The Trolley Problem Mysteries
F.M. Kamm and Eric Rakowski
Abstract
Suppose you can stop a trolley from killing five people, but only by turning it onto a side track where it will kill one person. May you turn the trolley? What if the only way to rescue the five is to topple a bystander in front of the trolley so that his body stops it but he dies? May you use a device to stop the trolley that will kill a bystander as a side effect? The Trolley Problem challenges us to explain and justify our intuitive judgments about these and related cases. This book presents views on this moral conundrum. After providing a brief history of views of the problem is and attemp ... More
Suppose you can stop a trolley from killing five people, but only by turning it onto a side track where it will kill one person. May you turn the trolley? What if the only way to rescue the five is to topple a bystander in front of the trolley so that his body stops it but he dies? May you use a device to stop the trolley that will kill a bystander as a side effect? The Trolley Problem challenges us to explain and justify our intuitive judgments about these and related cases. This book presents views on this moral conundrum. After providing a brief history of views of the problem is and attempts to solve it, it focuses on two prominent issues: Does who turns the trolley and how the harm is shifted affect the moral permissibility of acting? The answers lead to general proposals about when we may and may not harm some to help others. The book then presents comments on these proposals. There are then responses to each comment, and this provides a rich elaboration and defense of the original views.
Keywords:
trolley problem,
Tanner Lectures,
moral dilemma,
killing
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190247157 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190247157.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
F.M. Kamm, author
Lucius Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy, Harvard KSG
Eric Rakowski, editor
Edward C. Halbach Jr. Professor of Law, UC Berkeley
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