Imagine that you come across a run-away trolley, speeding along the track uncontrollably

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Imagine that you come across a run-away trolley, speeding along the track uncontrollably. If it stays on its current track, you see that it will end up hitting and killing five innocent people who have been tied to the track. But as it happens, you are standing next to a switch that, when pulled, will cause the trolley to move to a nearby track. This second track only has one innocent person tied to it. If you pull the switch, you can prevent the five innocent people from being hit and killed by the trolley, though the trolley will then unfortunately hit the one innocent person tied to the nearby track. When given this switch case, most people say that it would be morally okay to pull the switch. And Mill's principle of utility can easily explain why it's okay for this: if the only two actions available to you are to pull the switch or to leave things as they are, presumably pulling the switch will do the most to promote happiness over misery (i.e., preventing five innocent deaths at the expense of one). But now imagine another scenario—same run-away trolley that's about to hit and kill five innocent people tied to the track. But this time there's only the one track: there's no second track or switch-lever to use to alter the trolley's direction. But the track does go underneath a footbridge before it reaches the five innocent people, and there is an extremely large (though completely innocent) man on this footbridge. This man is so large that you realize you could use his mass to stop the trolley, preventing it from hitting and killing the five people. If you push this large man over the footbridge (against his will, it should be added), he will land in front of the trolley, stopping it, but killing him in the process. When given this footbridge case, most people say that it would be morally wrong to push the large man. This result isn't easily explained by Mill's principle of utility: if the only two actions available to you are to push the large man or to leave things as they are, and if pulling the switch was morally okay because it would prevent five innocent deaths at the expense of one, then how can it be wrong to push the large man when this is also the only way to prevent five innocent deaths?³

Discussion Prompt:

Do you agree with the common responses to these cases? If so, why? If not, why not? The Trolley Problem has been used by philosophers as a way to challenge the principle of utility--how might Mill respond? Finally, if you think pushing the large man is the right thing to do, why do you think so many people regard this action as morally wrong? Use your original post to defend your answer to these questions, then use your two reply posts to critique the arguments given by other students or to defend your own answer from the critiques of others.

³ Both the switch case and the footbridge case were first presented by the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson in her 1985 paper "The Trolley Problem." The switch case is itself a variation on a different trolley case first presented by the philosopher Philippa Foot in her 1967 paper "The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect.