As before, the trolley rushes along the rails, to which five people are tied. You are on a bridge that goes over the rails. You have the ability to stop the trolley by throwing something heavy on the way. There is a fat man next to you, and the only way to stop the trolley is to push him off the bridge on the way. What are your actions?

It should be noted that for a large number of people Active participation in this situation seems almost impossible. Most of those who would switch the switch in the first situation would not push the person under the trolley in the second. This feature was a prerequisite for a deeper study of the difference between these two situations.

The first clear difference is that in the first case, the observer does not interact directly with the person: the death of a person on the siding is a side effect of switching the arrow. However, in the second case, aggression towards the fat man is an integral part of the plan to save the five. This argument was considered (and rejected) by Shelley Kagan in his book The Limits of morality.

It is worth noting that similar decision is a consequence of the doctrine of double effect, which states that, if necessary, you can take actions that have negative side effects, but the intentional display of aggression (even to achieve positive results) is wrong.

"Fat Villain"

A further development of this example includes a situation where a fat man turns out to be a villain, who put five people in dangerous situation(tied them to the rails). In this case, pushing a fat person onto the rails looks not only morally advantageous, but also mandatory.

"Branch"

Assertion that is bad use killing one to save five doesn't work in this variant of the cart problem:

As before, the trolley rushes along the rails, to which five people are tied. As in the first case, you can transfer it to a siding. One fat man is tied to the rails of the siding. However, after the person the siding makes a loop and returns to Main way, in front of the place where five are tied. Thus, if there wasn't a fat man on the siding to stop the cart, the switch wouldn't have saved the five. What are your actions?

The only difference between this situation and the original wording is that an extra chunk of paths has been added. It looks trivial, especially considering that the trolley will not pass over this piece in any case. Thus, intuition suggests that the answer should be the same as in original problem- you should switch the arrow. However, in this case, the death of one is actually part of the plan to save the five.

"The Man on the Lawn"

This formulation is due to Peter Anger (English)Russian.

As before, the trolley rushes along the rails. You can get it out of the way by colliding with another cart. In this case, both trolleys will go off the tracks and fall off the embankment, hitting the lawn, where a man sleeps in a hammock. The person will be killed. What are your actions?

The answers in this situation depend partly on whether the responder is familiar with the original trolley problem. Angier, in his research, noticed that people who have not encountered such a choice before are more likely to say that the proposed action (collision with another minecart) is wrong.

Angier therefore notes that the various answers to this problem are based more on psychology than on ethics - in this new formulation, the only difference from the original productions is that the man on the lawn is not fully involved in the situation. Thus, people think that killing a man on the lawn is "foul play". At the same time, Angier notes that the lack of involvement in the situation does not affect its moral aspects.

"Donor"

An alternative wording that doesn't use a minecart looks like this.

A high-class surgeon has 5 patients, each of whom needs an organ transplant (different for all five). Every patient will die if they don't get this organ. Unfortunately, the hospital and the surrounding area do not have the necessary organs. A young healthy visitor comes to the hospital for a routine checkup. Examining it, the surgeon discovers that the organs young man fully compatible with the organisms of 5 of his patients. Suppose that in the event of the visitor disappearing without a trace, no one will look for him and no one will suspect the doctor of the murder. What should the doctor do?

The problem from the point of view of cognitive science

The trolley problem was first studied from the standpoint of cognitive science by J. Michael. He suggested that people's responses would be practically independent of their gender, age, cultural level and education, since their decisions are based on an unconscious "moral grammar", which, in some ways, is analogous to the equally unconscious universal grammar that underlies ordinary language.

Preliminary results confirmed this observation, and Michael's studies were subsequently generalized to 200,000 people from more than 100 different countries.

The problem from the point of view of neuroethics

In order to study this problem from the point of view of neuroethics, D. Green and J. Cohen used fMRI methods (functional magnetic resonance imaging). In their experiments, people's responses to questions posed in the original wording and in the wording with the "fat man" were analyzed. The hypothesis of scientists was that the solution of these problems will cause both emotional and cognitive reactions, while their conflict will arise. The results of the study showed the following: in situations that cause a vivid emotional response (“fat person”), there is significant activity in those parts of the brain associated with conflict resolution. At the same time, in more neutral situations (for example, the original trolley problem), there is activity in the area of ​​the brain responsible for higher cognitive functions. Thus, potential ethical ideas in this situation revolve around a person's ability to accept rational decisions moral property.

