Off My Trolley

When Philippa Foot died I thought briefly about mad philosophers roping people across railway lines; but then found I kept returning to consider the situation.  I wanted to reach a decision, to settle what I would do.  That the literature on the subject is extensive was no hindrance because I wasn't really interested in how others had thought about this:  it was my thinking that interested me - selfishness personified, but there you are - it would be foolish not to accept selfishness as part of self.

As you know, a mad philosopher has tied five people to a railway line and you are in charge of a train that is rushing towards them.   There is a branch line to which you can divert.  If you do there is a single person on that line who will be killed but the five on the main line will be saved. What do you do?

I didn't think first that I would save the largest number; which surprised me.  After all, the scarcity of information about those on the line suggests the sole criterion of saving the most. Then  I felt resentful at having to choose;  but, not believing in destiny or the hand of God, if I was thinking about this, choose I must.

Each person tied down is an individual with no greater claims to live than any other individual; being part of a set of five shouldn't give higher claims to life than being alone.  I was being invited  surreptitiously to award lives and losses to the potential victims and think times five was worse than one. But if I could do that, then I could admit other attributes to the six.  Which took the thinking out of the box even though, admittedly, the box had smuggled-in assumptions on worth and  more being worse.

Could this be something that could be thought about usefully at all, if the only thing I knew about the victims was that they could be more or fewer? Can I keep myself from surreptitious attributions?  Do we attribute characteristics no matter what, as part of the way we think at all?  And are we are just pretending when we claim to have not?

Right now I am minded to run down the five so that the principle that the many do not outrank the few can be upheld.