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/