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Notes

Literature

• . Michael Otsuka: // utilities (English)Russian 20/1, März 2008, S. 92−110
• Ginges J., Sheikh H., Atran S., Argo N.// Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (English)Russian. - 2016. - T. 113, No. 2. - S. 316-319. - DOI:10.1073/pnas.1512120113 .

An excerpt characterizing the Trolley Problem

Sonya went to the buffet with a glass across the hall. Natasha looked at her, at the gap in the pantry door, and it seemed to her that she was remembering that light was falling through the gap from the pantry door and that Sonya had passed with a glass. "Yes, and it was exactly the same," thought Natasha. Sonya, what is it? Natasha shouted, fingering the thick string.
- Oh, you're here! – shuddering, said Sonya, came up and listened. - I do not know. Storm? she said timidly, afraid of making a mistake.
“Well, she shuddered in exactly the same way, came up in the same way and smiled timidly when it was already,” Natasha thought, “and in exactly the same way ... I thought that something was missing in her.”
- No, this is the choir from the Water Carrier, do you hear! - And Natasha finished singing the motive of the choir in order to make Sonya understand it.
– Where did you go? Natasha asked.
- Change the water in the glass. I'm painting the pattern now.
“You are always busy, but I don’t know how,” said Natasha. - Where is Nikolai?
Sleeping, it seems.
“Sonya, you go wake him up,” said Natasha. - Say that I call him to sing. - She sat, thought about what it means, that it all happened, and, without resolving this issue and not at all regretting it, she was again transported in her imagination to the time when she was with him, and he, with loving eyes looked at her.
“Oh, I wish he would come soon. I'm so afraid it won't! And most importantly: I'm getting old, that's what! There will be no more what is now in me. Or maybe he will come today, he will come now. Maybe he came and sits there in the living room. Maybe he arrived yesterday and I forgot. She got up, put down her guitar and went into the living room. All the household, teachers, governesses and guests were already sitting at the tea table. People stood around the table - but Prince Andrei was not there, and there was still the old life.
“Ah, here she is,” said Ilya Andreevich, seeing Natasha come in. - Well, sit down with me. But Natasha stopped beside her mother, looking around, as if she was looking for something.
- Mother! she said. “Give it to me, give it to me, mother, hurry, hurry,” and again she could hardly restrain her sobs.
She sat down at the table and listened to the conversations of the elders and Nikolai, who also came to the table. “My God, my God, the same faces, the same conversations, the same dad holds a cup and blows the same way!” thought Natasha, feeling with horror the disgust that rose in her against all the household because they were still the same.
After tea, Nikolai, Sonya and Natasha went to the sofa room, to their favorite corner, in which their most intimate conversations always began.

