In 1967 Phillipa Foot introduced
the “trolley problem”. Many philosophers have modified the problem since then, but
as originally stated goes as follows: a conductor is driving a train onto a set
of tracks with five people tied to the tracks who will die unless he diverts
the train onto a set of tracks with one person on it. (Foot 3) In 1985 Judith
Jarvis Thompson modified the problem, making the actor a bystander, who has the
power to either let the train ride its course or redirect it by pulling a
lever. (Thompson 1). Over the past fifty years, many different philosophers
have come up with answers to this problem, but every answer must deal with the
importance of the bystander’s intention in acting. As such, the different
answers to the trolley problem reveal the role that intention plays in
determining the rightness or wrongness of action in a variety of ethical
theories.
II. Intention: Its Definition and Presence
in The Trolley Problem.
While
there are many theories about what it means for an action to be intentional,
there is consensus about what it means to say that an action has some
particular intention. Much of this consensus originates from G.E.M. Anscombe’s
1957 book Intention. Anscombe poses
an example of a worker who pumps poison water into a house full of Nazi
leaders. She goes through a number of different question that one could ask the
worker, all of which get different answers, but are also describing the same
action. Some of the questions appear to get almost tautological responses (e.g.
'Why are you moving your arms up and down?' 'To operate the water pump' 'Why
are you operating the water pump?' 'To replenish the water supply'). Other
responses, however, are more revealing and unveil some ultimate intention of
action (e.g. 'Why are you replenishing the water supply?' 'To poison it' 'Why
are you poisoning it?' 'To kill the Nazis'). Anscombe's argument is that the
final link in this causal chain represents the intent of an action, as it is
the ultimate intent to which all other intents are subsumed. (Anscombe 41)
While
it is somewhat clear how to identify the intention of actions, assumptions have
to be made in nearly all ethical situations. Since an intention is a subjective
state, it is only accessible to the actor. In the case of the trolley problem,
the assumptions made about intention are generally reasonable, but cannot be
verified. In most cases, it is assumed that if the bystander pulls the lever,
they intend to save five people, while there is not assumption made for the
bystander who doesn’t pull the lever. In a real ethical situation, the
intentions of the actor wouldn’t be entirely determinate, but for the sake of
the problem itself, these assumptions allow moral philosophers to make
arguments about ethical judgments.
II. Approaches to the Trolley
Problem.
A) Utilitarian approach: Utilitarian’s
believe that the only relevant ethical property of action is their expected value
of maximizing happiness and minimizing pain. These philosophers hold that the
bystander should pull the switch and try to save as many lives as possible. Joshua
Greene believes this position to be intuitive, but also that those who have
disagreements with this position are thinking irrationally. To prove this,
Greene analyzed the parts of the brain that are used to make different ethical
judgments, and gave people different moral dilemmas to work out. One dilemma
was the Trolley problem, while the other was as follows: “t's war time, and you
are hiding in a basement with several other people. The enemy soldiers are
outside. Your baby starts to cry loudly, and if nothing is done the soldiers
will find you and kill you, your baby, and everyone else in the basement. The
only way to prevent this from happening is to cover your baby's mouth, but if
you do this the baby will smother to death.” Many people answered that the
bystander should pull the switch in the Trolley problem, but claimed that the
baby should not be killed, where the situation seem ethically analogous. Greene
came up with a sort of “dual-process theory,” in which he argued that humans
are capable of making two sorts of moral judgments. One is a more rational and
logical judgment, made in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, that makes
utilitarian calculations (e.g. it’s better so save five lives than one). The
other forms of ethical judgments, made in the anterior cingulate cortex,
provide more emotional and immediate judgments. (Greene 3)
Greene’s
answer thus reveals that utilitarians do not consider the intentions of actions
to be relevant. He would argue that when one considers the intention of an
action, they are using the irrational part of their brain to make a judgment
that does not actually effect the moral rightness of the action in question.
B) The Doctrine of the Double
Effect: Foot actually introduced the “trolley problem” as a way of arguing for
the “doctrine of the double effect,” or the idea that the direct intention of
an action is more relevant to its ethical rightness or wrongness than the
foreseen consequences of that action. Foot’s argument for this principle is
similar to Greene’s, as it starts from the intuitive judgments that people make
in ethical situations. Foot gives the example of a judge who can stop riots by
framing an innocent person, and argues that most people would say that this is
unethical because part of the judge’s plan is to frame an innocent person, and
is not just a side effect of what the judge is attempting. However, most people
would answer that the bystander should pull the switch because the direct
intent of their action is to save five people, instead of killing one. In
opposition to Greene, Foot does not question this intuition, but instead argues
that it is a necessary precondition to ethical judgment. (Foot 4)
C) The Act-Omission Distinction: Some
believe that the bystander should not pull the switch in the trolley problem.
These philosophers believe there to be a distinction between action and omission,
as individuals can only be held responsible for acting, but not responsible for
failing to act. Among these philosophers is Anscombe, who believes that a
distinction between act and omission must exist. A utilitarian claims that for
an actor to let one die is the same as to kill them, but Anscombe argues that
this could not be the case, since it would imply that to not murder people
would be ethically equal to saving lives, which intuitively cannot be the case.
(Anscombe 68) In terms of the trolley problem, this means that it is wrong for
the bystander to pull the switch, since if they do so they are responsible for
the killing of one person, but would not be responsible for anything if they
let the trolley take its course.
These
philosophers thus consider intention relevant to action, but define action
differently than other philosophers. Instead of taking action to be anything
that a person does, these philosophers believe that actions only take place in
the case that a person performs some willed bodily movement.
III. Conclusion
The
question of the Trolley problem will never be resolved, but it provides a nice
introduction to different schools of thought in philosophical ethics. While the
Trolley problem is not nearly as complicated as most ethical situations, it is
still very effective as an example for demonstrating the beliefs of an ethical
theory.
Works Cited
Anscombe, G. E. M. Intention. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 1958. Print.
Foot, Philippa. "The Problem of Abortion and the
Doctrine of the Double Effect." Virtues
and Vices (1967):
19-32. Web.
Greene, Joshua. "Joshua Greene's Harvard
Homepage." N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2015.
Thomson, Judith Jarvis. "The Trolley
Problem." The Yale Law Journal 94.6 (1985):
1395. Web.
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