyone else who claims to have a clear answer. These hard decisions are ultimately your own to make, and you are responsible for the outcome. Reason can offer no comfort from the exercise of your authentic self.
See T.M. Scanlon’s “What We Owe to Each Other” pg. 235-236.