I just came back from my medicine class at the University of Michigan and we were discussing the trolley problem, which is based on morality. So I am posing the question to you...If given the option to pull a lever that changes the direction of a trolley and kills one person rather than five, what would you do? And if given the option to push a person in front of a trolley, killing that person but saving five others, would you?
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Interesting. I think that if you were to assess the two situations separately, then the answer would be no for both scenarios. That's simply because not many people want to kill another person. But if you compare them as the lesser of two evils, then I would imagine that many would rather pull the lever. There's a different tole on somebody's consciousness when it comes to physically harming someone opposed to just knowing that they caused harm. Esentially, they should both cause the same trauma since the end result is the same, but that's not the case. Apparently the human mind is more complex than just black and white. Perhaps there should be a field of study dedicated to this kind of stuff or even a movie.
ReplyDeleteThanks for responding. I agree with you're answer in many ways, particularly how abstract the human mind is. This problem makes me think of the movie The Box starring Cameron Diaz. You should check it out.
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