The trolley problem
Philippa Foot · 1967
A runaway trolley is hurtling down the track. Straight ahead, five people are working on the line and cannot escape in time. You are standing next to a switch: by pulling it, you can divert the trolley onto a side track. But one person is working on that track, and will be killed if you act. If you do nothing, the five die; if you pull the switch, one person dies, by your hand. You have only seconds to decide. A variant: imagine now there is no switch, but a footbridge over the track, and beside you a heavy man. The only way to stop the trolley and save the five would be to push him onto the track: his body would stop the trolley, but he would die. The balance is the same, one life against five, and yet almost everyone would pull the switch without hesitation, but would refuse to push the man.
Would you pull the switch? And what makes such a choice right or wrong: the number of lives saved, or the fact of causing a death yourself?
What it does in the debate
Objects to Consequentialismattacks the position
Divert the trolley or push a man off a footbridge: same balance, one death for five, but opposite verdicts. The difference cannot come from consequences; so something else decides.
- Compare two cases with an identical balance. In the first, one diverts the trolley by a switch; in the second, one can stop it only by pushing a man off a footbridge onto the track. Each time: one life lost, five saved.
- For the consequentialist, the two cases are equal, same balance so same verdict. Yet almost everyone judges that one may divert, but may not push.
- This difference of judgment cannot come from the consequences, which are identical: it lies in the way the good is produced, using a man as a mere means being not the same as causing his death as a side effect.
Therefore So consequences are not the whole of the right: the way of getting there counts too. An act can remain forbidden, when it treats a person as a pure instrument, even as it maximizes the good.