Introduction
In philosophy, ethics is the study of what one ought or ought not to do. Ethics have been ingrained in our everyday life. Whenever we call an action ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, we are making an ethical judgment. Moral theories or recommendations, whether deriving from religion or a mere personal code, are always connected to ethics. Since humans think and talk about morality frequently, it is only natural that philosophy would become concerned with ethics. What does it truly mean for an action to be good? How can we know what we should do in any given situation? This paper will serve as a critical comparison of two famous ethical theories: consequentialism and deontology. It will summarize the two ethical schools of thought, apply them to a famous thought experiment, and explain how each compares with common moral intuitions.
The Two Theories
Two of the most popular schools of thought in ethics are deontology and consequentialism. There are many subcategories to each theory, and most ethical ideas can be connected to one of them. Deontology, largely inspired by Immanuel Kant, states that there are rigid rules or maxims that govern moral normativity. This applies moral value to actions themselves. Most people agree that lying is wrong. A deontologist, however, could argue that lying is never permissible. Deontologists believe that certain actions are always wrong in themselves and that there are no circumstances that could make them permissible.
Consequentialism, in stark contrast to deontology, asserts that the moral value of an action is always determined by its consequences. Essentially, actions in themselves are not moral or immoral. One simply has an obligation to perform whichever action will lead to the best consequences. While lying may be wrong when it hurts someone’s reputation, it could be right if it saves someone’s life. Consequentialists may vary in their criteria for the value of a consequence, but they always determine moral normativity by evaluating consequences instead of actions themselves.
The Purpose of Thought Experiments
In philosophy, thought experiments are fictional stories meant to illustrate specific ethical dilemmas. These stories frequently depict absurd situations that very few people would ever encounter. Because of this, thought experiments are often accused of being frivolous or meaningless. If they depict unrealistic situations, what can they really tell us about ethics? Ethical theories, especially the two introduced above, state universalizable rules about morality. Deontologists believe that certain actions are always wrong and consequentialists always determine morality through consequences. Thought experiments put these theories to the test with extreme situations to determine just how universalizable the theory is. Thought experiments may merely be rhetorical devices. However, they are an incredibly useful tool for evaluating whether a theory provides sufficient answers to every possible situation.
The Trolley Problem
The Trolley Problem was first introduced by Philippa Foot in a paper about abortion. It was then popularized by Judith Jarvis Thomson in her famous paper Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem. Most people with any exposure to philosophical ethics have probably heard of this thought experiment.
The brakes on a train have failed. It is impossible to stop the train and it is careening toward five people tied down on the tracks. If nobody interferes, the runaway train is certain to hit and kill five innocent people. The train is about to hit a crossroads. If somebody pulls a specific lever, the train will switch tracks. However, this alternate track has one innocent person on it. If somebody were to pull the lever, the train would certainly kill that one person. In this scenario, you are a bystander next to the lever that fully understands what’s happening. You know that the train will kill five people if you don’t pull the lever and that it will kill one person if you do. What should you do?
As is made clear by the title of her paper, Thomson argues that this is a choice between killing and letting die. You allow five people to die if you don’t pull the lever. If you pull the lever, then you personally kill one person. In the first situation, you didn’t do anything. You merely decided to let things take their natural course. Switching the tracks, however, is an active choice. You interfered with the situation and decided that it was acceptable to directly cause one person’s death to prevent five deaths.
In the next section of the paper, I’m going to address what both schools of ethics would recommend in this thought experiment and compare their solutions with common moral intuitions.
Solutions to the Trolley Problem
i. Consequentialist
For a consequentialist, one would clearly have the moral obligation to switch tracks and prevent the deaths of five. According to this school of ethics, all moral value is determined by consequences. Therefore, there is no relevant moral difference between killing someone and allowing someone to die. Thomson presented a strong example to illustrate this:
“….This shown by what we see when we construct a pair of cases which are so far as possible in all other respects alike, except that in the one case the agent kills, in the other he only lets die. So, for example, imagine that
(1) Alfred hates his wife and wants her dead. He puts cleaning fluid in her coffee, thereby killing her,
and that
(2) Bert hates his wife and wants her dead. She puts cleaning fluid in her coffee (being muddled, thinking it's cream). Bert happens to have the antidote to cleaning fluid, but he does not give it to her; he lets her die.” (Thomson 1).
