Old Ethical Dilema

[sharkythesharkdogg]

Of course both choices are awful because someone dies either way. but you're looking at it as choosing to kill someone. This is incorrect since you have no choice in whether or not someone dies. The only choice you have to make is whether or not to save four people. And I can't see any argument for how, given what we know, choosing not to save four people isn't better than choosing to save one. You can talk about wanting to refuse to accept a utilitarian notion of ethics, but what you want to accept isn't really that relevant. You either save four people or you save one. We can sit around talking about the value of even a single human life until the cows come home, but with no other information, saving four is a better choice than saving one when either outcome is guaranteed.

This is mostly just semantical footwork to explain the situation in a more positive fashion. It is just like good marketing. It doesn't change the fact of the situation, but makes one look more appealing than the other. Saying you are "saving five lives" instead of killing one, merely brings to the fore the rescue and puts the death to the background. I would rather say that no single life is more important than another. Moreover, it is hard to say that five are necessarily more important than one. Abstractly, without reference to the character of the individual, I have a hard time to accept that fives lives are greater than one. I can see problems with such a statement, problems that I haven't quite resolved myself but I also think the solution lies in my own understanding of the world and the impossibility to measure the value of a life. Five impossible to measure lives do not necessarily outweigh or balance one immeasurable life.

I see what you're trying to say here but it's more than just fancy footwork. We'll use you're own spin and see how it works.

"I saved a life." It's correct, and it would be a positive spin to the fact that by not pulling the switch you let 5 people die. I know it's difficult to put a value on that one life, but it's equally difficult to put a value on the other 5. You say one immeasurable life is difficult to weigh against 5 immeasurable lives, but let's do the classic example of upping the stakes. Switching the track will keep the whole train from derailing, killing 300. Or derailing into a busy metro area, killing thousands. When does it become less of a perfect ideal in your mind versus a sad truth that you must pull the switch? In this case, the best anyone can do is attempt to save as many lives as possible. Inaction doesn't make someone morally correct, it just makes them indecisive and unwilling to accept the situation they've been forced into.

A person may not like it, in fact I hope they wouldn't, but once they are aware of the situation given and aware of the way they can affect that situation they are inextricably involved in that situation. Choosing to not pull the switch doesn't make them uninvolved, it is simply them making the choice to save that one life/kill 5.