The Trolley Problem
The Trolley Problem is a thought exercise in ethics and psychology and can be very revealing of a person’s character and personal values. In many ways it is an impossible question, and that is why it has been a source of debate since it was first posed in a 1967 essay by the British philosopher Philippa Foot, who used it in constructing a partial defence of the doctrine of double effect and of her thesis that positive duties (duties to perform a certain action) are intuitively less important than negative duties (duties not to perform an action). Your response to the query below will determine your understanding of the algorithm needs.
A solar flare has produced an electromagnetic pulse large enough to knock out electronics throughout an entire city. A doctor, on his way home from a shift, finds himself straddling the train tracks in his unresponsive car. He doesn’t see the train coming. On the opposite track, a bus full of senior citizens has also been shut down while straddling the tracks. Because of their low mobility, even if they knew a train was coming, they wouldn’t have time to exit the bus. The train is running at full speed toward a decision point. You are standing beside the manual switch. You can choose to do nothing, and the train will barrel into the doctor; or, you can choose to activate the switch, intentionally causing the train to hit the bus of seniors.
What will you do?