“It happens to you,” Natasha said to her brother when they sat down in the sofa room, “it happens to you that it seems to you that nothing will happen - nothing; that all that was good was? And not just boring, but sad?
- And how! - he said. - It happened to me that everything was fine, everyone was cheerful, but it would occur to me that all this was already tired and that everyone needed to die. Once I didn’t go to the regiment for a walk, and there was music playing ... and I suddenly became bored ...
“Ah, I know that. I know, I know, - Natasha picked up. “I was still little, so it happened to me. Do you remember, since they punished me for plums and you all danced, and I sat in the classroom and sobbed, I will never forget: I was sad and felt sorry for everyone, and myself, and I felt sorry for everyone. And, most importantly, I was not to blame, - said Natasha, - do you remember?
“I remember,” Nikolai said. - I remember that I came to you later and I wanted to console you and, you know, I was ashamed. We were awfully funny. I had a bobblehead toy then and I wanted to give it to you. Do you remember?
“Do you remember,” Natasha said with a thoughtful smile, how long, long ago, we were still very young, our uncle called us into the office, back in the old house, and it was dark - we came and suddenly it was standing there ...
“Arap,” Nikolai finished with a joyful smile, “how can you not remember? Even now I don’t know that it was a black man, or we saw it in a dream, or we were told.
- He was gray, remember, and white teeth - he stands and looks at us ...
Do you remember Sonya? Nicholas asked...
“Yes, yes, I also remember something,” Sonya answered timidly ...
“I asked my father and mother about this arap,” said Natasha. “They say there was no arap. But you do remember!
- How, as now I remember his teeth.
How strange, it was like a dream. I like it.
- Do you remember how we rolled eggs in the hall and suddenly two old women began to spin on the carpet. Was it or not? Do you remember how good it was?
- Yes. Do you remember how daddy in a blue coat on the porch fired a gun. - They sorted through, smiling with pleasure, memories, not sad senile, but poetic youthful memories, those impressions from the most distant past, where the dream merges with reality, and quietly laughed, rejoicing at something.
Sonya, as always, lagged behind them, although their memories were common.
Sonya did not remember much of what they remembered, and what she remembered did not arouse in her that poetic feeling that they experienced. She only enjoyed their joy, trying to imitate it.
She took part only when they recalled Sonya's first visit. Sonya told how she was afraid of Nikolai, because he had cords on his jacket, and her nanny told her that they would sew her into cords too.
“But I remember: they told me that you were born under cabbage,” said Natasha, “and I remember that then I did not dare not to believe, but I knew that this was not true, and I was so embarrassed.
During this conversation, the maid's head poked out of the back door of the divan. - Young lady, they brought a rooster, - the girl said in a whisper.
“Don’t, Polya, tell them to take it,” said Natasha.
In the middle of conversations going on in the sofa room, Dimmler entered the room and approached the harp in the corner. He took off the cloth, and the harp made a false sound.
“Eduard Karlych, please play my favorite Monsieur Filda’s Nocturiene,” said the voice of the old countess from the drawing room.
Dimmler took a chord and, turning to Natasha, Nikolai and Sonya, said: - Young people, how quietly they sit!
“Yes, we are philosophizing,” said Natasha, looking around for a minute, and continued the conversation. The conversation was now about dreams.
Dimmler began to play. Natasha inaudibly, on tiptoe, went up to the table, took the candle, carried it out, and, returning, quietly sat down in her place. It was dark in the room, especially on the sofa on which they sat, but the silver light of a full moon fell on the floor through the large windows.
“You know, I think,” Natasha said in a whisper, moving closer to Nikolai and Sonya, when Dimmler had already finished and was still sitting, weakly plucking the strings, apparently in indecision to leave or start something new, “that when you remember like that, you remember, you remember everything , until you remember that you remember what was even before I was in the world ...
“This is metampsikova,” said Sonya, who always studied well and remembered everything. “The Egyptians believed that our souls were in animals and would go back to animals.
“No, you know, I don’t believe that we were animals,” Natasha said in the same whisper, although the music ended, “but I know for sure that we were angels there somewhere and here, and from this we remember everything.” …
- May I join you? - Dimmler said quietly approached and sat down to them.
- If we were angels, why did we get lower? Nikolai said. - No, it can't be!
“Not lower, who told you that it was lower? ... Why do I know what I was before,” Natasha objected with conviction. - After all, the soul is immortal ... therefore, if I live forever, so I lived before, lived for eternity.
“Yes, but it’s hard for us to imagine eternity,” said Dimmler, who approached the young people with a meek, contemptuous smile, but now spoke as quietly and seriously as they did.
Why is it so hard to imagine eternity? Natasha said. “It will be today, it will be tomorrow, it will always be, and yesterday was and the third day was ...
- Natasha! now it's your turn. Sing me something, - the voice of the countess was heard. - Why are you sitting down, like conspirators.
- Mother! I don’t feel like it,” Natasha said, but at the same time she got up.
All of them, even the middle-aged Dimmler, did not want to interrupt the conversation and leave the corner of the sofa, but Natasha got up, and Nikolai sat down at the clavichord. As always, standing in the middle of the hall and choosing the most advantageous place for resonance, Natasha began to sing her mother's favorite play.

