A few years back I discovered trolleyology.
Well, I already knew about trolleyology, but I didn’t know that was what it was called. Recently, I ran across it again. Trolleyology is the philosophical practice of setting up hypothetical ethical conundrums involving out-of-control trolleys racing down tracks about to kill oddly helpless innocent bystanders. Just as an example, from my recent re-encounter with them (linked above):
A runaway trolley is coming down the track. It is headed towards five people who cannot get out of its way. A passerby realizes that if he pushes a nearby fat man onto the tracks his bulk will stop the trolley before it hits the five, though the fat man himself will be killed.
The question being: is it right or wrong to sacrifice the fat man to save the five? There’s another conundrum here, far too complicated and full of philosophers’ inside jokes. The picture (above right) shows the Green Line trolley at 43rd Street along Baltimore Avenue, half a block from my apartment where I lived in West Philadelphia in 1995, when I was starting graduate school. Not shown in the picture: five helpless innocents just out view to the left, down the hill, tied to the tracks – just another day in West Philly, after all.
A famous scientist was once asked whether he would throw himself in front of a train to save the life of a brother of his. His answer? No, he would not. But he would do so to save -two- brothers, or eight cousins.
The principle behind that answer would, in the real world, color all such decisions about who to allow to die. Not many people would kill their own child to save the lives of several strangers!