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Power Femme
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Cinnamon spiced, caramel colored, power-femme
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Married to a wonderful horse girl
Join Date: Oct 2009
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tonaderspeisung
i read the initial post as a question of which is the right sided action
not a question of should an action be performed or not
upon rereading my initial posts i should clarify i find both actions equally right and i don't see either as a wrong sided outcome given the facts in the initial scenario.
i would hold the people at the tracks accountable/responsible for being active participants in their own fate.
i am curious for those who find the utilitarian view so handily the right sided solution
should the many have that much advantage when the outcome of the few in this case is so absolute?
that is the one fact that keeps this a zero sum on both sides for me.
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Given the initial conditions I can't see how this could not be a zero-sum scenario. Someone is going to die no matter what action is done. So the question then becomes whether one person dies or five people die.
As far as the utilitarian case to be made, the answer is based upon it being *incidental* that the one person on the alternative track will die as opposed to using this person *for the purpose of stopping the train*. Let's change the parameters just a tiny bit, instead of flipping a switch which diverts the train imagine that you are standing on a bridge above the track. Again you see the train. Next to you is someone. If you push them off the bridge they will land on the switch which will divert the train but this will cause their death. Under those circumstances it would be wrong to push the person. Why the two different outcomes? Because in the original scenario, the death of one person on the alternate track is an unhappy side effect so it makes it zero-sum but still defensible. In the second scenario we are using the person as an *instrument* to achieve a desired end. In the first scenario we are not using the person as an instrument, he just happens to be a bystander who, unfortunately, is in the wrong place at the wrong time. We might regret his death but his death is not the instrument we use to achieve saving the five people.
Cheers
Aj
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"People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up." (Terry Pratchett)
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