The Trolley Problems

In a moral dilemma, using a process that considers making the most people happy may be the best outcome. Radbruch, Leget, Bahr, Müller-Busch, Ellershaw, de Conno, & Vanden Berghe (2016) defines assisted suicide as “a person intentionally helping another person to terminate his or her life, at that person’s voluntary and competent request” (pg. 5). With this definition, the patient is in complete understanding of outcome of their decision. So applying the utilitarian theory, it would be to allow patients that fit all the criteria the choice of physician assisted suicide as it would provide them the happiness of having that as a choice. This is an important choice to have because as it states in the same article, “patients must be suffering unbearably, with no prospect of improvement, but the illness does not have to be terminal” (Radbruch et al, 2016, pg. 4). Why should someone wanting to go through with a physician assisted suicide be forced to live a life they do not want? Also, having this choice would make the greatest amount of happiness for most number of patients because the patient would feel like a burden emotionally and financially to their families. So in order to save their family from seeing them grow worse from the

Most people would pull the lever to divert the train onto the tracks where only one person is working. To throw the switch in order to maximize well-being, saving five workers corresponds with the ethical example of utilitarianism. Utilitarians believe the most ethical course of action is the one that offers the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Orphan trains and Carlisle and the ways people from the past undermined the minorities and children of America. The film "The orphan Trains" tells us the story of children who were taken from the streets of New York City and put on trains to rural America. A traffic in immigrant children were developed and droves of them teamed the streets of New York (A People's History of the United States 1492-present, 260). The streets of NYC were dirty, overcrowded, and dangerous. Just as street gangs had female auxiliaries, they also had farm leagues for children (These are the Good Old Days, 19). During the time of the late 1800's and early 1900's many people were trying to help children. Progressive reformers, often called

In this paper, I will explicate how a Utilitarian and a Kantian would understand the Trolley Problem and describe why I consider the Utilitarian approach to fare better in the case of the Trolley Problem. On one hand, a Utilitarian, a believer in the philosophy of Utilitarianism, believes that a morally admirable action is one that helps the maximum number of people. A Kantian, on the other hand, is a believer and follower of the Kantian ethics, which fundamentally preach that the correctness or wrongness of one’s actions depends on if one carries out one’s duty, and not on the consequences of one’s actions. In order to further understand the perspectives of these two philosophies, I will explain how they would comprehend the Trolley Problem, which is, essentially, a theoretical moral predicament where a trolley is speeding down a railway track and five people are tied to the track and a bystander has two options: either pull a lever, divert the train to an alternate railway track with one person on it and kill that one person and save five people, and thus intentionally commit homicide, or the bystander doesn’t pull the lever and lets five people die, therefore submissively allowing five deaths.

To apply utilitarianism to this ethical controversy one has to evaluate which option would benefit society

The complexity of the Trolley problem is one that can be resolved by unravelling the concept itself and considering the multipe possible analogies, the use of which is very important in the understanding and answering of ethical questions such as the Trolley problem . The trolley problem mainly deals with the law in relation in to morality, how public policy dictates or influences legality. Finding the most ethical solution to the problem is what is required of those who dare undertaking solving this problem

These cases pose great difficulties for the Utilitarian. (Many (if not all?)have to do with what Jonathan Glover calls THE ACTS AND OMISSIONS DOCTRINE; this states that `in certain contexts, failure to perform an act, with certain foreseen bad consequences of that failure, is morally less bad than to perform a different act which has identical foreseen bad consequences.'(Thus it is worse to KILL someone than merely to LET SOMEONE DIE (or to let someone else kill them. Thus some Catholics would justify the bombing of military targets in The Second World War even when such bombing was bound to cause civilian casualties). The Utilitarian is committed to REJECTING The Acts and Omissions Doctrine; but this seems unacceptable. (Failing to send money to the starving is wrong, but it is not as wrong as sending the starving poisoned food – Philippa Foot).

