OPINION — Our moral intuitions drive our motives, choices, and thoughts. I recognize unsettling events in the news without the need for further introspection. However, sometimes such intuition is inconsistent or contradicting; sometimes, I have multiple instincts, leading me to different conclusions. So, which intuition is more “right”?
Consider the following situation:
As you walk by the train tracks set, you spot a trolley gliding down toward five people. They don’t know it is coming, nor can they hear it. Even if they realize the trolley is headed their way, they still won’t be able to avoid it in time. As these five people are increasingly at risk, you spot a lever. This lever, when pulled, will divert the trolley onto another set of tracks. This track, however, has one person who, like the other five people, has no clue about the yet-to-occur disaster.
Would you pull the lever, leading to one death but saving five?
The majority of people would do so. After all, by comparison, five lives should be worth more than one. Developed by Philippa Foot in 1967, this problem is called The Trolley Dilemma.
Now reconsider your intuition with a second thought experiment, similar to the Trolley Dilemma, but with a twist.
You are a doctor working with five patients on the verge of death. For them to survive, they each need transplants. Two of the patients require a lung, two of the patients require a kidney, and one patient requires a heart. The room next door has a perfectly healthy individual recovering from a broken arm.
So, would you kill the healthy patient, obtain their organs, and save the five others?
Your moral intuition may tell you differently this time. Even if you can save five people, killing one person is wrong. Or maybe you agreed with both statements. Or perhaps you disagreed with both.
How do we perceive right and wrong?
First, I’d like to talk about moral intuition. Google defines intuition as “being able to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.” We know that stealing is wrong, killing is wrong, and even lying is wrong. However, the background situation and intention during such events make intuition a long-debated topic. A poorer person stealing food could be justified due to their circumstances; the purpose wasn’t meant to inflict harm, even if what was done was immoral. Is there one we should prioritize?
The topic of the Trolley Dilemma focuses on such precedencies. Prioritizing consequences is known as consequentialism. You are regarding morality by the result and the products; pulling the lever saves five lives while refraining from doing so will kill five; the former has more satisfactory outcomes. The most recognized interpretation of consequentialism is utilitarianism. As the word denotes, its goal is to maximize utility in the world. When your moral intuition follows utilitarianism, you deem an action with more benefits than harm as “good.” It also remarks that you can only reckon morality through the outcome, and no metrics exist to assess the action. Robin Hood is a suitable example of consequentialism where he robbed and stole from the rich to give to the poor. The result was good, even admirable, but what about the action?
This introspection leads to deontology, which, contrary to consequentialism, judges actions by the actions themselves, not the result. (Heard of the phrase “the ends don’t justify the means”?) It advises that regardless of how promising a situation may be, one must never disobey explicit moral rules. In the Trolley Dilemma, pulling the lever actively kills life, irrespective of how many lives one can save in return. If the five people on the train tracks die, you bear no commitment, and thus no moral laws are broken. An important note here is that responsibilities are made through active choice: if a truck bumps into a car, resulting in a pedestrian being hit, it is not the car’s fault the driver made no active choice to commit such an act. That being said, these five people are not your responsibility because the trolley was already going down that path, and you did not choose to inflict harm actively. The same could not be said with pulling the lever; you are intentionally constructing an act that would end the life of a person who would have otherwise survived if you were not there. In other words, you hold all responsibility for that death.
Both philosophies explain moral intuition. You may think only the outcomes of actions matter, and therefore saving five people would be ideal. Or maybe you believe that acts themselves deem what is right and wrong, and hence certain things must never be done.
After hearing from both sides, would you still pull the lever?