Intuitively, these cases both seem equally morally abhorrent. In the first case, Alfred actively murders his wife. Had he done nothing, she would have continued to live. In the second case, Bert didn’t technically kill his wife. However, saving her would have been relatively simple and he refrained from doing so. In both cases, Alfred and Bert’s decisions led to the deaths of their respective wives. In these specific examples, consequentialism lines up with most people’s natural moral intuitions. The moral value of these decisions, whether it’s the trolley case or the darker wife-killing case, is determined more by results and not by method (action vs. inaction).
ii. Deontological
Deontologists, on the other hand, believe that results and consequences are irrelevant in determining the moral value of an action. The morality of an action is determined by the action itself, not the circumstances. In the Trolley Problem, a deontologist would strongly oppose switching the tracks. While it may be true that fewer people would die if one switched tracks, it is always wrong to kill someone. The circumstances leading up to the decision are not the fault of the bystander with the switch. Because of this, the bystander cannot be morally culpable for the train killing five people. Moral culpability could be applied, however, if the bystander decided to kill one innocent person by switching tracks. A deontologist would evaluate the Trolley Problem only within the scope of the bystander’s actions. Because the circumstances are irrelevant, the bystander’s choice is between killing one or killing nobody. If one assumes that killing is wrong, then a deontologist would always support allowing five to die instead of killing one.
In the Trolley Problem, it seems that the deontological perspective heavily contrasts with our moral intuitions. Most people would have a hard time saying that the bystander has zero moral responsibility for allowing five people to die. Because of this, most people end up thinking in a consequentialist way about the Trolley Problem. However, the opposite becomes true when the same dilemma is reframed with a different situation.
The Killer Hospital
Imagine a situation in which a doctor has five patients in critical condition from a terrible accident. They need an impossibly rare blood type transfused to have any chance at survival. This blood type is so rare that no hospital has access to the blood. The only way to procure this blood would be to find an innocent person off the street who could “donate” their blood to save them. However, because there are five such patients, the doctor would need to take all of this innocent person’s blood. Since nobody in this story is willing to give their own life to save five, the hospital would have to kidnap the innocent person off the street and kill him to take his blood. If they did this, all five patients would certainly be saved.
This situation is clearly horrific and not remotely realistic. However, it is almost the exact same dilemma as the original Trolley Problem. The doctor must choose between actively killing one innocent person or allowing five innocent people to die. Assuming consistency, a deontologist would certainly oppose the doctor’s kidnapping plan. It is always wrong to kill an innocent person. The extraordinary circumstances (saving the lives of five people) would be irrelevant. Murder is murder, and it is always morally impermissible to kill an innocent person. A consequentialist, however, would likely answer the question in a much more controversial way. If the moral value of an action is purely determined by its consequences, then the doctor would have a moral obligation to kill one innocent person and use his blood to save five. If the doctor fails to act, five people die. If he kidnaps and kills one person, only one person dies.
It is important to clarify that there are various forms of consequentialism. Some consequentialists may take broad cultural effects into account. Specifically, they may claim that the world would be worse off if doctors killed innocent people to save their own patients. However, thought experiments generally ignore repercussions that may exist outside of the scenario itself. If the scenario exists in a vacuum, consequentialists would generally support killing one to save five. That does not necessarily mean the same would be true outside of the thought experiment’s self-contained scenario.
What This Shows about Moral Intuitions
Both thought experiments present extremely similar scenarios. They involve a dilemma in which one must choose between allowing five people to die or killing one person to save them. However, in the Trolley Problem, the consequentialist view provides the most intuitive answer. In the Killer Hospital scenario, the deontological perspective is much more consistent with our moral intuitions. What does this show about ethics?
It seems that there are two possible conclusions that could be drawn from this inconsistency. Either our moral intuitions are flawed, or consequentialism and deontology are both flawed theories.
Our moral intuitions could certainly be heavily shaped by flawed human perception. In the Trolley Problem, a train seems very unavoidable. It is moving in one direction and cannot be stopped. Because of this, switching the tracks feels more like diverting a threat than directly killing someone. In the hospital example, the doctor would need to forcefully kidnap someone and kill them to take their blood. Our variation in moral intuition may merely come from the gruesome nature of the hospital example and a perceived lack of control over a runaway trolley.
It is also possible that the problem lies in deontology and consequentialism. Both theories attempt to explain ethics, a famously confounding field, with relatively simple universal rules. Consequentialists argue that one should always focus on consequences caused by the action, while deontologists believe actions themselves are the only determinants of moral value. It is possible that ethics is simply too complicated of a field to be solved by any individual theory.
Conclusion
In this paper, I analyzed consequentialism and deontology and applied them to two variations of the Trolley Problem. I then discussed how each fails to line up with our standard moral intuitions and addressed why this discrepancy may exist. I provided two potential answers: that both ethical theories are flawed, or that our moral intuitions are flawed. I did not attempt to determine which was flawed because I don’t think that question is answerable. Ethics cannot be empirically proven or simplified in the same way science or mathematics can. Ultimately, each individual needs to make a choice about what they want to trust. Is it better to follow an ethical school of thought to ensure consistency, or should we trust that we have our moral intuitions for a reason?
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