What makes an action right · Quiz question 2/35
The Trolley Problem (Switch Case)
Pull the lever and 1 dies instead of 5. Would you? Where the trolley problem came from (Philippa Foot, Judith Jarvis Thomson) and what philosophers actually think.
A runaway trolley is heading for 5 people. If you pull the lever next to you, it switches tracks and kills the 1 person standing there instead.
Pulling the lever is the right thing to do.
British philosopher Philippa Foot introduced it in a 1967 paper on abortion and the doctrine of double effect — in her version, the person deciding was the tram driver. American philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson named it the "trolley problem" in 1976 and in 1985 developed today's version with a bystander at the lever.
On outcomes alone, it's easy: 5 lives beat 1. And most people — and most philosophers — do pull the lever. The trouble is that the same math applied to other cases sends our intuitions the opposite way (see The Footbridge and The Transplant Surgeon).
Foot's point was to test two distinctions: killing vs. letting die, and intending harm vs. merely foreseeing it. When you pull the lever, the 1 death is foreseen but isn't your goal or your means. The Catholic tradition's doctrine of double effect uses exactly that difference to allow pulling the lever while forbidding pushing someone off a footbridge.
Saving more lives is right. No reason to hesitate between 5 and 1.
Key names: Jeremy Bentham, Peter SingerThe 1 death is a side effect, not a means, so it's permitted — using a person as a means is different.
Key names: Foot, Thomson (1985), Frances KammThe moment you pull, you become the one who kills. The duty not to kill outweighs the duty to rescue.
Key names: Thomson (changed her view in 2008), Bernard Williams on integrityIn the 2020 PhilPapers Survey, about 63% of philosophers said they'd switch the track.