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……