This paper deals with the core version of the Trolley Problem. In one case many people favor an act which will bring about the death of one person but save five other persons. In another case most people would refuse to “sacrifice” one person in order to save five other lives. Since the two cases seem similar in all relevant respects, we have to explain and justify the diverging verdicts. Since I don’t find current proposals of a solution convincing, I (...) propose an alternative one according to which —but not —violates two forms of equality. I also test the underlying egalitarian principle against other cases. I argue that it offers a good explanation and also a normative justification of our intuitive verdicts about the cases. (shrink)

“The Trolley Problem” is the name Judith Jarvis Thomson has given to a difficult problem in moral philosophy and legal theory. The problem arises by considering a series of cases, all of which involve a choice of evils. Many, but not all of these cases, involve an out-of-control trolley about to run over a group of five people. In each case we are asked for our intuitive judgment as to whether it would be permissible to save the five people at (...) risk when doing so would require the death of, or the imposition of a high risk of death on, another human being. (shrink)

This essay questions the self-sufficiency of abstract, non-consequentialist, principles as a defence of a libertarian regime. The argument focuses on the difficulties involved in attempts to defend the priority of negative rights if an attractive conception of freedom and an agent-relative view about our reasons to respect rights are to be upheld. The paper closes by suggesting how libertarianism could gain support from various, and perhaps mutually irreducible and even conflicting, considerations in a wide consequentialist system.

The trolley problem, first described by Foot (1967) and Thomson (The Monist, 59, 204–217, 1976), is one of the most famous and influential thought experiments in deontological ethics. The general story is that a runaway trolley is threatening the lives of five people. Doing nothing will result in the death of those persons, but acting in order to save those persons would unavoidably result in the death of another, sixth person. It appears that, depending on the situation, we have different (...) moral judgments about the permissibility of action. We will review and systematize all the proposals in the literature of the past 35 years that have attempted to grasp our moral intuitions in a simple deontological principle. In particular, seventeen proposals will be classified: six algorithmic, seven psychological, and four other invalid accounts. This review and classification sheds light on some subtle differences and clarify a few issues. (shrink)

“The Trolley Problem” is the name Judith Jarvis Thomson has given to a difficult problem in moral philosophy and legal theory. The problem arises by considering a series of cases, all of which involve a choice of evils. Many, but not all of these cases, involve an out-of-control trolley about to run over a group of five people. In each case we are asked for our intuitive judgment as to whether it would be permissible to save the five people at (...) risk when doing so would require the death of, or the imposition of a high risk of death on, another human being. (shrink)