In the article "Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect" she proposed the following thought experiment, which has been haunting philosophers, anthropologists, specialists in cognitive science and neuroscience for several decades:

A heavy uncontrolled trolley rushes along the rails. On its way there are five people tied to the rails by a crazy philosopher. Fortunately, you can switch the arrow - and then the cart will go along another siding. Unfortunately, there is one person on the siding, also tied to the rails. What are your actions?

We can direct the trolley to a siding so that at the cost of the life of one, save five. Most likely, you will choose this option. Or we can do nothing, fully aware that our inaction will result in the death of five innocent people.

In moral philosophy with mixed success oppose each other the concepts of utilitarianism (J. Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham and others) and deontological ethics, which inherits the ideas of Immanuel Kant. According to the utilitarians, those actions that increase the overall benefit and happiness are preferred - which means that the switch should be switched without question. But from the point of view of Kant's ethics, it is impossible to do so. A person can only be seen as an end and not a means, even if it is a means to save the lives of others.

In 1976, Judith Thompson proposed an improved version of the experiment. Choose the right decision here it becomes much more difficult.

The trolley is still rushing at full speed along the rails, to which five people are tied. You are standing on the bridge, which is located just above the railroad tracks. In front of you is a massive fat man, which you can push under the train and thereby save the rest of the people. You can throw yourself under the train, but your weight will not be enough to stop the trolley.

From the standpoint of a pure utilitarian, nothing has changed: you are just as morally obligated to sacrifice one to save five, even though it involves direct violent action. But most people, as shown by studies and surveys conducted in several countries, think otherwise.

If in the first version of the experiment almost everyone is ready to switch the arrow, then there are much fewer people who want to kill a fat man. What's the matter here? What exactly changed in the second experiment compared to the first?

Apparently, the result for us is not the most important thing. It is also important how exactly it is achieved.

Many ways have already been proposed to explain the difference between the case of the arrow being moved and the case of the fat man. For example, you can see that in the second situation, the fat man can survive, while in the first one someone will definitely die.

Psychologist Joshua Green from Harvard University argues that in the first case we are dealing with an impersonal moral dilemma, which involves cold rational thinking. And in the second, emotions and empathy are turned on, which lead to completely different decisions. This explanation looks plausible, especially when you consider that a fat man is much more likely to decide to kill autistic people and people with psychopathic tendencies, who have empathy just big problems. But there may be other reasons as well.

If in the first case you redirect the arrow, and the person suddenly manages to break the ropes and run away, you will, of course, be very happy - your conscience will not be burdened by anything. But if the fat man can escape and does not stop the train with his body, there will be nothing joyful in this: it turns out that you did not save anyone and made a vain attempted murder.

Over the past 40 years, many more variations of this riddle have been invented. Here is some of them:

You know that the fat man on the bridge is the villain.

You don't need to push the fat man with your powers - he is standing right on the hatch, which you can open by pressing the lever.

One man tied to the rails is yours worst enemy, and by five you do not experience any emotions.

The minecart can be removed from the tracks by pushing it into another minecart. In doing so, both of them will fall on the lawn and kill a man sleeping in a hammock.

In the first versions of the experiment, we completely ignore who the people on the rails are, what a fat man looks like, what he is wearing, and many other factors that real situation may influence our decision. Some people think that for this reason mental constructions completely useless and say nothing.

But it is precisely this dilemma that really raises important questions No wonder she got so much attention. There was even the term "trolleyology" (trolleyology), which denotes research on similar moral contradictions.

As David Edmonds, who has devoted an entire book to this problem, points out, similar cases are being analyzed by cadets at the Military Academy at West Point, USA - this is supposed to help highlight the difference between the methods of the US military and terrorist organizations. The latter deliberately strike civilians, while the former attack military objectives, and civilians become only accidental, albeit inevitable victims.

In fact, we face such problems everywhere. Here is an example from the medical field that Edmonds gives:

When some medical organization faced with the choice of funding one drug that is supposed to save X lives, or funding another drug that is supposed to save Y lives, she is really dealing with a variation of the trolley task, although such dilemmas do not require killing anyone.

Thought experiments such as the trolley problem, which at first glance seem completely useless, actually help to better understand what exactly we consider right and fair, what kind of ethics is preferable for us.

But that's not all. Everything large quantity tasks that were previously performed by people are taken on by automated systems. Hundreds of self-driving cars will soon be on our roads. This raises serious ethical issues: what program of action should we put into these systems?

