Trolley Case: Negatively Affected By Death Of Man A

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.

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.

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.

Sophisticated consequentialism is a hybrid, as it adopts the ideological tenants of both modalities of consequentialism and allows for the nuance of personal relationships to at times, override the adherence to a presumed action based upon the tenants of consequentialism. The sophisticated consequentialist may accept the reality that saving their one true love, is ideologically less beneficial than saving the three strangers, however the consequentialist would also take into the account of their personal feelings and the perceived total good that they may experience with that person over a lifetime as more beneficial than saving a higher quantity of strangers. At this, the sophisticated consequentialist is adopting the subjective consequentialist view of the intent to save one’s love, and experience more moments with them and bring about a higher amount of happiness than saving those three strangers. In this, I believe that sophisticated consequentialism is giving credence and importance to the personal point of view, as a textbook definition of a consequentialist theory would point to saving the

Philosophy consists of two major theories which aim to deny and validate moral rules and principles: deontology and utilitarianism ethics. These two perspectives give philosophy its wide range of concepts and decisions to frame our lives, giving structure to what we believe is right and wrong. More often than not, these concepts bring argument to what has already been set in stone by tough, controversial philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham due to the nature of the topics and sensitivity they cause. In this essay, I look to discuss the trolley example in relation to deontology and utilitarianism; what each of these concepts tells us about the best way to behave in the example, and concluding with which concept is right?

To begin with, the Trolley case is an experiment where you are put into a situation where you are on a runaway trolley where the breaks do not work and you are headed for five people and you can either hit the five people, killing them or save them by turning the trolley hitting one person and killing him. There is another scenario called the Footbridge case where you are in the same situation but in order to save the five people you have to push a fat man off a bridge stopping the trolley. This is very interesting experiment that questions human ethics and morality. It makes you think whether or not it is morally permissible to turn the trolley. I argue that there is an important moral difference between the Trolley case and the Footbridge case because there is a difference between letting someone die to save people and killing someone to save people.

Consequentialism and non-consequentialism are both action based ethical frameworks that people can use to make ethical judgments. Consequentialism is based on examining the consequences of one’s actions as opposed to non-consequentialism which is focused on whether the act is right or wrong regardless of the outcome (Burgh, Field & Freakley, 2006). The three sub-categories of consequentialism are altruism, utilitarianism and egoism.

In Thomson’s Trolley Problem the bystander must not flip the switch due to the difference between doing and allowing. As the bystander is not the driver, the decision he must make is either allow five to die or kill one. The death of the five workmen cannot be blamed on the bystander since if the bystander was not there, there would be no one to flip the switch the five workmen would die and the one workman would remain unharmed. However, if the bystander was to flip the switch he would have greater responsibility for the death of the one worker because if the bystander wasn’t there the worker would have survived.

According to consequentialism, the right or wrong thing to do depends on what would lead to the best outcome; so each act is either morally required or morally forbidden. We can presume so that a consequentialist who finds himself in the situation of Jim

The Trolley Driver, Transplant and Bystander at the Switch are different situations to approach and analyze questions of morality. Firstly, what is the difference between letting something happen and directly affecting an outcome? And what does morality require or forbid in each situation? To answer these questions, I will be using Jeremy Bentham’s approach of utilitarianism.

1. Consequentialist moral theories see the moral rightness or wrongness of actions as a function of their results. If the consequences are sufficiently good, the action is right; if they are sufficiently bad, the action is wrong. However, nonconsequentialist theories see other factors as also relevant to the determination of right and wrong.

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.

Thanks for your participation yesterday in the trolley-car thought experiment. I know the experiment required you to suspend disbelief and imagine a set of conditions that would not likely apply in the “real” world, but the assumptions built into the thought experiment serve a purpose; they are designed to bring to the surface common moral intuitions that many of us have, and eliciting these moral intuitions helps shed light on Socrates’ method of argument.

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.

Conclusion: Therefore for the above case I would say that the passenger would succeed in his negligence claim against the tramway authorities. As there was a duty of care owed by the driver and tramway authority which they had breached in result the plaintiff was