Essay Example on Ethical Dilemma

Introduction

Judith Thomson’s “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem” presents an ethical dilemma that warrants applying a philosophical principle. It comes from the classic thought experiment known as the Trolley dilemma (Thomson, 2019). In the investigation, a runaway trolley comes hurtling down the track towards five workers who are oblivious to the approaching danger. A bystander cannot alert them because there is not enough time to react to the incoming trolley even when they spot it. The trolley’s brakes have also failed. The bystander sees a lever close by, which would allow them to divert the trolley to a different track.

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On the other path, another worker would also be unaware of the incoming danger. So, should the bystander pull the lever at the one person’s expense or let the five people die. Thomson offers various variations of the thought experiment that probe into the readers’ moral intuitions. Using such variations, Thomson argues that ethical theories such as utilitarianism and consequentialism that judge an action’s ethicality based on outcome lack consistency because they do not explain why some acts of killing are permissible while others are not. Instead, the author advocates for distributive exemption where it is ethical to deflect harm from more to few people, provided it does not violate anyone’s rights.

Experiment

Most people would be okay with pulling the lever because it ends up saving five people’s lives for the price of one in the trolly experiment (Thomson, 2019). However, Thomson creates a variation of the same experiment by using a surgeon who can save five patients’ lives by directly killing a healthy patient and harvesting the organs. According to Thomson (2019), some people would argue that it is wrong for a doctor to kill a healthy patient to save the other five who need different organs. The two scenarios show that killing does matter because some people would have agreed that letting that one person died at the train tracks to save the other five is ethical. But killing one healthy person to save five is unethical; hence the variation between the two scenarios involves active killing, which causes people to change their moral principles.

Killing one person to save five people along the rail track seems to be an easy decision because of the number of people. Having five people live by killing one person appears to be justifiable for some people because many take priority. But the same principle seems to lose meaning the moment the issue of killing is taken into consideration. It is for that reason that Thomson (2019) considers the philosophy inconsistent. Killing seems to be the determining variable that causes the principle to change because killing one person to save five people is unethical and immoral.

Thomson’s argument can be utilitarian because it supports the actions that promote the most good for most people. It acknowledges the critical role outcome in judging the ethicality of an effort. In utilitarian ethics, the right action would benefit the five people on the railway track instead of not flipping the lever and bringing happiness and pleasure to the one person on the alternative route. Therefore, Thomson’s argument would qualify as utilitarian because it advocates for the diversion of harm from the track with five people to those with one person without violating the individual right.

Moral Law

Kantian ethics argue that an action is justified if the reason behind it adheres to the moral law or a sense of duty. However, Kantian ethics is deontological, and that means judging the morality of an action based on its rightness or wrongness, rather than the outcome. Under Kantian ethics, diverting the trolly to the track with a single person will not be morally right because it treats a human being as a means to an end. In Kantian ethics, an action should be a means to an end in itself, and killing one person to save another would be wrong no matter how many. Also, one might argue it was not motivated by goodwill but rather the avoidance of guilt. Diverting the train to save five people comes out of the fear to not feel guilty about doing anything. The same principles apply to the doctor’s scenario because treating the healthy patient as a means to an end is also wrong in Kantian ethics.

Thomson concludes that negative duties are more stringent than positive ones. Negative duties are those responsibilities that bar people from doing something—the positive ones, ideals that people should undertake. Based on the trolly thought experiment and its variations, the author’s conclusion is logical. Negative duties seem to take precedence over the positive ones, especially in the thought experiment. If the trolley driver lets the trolley proceed on its course, he would be violating his positive duty to intervene and save five lives. As for the surgeon, if he moves to dissect a healthy patient, he breaks the negative obligation to avoid killing (Thomson, 2019). Now in the surgeon’s case, the negative duty to refrain from killing is more powerful than the positive duty to save five people’s lives. That shows that the negative duties take precedence over the positive ones.

Conclusion

Thomson’s argument is not entirely convincing because it has certain loopholes. For one, the act of diverting a trolley or a missile can be said to generate a new threat to fewer people. But Thomson responds to that by saying redirecting the threat is okay as long as it does not violate a person’s right. But a counter-argument would be, the act of diverting the trolley is in itself to the track with one person violates their right to life. She replies to that dilemma that pulling a lever is not a violation of the rights of the single person on the other track. However, a counter-argument would be, supposedly the primary way did not have five people, but the alternative route had a single person, it would be a violation of rights to turn the trolley to the alternative track. Therefore, pulling the lever can qualify as a violation of rights because five people on the alternative path do not remove the one person’s right to life on the alternative route.

Reference

Thomson, J., J. (2019). Killing, letting die, and the trolly problem. In, Ethical theory: An anthology (pp. 543-551). Wiley-Blackwell.