"No, obviously. That would be monstrous."
This feels like begging the question. Why is it obvious that a doctor shouldn't kill one patient to save five? It seems like it is obvious because we have an overwhelmingly strong intuition that it is wrong. Given that there are many people who have an overwhelmingly strong intuition that being gay is wrong, I'm unsure if it's a good idea to just rely on that intuition, and leave it there.
I don't know whether it is because I have examined that case more closely but I think it can be thought throught.
If you had doctors who were known to organ harvest then anybody submitting to be their patient would risk getting harvested. This is not merely possible but kind of justifiable. It is so justifiable that even if a harvesting would save more lives more immedietly the effect of people not seeking medical treatment would easily displace this benefit.
On the contrary if all the patetients are super glued in tot he decision making it becomes more natu... (read more)
If you go to Harvard Law School, one of the first classes you'll take is called "Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do?" It starts with the trolley problem.
Students are asked "Should you pull the lever?"
They're both wrong. The question is underspecified. The right answer is "It depends."
Heck yeah!
Of course not.
Those hypothetical situations cheat the problem. The purpose of the trolley problem is to compare one positive value against another positive value. Let's do that.
Yes, obviously. Your job is to maximize the combat effectiveness of your fighting force.
No, obviously. That would be monstrous. Even if it weren't, the negative externalities would overwhelm your proximate benefit.
If the answer to an ethical question is always the same, regardless of context, then you can reason about it as a context-free abstraction. But answers to ethical questions are usually context-dependent.
If I took the class I'd ask "What year is it? Where am I? Who am I? Who's in the trolley? Who's on the tracks? Who designed the trolley? Who is responsible for the brake failure? Do I work for the trolley company? If so, what are its standard operating procedures for this situation? What would my family think? Would either decision affect my future job prospects? Is there a way for me to fix the systemic problem of trolleys crashing in thought experiments? Can I film the crash and post the video online?"
By the time I get answers to half those questions, the trolley will have crashed, thus resolving the dilemma.