Is it necessary, for example, to automatically unhook a wagon that is about to explode from general composition by sacrificing a few for the lives of the many? In other words, should robots be utilitarian or Kantian?

Edmonds believes that we would prefer to program them to minimize sacrifice and maximize the good. And it would be perfectly justified: if emotions prevent us from killing a fat man, then machines have no such excuse. Their ethics will be different from ours. But it is our arguments, experiments and reasoning that will largely determine what it will be like.

The Trolley problem is a thought experiment in ethics, first formulated in 1967. English philosopher Philippa Foot. Being outside the standard philosophical questions, trolley problem is playing big role in cognitive science and neuroethics.

“A heavy uncontrolled trolley rushes along the rails. On its way there are five people tied to the rails by a crazy philosopher. Fortunately, you can switch the arrow - and then the cart will go along another siding. Unfortunately, there is one person on the siding, also tied to the rails. What are your actions?

The concept of utilitarianism prescribes in without fail toggle arrow. According to this concept, switching an arrow is not the only permissible action, but, from a moral point of view, best action(another possibility is to do nothing).

A similar problem was proposed by the philosopher D. D. Thomson:

“As before, the trolley rushes along the rails, to which five people are tied. You are on a bridge that goes over the rails. You have the ability to stop the trolley by throwing something heavy on the way. There is a fat man next to you, and the only way to stop the trolley is to push him off the bridge on the way. What are your actions?

It is worth noting that for a significant part of the people, active participation in this situation looks almost impossible. Most of those who would switch the switch in the first situation would not push the person under the cart in the second. This feature was a prerequisite for a deeper study of the difference between these two situations.

The first clear difference is that in the first case, the observer does not interact directly with the person: the death of a person on the siding is a side effect of switching the arrow. However, in the second case, aggression towards the fat man is an integral part of the plan to save the five. This argument was discussed (and rejected) by Shelley Kagan in The Limits of Morality.

It is worth noting that such a decision is a consequence of the doctrine of double effect, which says that if necessary, you can take actions that have negative side effects, but the intentional manifestation of aggression (even to achieve positive results) is wrong.

An alternative wording that doesn't use a minecart looks like this.

A high-class surgeon has 5 patients, each of whom needs an organ transplant (different for all five). Every patient will die if they don't get this organ. Unfortunately, the hospital and the surrounding area do not have the necessary organs. A young healthy visitor comes to the hospital for a routine checkup. Examining him, the surgeon discovers that the young man's organs are fully compatible with the organisms of 5 of his patients. Suppose that in the event of the visitor disappearing without a trace, no one will look for him and no one will suspect the doctor of the murder. What should the doctor do?

And now the last twist:

Guess what people answer if you formulate the problem like this.

Below is the classic trolley problem, a well-known thought experiment in the field of ethics.

A heavy uncontrolled trolley rushes along the rails. On its way there are five people tied to the rails by a crazy philosopher. Fortunately, you can switch the arrow - and then the trolley will go along a different, siding track. Unfortunately, there is one person on the siding, also tied to the rails. What are your actions?

The concept of utilitarianism ( maximum benefit) instructs to switch the arrow without fail. Opponents of switching arrows emphasize the impossibility of comparing human lives, and leave the situation to the conscience of a crazy philosopher.

An alternative formulation of the same problem is curious.

A high-class surgeon has 5 patients, each of whom needs an organ transplant (different for all five). Every patient will die if they don't get this organ. Unfortunately, the hospital and the surrounding area do not have the necessary organs. A young healthy visitor comes to the hospital for a routine checkup. Examining him, the surgeon discovers that the young man's organs are fully compatible with the organisms of 5 of his patients. Suppose that in the event of the visitor disappearing without a trace, no one will look for him and no one will suspect the doctor of the murder. What should the doctor do?

There are others similar tasks, for example, about a fat man.

As before, the trolley rushes along the rails, to which five people are tied. You are on a bridge that goes over the rails. You have the ability to stop the trolley by throwing something heavy on the way. There is a fat man next to you, and the only way to stop the trolley is to push him off the bridge on the way. What are your actions?

