The Trolley Problem is a famous thought experiment and ethical dilemma that originates from Philippa Foot’s “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect,” wherein she poses a series of ethical dilemmas, one of which, about a tram, being what would become known as the Trolley Problem. She says to imagine that a judge is “the driver of a runaway tram which he can only steer from one narrow track on to another; five men are working on one track and one man on the other; anyone on the track he enters is bound to be killed.”[1] The judge in question had just prior been put to another test, wherein he was expected to choose between mass violence or condemning someone who is innocent. She says that the controversy surrounds problems such as this:
Suppose that a judge or magistrate is faced with rioters demanding that a culprit be found for a certain crime and threatening otherwise to take their own bloody revenge on a particular section of the community. The real culprit being unknown, the judge sees himself as being able to prevent the bloodshed only by framing some innocent person and having him executed.[2]
Foot is particularly interested in addressing these dilemmas as they relate to the Principle of Double Effect, which suggests that it is permissible to do foreseen harm in the case that it is not intended but only of secondary consequence. She gives examples such as hospitals refraining from giving an abortion to save a woman’s life, but allowing a hysterectomy of a cancerous uterous that results in the same fate, due to the fact that abortion is intended to kill the baby and the other only allows the baby’s death to occur as a consequence of saving the woman. Foot ends her paper by letting the reader know that she was just shedding light on the existence of these dilemmas and was not posing a solution.
Today, the Trolley Problem sometimes includes also her fat man (who, in another example, gets stuck leading others out of a cave, to leave them the dilemma to blast him out so they can survive or not), or else just another random person, who is lashed on one set of tracks while five other individuals are lashed to another, leaving the listener to answer if they pull the lever to kill the fat man in order to save the five others.
These are ethical dilemmas because there is no obvious answer to any of them. The answer from utilitarianism is that the individual is obligated to preserve the greatest good of the greatest number by flipping the switch to kill the one instead of the many. The answer from the categorical imperative is that it is never acceptable to treat another human being as a means to an end, even if to save others. There seems to be some weight to both of these answers, such that this appears to be an area of moral ambiguity.
The moral ambiguity of the situation is such that the actor seems to be inculpable. Whether to save many or to avoid killing one, the intention is unquestionably good, though falling short of the Greatest Good, that of saving everyone. The only individual surely culpable is the originator of the scenario, who, if a second party, may be trying to pass responsibility or focus to the third party, who is looking onward, or to cause confusion. Foot’s description of the judge approached by rioters seems eerily similar to the story of Jesus of Nazareth and perhaps also to other heretics, radicals, and scapegoats of all kinds. In the case of Jesus, the Pharisees had brought him to Pontius Pilate, demanding his execution, and, though he did not break any Roman laws, Pilate washed his hands of the innocent blood and allowed the Pharisees to try and condemn him under their own customary law. There are countless others who have similarly died unjust deaths or who have faced undue persecution, from Socrates to Bruno and beyond. How much did this kind of dynamic of causing innocent deaths—black magic?— play into things?
I argue that the ambiguity is itself what is perfectly moral, and an important safeguard built into the framework of the Great Game that is Nature. I think that the fact that different individuals will answer in different ways provides exactly the kind of unpredictability necessary to ensure that the fully mechanical or cybernetic, causal rigging of society cannot be ever achieved, but remains an insurmountable goal. If individuals could count on the buck being passed or not, they could act accordingly, such that establishing situations of moral gray areas involving third parties could be utilized to carry out some very dastardly things. As always, Nature ensures that there can only be enough evil to allow for the Best Possible World, and never enough to triumph over the Greatest Good. But, for there to be a necessary, even good evil, evil must have its victims.
Biological systems are ultimately binary in their foundations. They can either go one way or another. For instance, it is common among ethnic groups, such as those of Papua New Guinea especially, to display two male phenotypes, one that is more robust and another that is more gracile. These kinds of probabilistic outcomes establish a situation that is favorable toward adaptation, because the population can be selected for more gracility or robustness as is found climatically and environmentally necessary. In a way, Nature appears to function according to a sort of Boolean logic.
Social animals, especially males, have agonistic relationships, meaning that they are in constant competition with one another over territory, but have social instincts that govern their behaviors similar to rules of a game. Similarly, in Ancient Greece, the agon was the spirit of a fair competition, or what may be known colloquially as a good game, one that is pursued for the ends of the experience itself, even more than for the pursuit of a victor. A good game generally requires that there be an even playing field and fair terms, such that a struggle can occur. It is the struggle that was demanded among the Greeks more than the crushing of an opponent, and similarly it is struggle that the survival of the fittest demands of us. A good game between humans, especially today, is one in which the opponents are fairly matched and on fair grounds for competition. It also requires good sportsmanship, or proper behavior from the players, such as not cheating and not arguing with calls made by the referees. Thus, there is attention given to a fair playing field and to adhesion to the rules, and these are basic components of an agon. In Nature, Nature herself is the referee, and she makes the calls. Sometimes those calls are not favorable, and may even seem unfair. But Nature is the referee.