For example, let’s suppose there was a scenario where you are at a swimming pool, there is a child swimming, parents leave for a few minutes, there is no one else around, child is drowning and if you don’t do anything, if you can’t find the parents what would you do? Most people say in that case “It is not just you would have an option to save the child but you are positively, morally obligated to save the child.” This might seem like it causes a problem for my view about the trolley problem because it seems analogous like you are the only person who could save the people’s lives but my response is that this is not a good analogy. In case of a drowning child, there is nobody else that has to die in order for you to save the child it is just a choice between one person dead or not. But in this case, it is a choice between five people being dead or one person being dead and you actively have to do something to kill them.

In a similar vein, utilitarians might further argue that, not only does the calculation work out to favor the one death over the two deaths, but that Amy and Bianca’s parents have a moral obligation to save only Amy’s life. Because of the consequentialist nature of utilitarianism,

Sandel opened his discussion with the audience through four stories followed by audience responses to, What's the right thing to do?" Story one was about five workers on a trolley which does not have working breaks. If the trolley crash, all five passengers will die. However, there is a worker working on the track. The moral dilemma is, do they allow the trolley to keep straight and crash killing all five passengers, or do they use the steering wheel to turn, resulting in the death of the worker that is working on the track?

A man ends up in a South American town in front of a group of 20 inhabitants who had protested against the government and were about to be killed as punishment and to serve as warning. Understanding that the man, Jim, had ended up in the town by accident, they decide to honor him as a visitor and give him the privilege of killing one of the Indians. As a result, the other 19 will be set free. The utilitarian response to this is that Jim should kill the one man. The utilitarian must again forget his integrity and act for the greater good. Although his best benefit may be to not kill one man, he must consider the complete picture; he is saving the lives of 19 people.

The issues of morality are most clearly expressed through examples of different methods of analyzing a situation. The case of Holmes, an officer in charge of a sinking ship, shows the striking differences between philosopher Immanuel Kant’s beliefs and those of the Utilitarians. After Holmes’ ship sinks, there are twenty passengers in a lifeboat that is only meant to hold fourteen people. There was no time to send out a signal for help before the ship sank, so no rescue is guaranteed and the nearest land is fifteen hundred miles away. Holmes decides to force the wounded passengers and those wearing life jackets off of the lifeboat and make his way to shore without them. This action

Is it worth it if an individual is going to be sad and unhappy the rest of their life. No one truly wins at the end because there are people left upset with the decision made. Utilitarianism does not look at the overall picture of what a person wants to do for themselves. Their view is only one sided and does not look at other options if everyone is not benefited then a person cannot choose it. A person can never know if the choice they made was the one that mostly benefited people. Maybe the other choice could have been better. A person never really knows since there are many different scenarios that can occur with different decisions. When it came to Rachel dying The Dark Knight was very unhappy with his choice and was it really worth it at the

Throughout life, individuals are often faced with a multitude of moral dilemmas which can be difficult to assess given the factors of the situation and consequences, based on what is right and wrong. In this paper I will be assessing the Trolley Problem in relation to Utilitarianism and Deontology and will conclude which theory is the best way to behave given the situation. In the first paragraph, I will begin by discussing the Trolley Problem followed by the next paragraph’s which will explaining how Utilitarianism and Deontology would approach the situation. Furthermore, I will be discussing which theory I believe is right in regards to the best way to behaving in society, given the possible outcomes of the problem. Since the moral issue of killing and letting die are close in hand, Deontology is the only explainable way to behave because this theory approaches all situations in regard to what is fair and acceptable for all, while Utilitarianism takes an approach that degrades humanity and differs from person to person.

The trolley problem can be expanded to discuss a number of related ethical dilemmas, all referring to the conflicts inherent in utilitarianism and consequentialist ethics. The problem with the trolley driver scenario is that the driver is faced with a choice of whether to infringe on the rights of one man (the man on the tracks) or whether to allow the trolley to crash, thereby killing the five people on board. The driver is stuck between two equally unfortunate situations, and the issue calls into question whether it is more ethical to save five lives than it is to refrain from infringing on the life on an innocent man. Inherent to the problem is the fact that it is impossible to know whether the diversion of the trolley will in fact save the five lives.