I recently came across another version of a similar puzzle while playing the game Life Is Strange (carefully this paragraph contains a mini-spoiler, you can skip it). The game forces you to make all sorts of difficult (psychologically) decisions, which allows you to learn a lot about yourself. For example, there you had to choose between saving a friend main character game and the whole city and, to my surprise, I chose a girlfriend (this is how I am good friend apparently).

In the comments to my post about the impressions of the game, they sent me a link to community, where they come up with alternative (usually funny) versions of the puzzle about the trolley.

For example, would you push a fat person in the path of a trolley to spare a person down the path from making a decision? classical problem trolleys? How will you solve the trolley problem if you do not know what role you will be in when the solution is implemented: as a lone person or one of five tied on rails, a trolley driver or standing at a lever? Will you push the fat man onto Mr. A if Mr. A wants to save his wife, who is lying alone on the tracks, by redirecting the trolley onto a track with five people (Mr. A, his wife and the fat man will die, but five will survive).

In yet another variation, the trolley problem was combined with the well-known Prisoner's Dilemma. You and your partner (whom you can't communicate with) are solving a cart problem, but your carts are heading towards each other. Each of you is on the tracks behind your trolley. If both of you don't pull the levers, the carts will run over five people and crash into each other. If you both pull the levers, the trolleys will go around the detours and crush two people each. But if only one of you pulls the lever, then the trolley of the second will crush five people and the one who pulled the lever (so they can crush you).

The most beautiful version of the problem, in my opinion, is about cows. Initially, there are n cows on the path of the trolley, and on alternative way- one man. At what minimum value n you pull the lever to run over a person? Will your decision change if you know that the person lying on the tracks is a vegan?

I decided to play this game too, so keep my thought experiment (none of the following is meant to be more than fiction). I hope it doesn't seem too complicated.

A task.

So, the trolley is going to run over five people. Only you can turn the lever and move the trolley to the tracks where there is one person. This man is a Nobel laureate who is close to discovering a cure for the immunodeficiency virus, which will be produced by genetically modified plants, but only helps people with black skin. According to experts from the World Health Organization, such a drug could save 100,000 lives of black Africans a year, and the death of a scientist will delay the appearance of the drug by two years.

However, according to members of the Genetic Safety Association, such a drug (derived from GMO plants) leads to infertility, and the HIV dissident organization claims that HIV does not cause AIDS and does not lead to anything bad, or even does not exist at all. WHO experts and most scientific community deny what is written above in this paragraph.

Now let's describe five people who are on the current path of the trolley. First, there is a theologian among them who is praying for the trolley to stop on its own. The theologian defended, and the VAK approved a dissertation on theology, proving the existence of God. The theologian claims to have discovered a prayer that works, but only if it is aimed at helping a true believer. The theologian asks not to turn the lever, because he is a true believer and God, having heard his prayer, will stop the trolley himself, and no one will be hurt (the theologian lies on the rails closest to the trolley). Nobel Laureate with an atheistic worldview, according to the theologian, he does not fall under God's protection. If the theologian still dies, his theory will be refuted, and the HAC specialty in theology will be eliminated. If the lever is not turned, and God stops the trolley, the theologian himself will become a Nobel laureate.

Next to the theologian on the rails lies the patriarch, who had previously highly appreciated the theologian's dissertation, during a speech before the State Duma, but unlike the theologian, he asks to pull the lever (crush the scientist). The patriarch has a notarized document that, in the event of his salvation, he orders to distribute all church luxury items (from yachts, limousines and ROC assets in banks, to previously seized school premises, hospitals) in favor of the poor, sick and homeless through your chosen charitable foundations. It's about on property and assets for more than 50 billion rubles. That is, 200 thousand poor, homeless or sick people will receive 250 thousand rubles each, which can save them from hunger, lack of medicines and housing. It is also known that in the event of the death of the Patriarch, he will be declared a saint, and next to the main building of Moscow State University a chapel will be built in his honor.

Next to Patriarch Kirill lies a pregnant woman (first trimester). This woman was about to have an abortion, apparently not counting her embryo as a human (the sixth person on the rails), but given the situation, is willing to change her mind.

