The Trolley Problem (continuing)

In the previous posts, I give an introduction to normative ethics. Those three theories (utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics) are traditional perspectives in philosophy as we mention moral law. However, there are still some points of view raised to deal with moral problems in 20^th century. That is what I want to use and what I prefer for solving the trolley problem.

It is existentialism(存在主義). In particular, I want to introduce the theory from Jean Paul Sartre (保羅‧沙特), whose quote “existence precedes essence” is widely known. Sartre believes that there are no pre-existing moral guidelines that determine how we must act in the dilemma. We are forced to create our moral values through our choice, and we have no choice but to make a choice. Moreover, in Sartre’s theory, if we deny that we have the responsibility to make our choice in the moral dilemma, such as following the religion or moral systems, then we must be humiliating our humanity of free will and act in “bad faith”.

Therefore, in the trolley problem, we may give such an answer: there are no absolute objective morality here! We could only create our own morality by choosing whether to divert the way or not. After all, we will never know what we may do if we really face the choice in the trolley problem. We even don’t know whether we will make the same choice in the same condition if we choose again. In our erratic free will, the enigma of humanity lies. 

The Trolley Problem -- An Introduction and discussion about Normative Ethics (continuing)

In the previous post, we talked about utilitarianism. Now, let’s carry on our discussion with deontology. Deontological ethics is widely known and usually associated with Immanuel Kant (康德), who considers morality to be a universal rule depending on the motives , or good will, in other words. That is, an act is moral if and only if everyone can do that way and will be considered moral doing that way. It implies that the morality is “absolute”, “impersonal”, and ”universal”.

More precisely, Kant believes that any human beings should not be thought of as a means to an end because humanity is the end itself! Hence, in the trolley problem, if you divert the trolley, then you seem to treat that one worker on the sidetrack as a means to save 5 lives. It will be seen as immoral in Kant theory.

However, there’s a question remained:

How can we explain the choice of sacrificing five instead of one?

The answer lies in duties, which is another important perspective in deontology. Kant thinks that as we make our choices, we should take responsibility for them. Perhaps we can’t deny that you have made a choice in your mind whether you switch the direction or not, but Kant thinks that we can’t attribute the responsibility of 5 death to you if you don’t do anything. That is because there aren’t any better solutions here! For instance, for someone who can’t swim, we will not blame him for not saving the man drawn in the river. We can do nothing in both cases, so the duties will not be imposed on us.

The Trolley Problem -- An Introduction and discussion about Normative Ethics (continuing)

Let’s home in on utilitarianism first. The utilitarianism claims that the best moral decision is to maximize utility. In other words, the more pleasure and happiness for more people the action can lead to, the more moral the action is.

In the trolley problem, we’ve known that utilitarianism assumes five people’s lives are more valuable than one. This aspect is severely denounced by those who believes the value of lives can’t be quantified. They think that if lives can be seen in that way, then our lives are ”objectified”(物化), which means lives are similarly to money, commodities, etcetera, and can be controlled or manipulated by other people. From this point of view, objectification may obliterate our personality. Therefore, the trolley problem should be discussed in concerns of our backgrounds, identities and life experience, which is who we are in other words.

However, those who believes in utilitarianism will reply that we use the quantity of lives to decide the utility just because the quantity of lives is the ”only information” we have in this thought experiment. After all, the problem must be discussed in qualitative researches before quantitative researches. Hence, exclusive of our personality, if we just think about the difference between “five workers” and “one worker”, we may not deny that “five workers” is the one of more value.

Actually, the biggest defect and merit of using utilitarianism both lie in simplification. That is, we simplify the condition so as to make a decision more easily. This is why this method are used more to deal with some controversial issues by the government. Perhaps the government will not insist that the decision of most utility is the most moral method, but the government will at least claim that it is necessary evil to make such a decision.

To be continued……

The Trolley Problem -- An Introduction and discussion about Normative Ethics (continuing)

 (continuing)
     The third approach is virtue ethics (德行論/行為者倫理學), which consider morality mostly on the role or characteristic of a people who do the act. More precisely, the judgement of good and evil will depend on not only the act you do but also who you are. That is because the people with different backgrounds, different identities, and different life experiences will perhaps be obligated with different duties. For example, what we expect a teacher to do may not be the same as what we anticipate a student doing, and hence we shouldn’t hold up the same standard for both teachers and students for the same act. In this case, those who support this concept will insist that we can’t define or determine the morality just by the given information due to the difference between each person.

The trolley problem caused a sensation in recent years because the Harvard professor, Michael Sandel, discussed about this problem in his lecture. Moreover, after he published his writing, Justice— What’s the Right Things to Do(正義──一場思辨之旅), the problem has been more and more widespread in the world. In fact, Sandel is a supporter of the third approach. Therefore, if you take a lesson in his class, you will probably find out that he raise the issue just wanting to criticize utilitarianism and deontology. And perhaps the third approach has gradually developed to be the mainstream solution to the problem.

However, if you ponder on the third approach, you may find some extra disadvantages of the concept, such as vagueness. That is, who, in the trolley problem, should be criticized for diverting the trolley? Because we only reply that “the information is insufficient”, there would be the next question here: with what given information will we be able to judge good and evil for diverting the trolley? Perhaps there aren’t any precise standard we can set up to answer the question above. Hence, maybe it’s time to revisit the first and second approach and rethink about the advantage and disadvantage of them. 

To be continued…….

For more information, watch the video of Sandel's lecture:
     http://www.justiceharvard.org/2011/03/episode-01/