It seems as though the categorical and utilitarian forces function— in the Trolley Problem— similarly to other binaries in nature, providing a range of probabilities that allow for success to occur within them. In particular, these forces under this scenario seem to mirror the forces of supply and demand in economics. It would be foolish to assume that one side or the other gets an absolute say or presence, at expense of the other. In economics, if either supply or demand had an absolute say, this would amount to different forms of theft, whether of money by the producer or of goods by the consumer. Instead, both sides exert their pressures, and sometimes one side comes out a little more on top, but never for the rest of time, in a way similarly to a bull stag’s or silverback gorilla’s agonistic claim over a given territory. It is the balance between that bears the fruits, a workable price for goods and services. Similarly, it seems as though the balance between categorical and utilitarian decisions keep us from being stuck in a world of either hyper-realism or hyper-idealism, and present us instead with an organic and pragmatic present which remains forever unable to be commandeered by any one given party or interest group. Nature seems to ensure this in the form of probability or phenomenal uncertainly.
The basis of all morality is self-preservation. Clearly, the individuals of the Trolley Problem who have been put into the situation of being fated have already lost in this pursuit, and so saving the individuals is not a matter of their worthiness to live, but a matter of the onlooker’s preference, to that extent to which doom is certain at all. That is, the doomed individuals have failed in their pursuit of self-preservation, leaving their preservation to be in the hands of others. That they have failed in self-preservation means that their survival, in itself, is not itself a consideration of morality, but that other factors may be considered by those whose hands their fate is now in. Any action or inaction is according to the preference of the onlooker, and as suits their conscience. This is a matter of natural fact. The onlooker, in effect, owns the individuals who have lost control over their lives, by having the say in what happens without having the responsibility for acquiring that say. The individuals, abandoned to the environment, have, in effect, become a part of the land, the commons, to the extent that they are indeed fated.
If the onlookers have no one to hold them to account, they may allow for all of the parties to be killed, or may even enslave them, and this is no more or less good or right, in the eyes of Nature, except according to the degree to which their choices assist their own self-preservation and contribute toward their wellbeing and success, the wellbeing and success of the others having already been negated except by potential acts of compassion by onlookers. Survival and fecundity are the moral standards of Nature. The survivors, however, won’t have their negligent deaths or slavery sanctioned so long as their human qualities—the conati— prevent it, or so long as their human expression is desired for preservation by others willing to stop the onlooker from allowing for their doom or ensnaring them in it. These same others may also desire to punish the onlooker for making a choice disagreeable to them, and they may have the natural agency to accomplish this punishment. As such, the onlooker needs to seriously consider what the context of the situation they are in is before deciding whether to act or not. As with the individuals who are faced with impending doom, the onlooker has him- or herself been situated in an unfortunate condition, and likewise has their own fate left to the choices and opinions of those who will either sanction or punish the onlooker’s action or inaction.
This suggests that the most virtuous option for the onlooker is to be aware and involved in the establishment of the operating principles or laws of the onlooker’s society, so that the onlooker can appeal to mutually-agreeable and a priori terms for resolving the dilemma, but while also knowing when to go against those principles when “reverse psychology” or realpolitik may be utilized to achieve some desired ends. In my case, I would tend to favor liberal treatment for those involved in resolving naturally-occurring Trolley Problems and illiberal treatment for those involved in resolving man-made or “staged” Trolley Problems, because the second involves human intentions to which the party may have been informed. In other words, my approach to casuistry would be to generally allow for choice between the saving of small groups or certain individuals when the problem is caused by forces of Nature, and would probably tend to be utilitarian in many of those cases, but would harshly penalize those who make the choice wrong when it comes to things done by humans, and would tend toward the categorical in such instances. Of course, in order to preserve Nature’s solution to the Trolley Problem, I would apply each non-absolutely unless each problem can be rigorously addressed so as to a priori prevent realpolitik from being able to occur. Each event is otherwise best judged on a case-by-case basis, with consideration to what outcome is most conducive to the wellbeing of all as a matter of contingent principle.
References
Foot, Philippa, “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect” (N/A) Accessed 2024: https://www2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ362/hallam/Readings/FootDoubleEffect.pdf
[1] Foot
[2] Foot
