Re: Standards of Behaviour

Brian Gleichman posts regarding the "trolley problem" and variations:

  Looking at those examples I don't see how
  it's possible to get something logically equivalent
  such that I at least would give different answers.

The "fat man" variation - five people are tied to the track, but you
can save them by pushing a fat man in front of the trolley and
stopping it, where your own body mass is insufficient to stop the
trolley - is probably a better contrast.

I personally don't find these to be difficult, because I wouldn't flip
the switch in the basic trolley problem.  Flipping the switch is
murder of the person on the siding; doing nothing is merely
negligence, which I consider to be the lesser evil.

Then again, I don't necessarily consider counting lives to be a valid
method of measurement, either.  I think that cases like the transplant
problem merely tend to show that utilitarianism is an inconsistent
philosophy, and that the correct conclusion is that one should adopt a
contractarian philosophy instead.

Warren J. Dew