The last two people on this branch of the path are heterosexual married couple, planning to have three children (but so far childless). You can save them alternative way: not turning the lever, but dropping a homosexual couple standing on the bridge in front of the train (two men, alas, not fat, well-groomed, well-dressed, athletic, so the train will still crush the theologian, the patriarch and the pregnant woman). In principle, you can throw this couple under the train and in case you decide to turn the lever to add them to the number of victims along with the Nobel laureate (by the way, she is a woman). For this, Milonov will give you his deputy chair (this will not happen if the patriarch dies because of you).

Finally, it is worth noting that there is another way - to blow up the trolley (no one lying on the rails will be harmed). But with this option, too, there are a couple of nuances. The fact is that this is a special trolley. The trolley carries secret drawings of the Armata tank, without which Russian tanks will be guaranteed to be worse than American ones, and the icon of the Blessed Matrona. In addition, if the trolley is blown up, the FSB colonel, who guards the directors of the Monsanto company, Navalny, Obama and his captives, will die. exact copy- the result of the experiment secret laboratory on 3D copying of people. All of them will also die, and Putin will not get the technology of 3D copying people. Putin wants to use technology to (potentially) live and rule forever (the availability of technology to other people is not affected by your decision).

Everything takes place in Crimea, which at the time of the events is controlled by Ukraine. The explosion of the trolley is guaranteed to serve as a pretext for the annexation of Crimea to Russia. Otherwise, Crimea will remain with Ukraine in the near future. In Belarus, an additional 200,000 cows will be killed to make up for the lost meat, which will be destroyed on the outskirts of Russia as "sanctions". As part of measures to prevent terrorism, The State Duma will ban promotion of Counter-Strike to minors. 50 billion rubles from the budget will be allocated for the implementation of the law, which will go to Panamanian offshores. Nobel laureate, FSB colonel, director of the Monsanto company, as well as a homosexual couple - vegans.

Regardless of the choice, the court will justify you (nothing threatens you). And now I give the floor to you, dear readers. Which of the proposed paths will you choose? And most importantly - explain why?

End of task.

P.S. By design, the answer to the whole problem should depend on many small answers that you give to numerous questions in Everyday life. But which of your views and beliefs is more important? Do you trust scientists? Do you believe in God? Are all lives equal? Is a human copy, an embryo, a planned child? Does life have a price? Is it necessary to discard emotions when solving such problems?

P.P.S. It would be great if someone made an illustration.

In general, there are interesting Scientific research on the topic of initial tasks, some of which I mention in the article« » .

Trolley problem is a thought experiment in ethics, first proposed by Philippa Foote in 1967, which has also been extensively studied by Judith Jarvis Thomson, Peter Unger, and Francis Kamm. Outside of traditional philosophical discussion, the trolley problem is important in cognitive science and, more recently, in neuroetics. She has also been the subject of many television shows focusing on human psychology.

The general description of the problem is as follows:

The trolley has lost control and is rushing along railway track. Ahead of the track, five people are tied and immobilized, and the trolley rushes straight at them. You are standing at some distance from the events, at the arrow. If you click on the arrow, the trolley will take a different path. However, you notice that one person is tied up on the other path. You have no way to control the arrow to change the direction of the cart without losing a life (for example, by holding the arrow in the middle position so that the cart gets stuck between two tracks, or by pressing the arrow when the front wheels have gone through the turn, but the rear wheels have not). You have only two options: (1) Do nothing and the cart will kill five people on the main track. (2) Press the arrow and the cart will go down the side track and kill one person. Is the choice correct?

Review

Foote's original formulation of the problem was:

Imagine that protesters come to a judge or magistrate who demand that the culprit of a certain crime be found and found guilty, otherwise they will independently carry out a bloody revenge on a certain part of the public. Since the real culprit is unknown, the judge believes that he can only prevent bloodshed by framing an innocent man and condemning him to death. Or another example: a pilot whose plane is about to hit the ground decides to direct it to a more or less populated area. To draw as close a parallel as possible, let us suppose that he is the driver of an unmanaged tram, which he can direct only along one or the other narrow gauge; five people work on one track and one on the other; no matter which way he goes, people will die along this way. In the case of the protest, the crowd has five hostages, so in both cases the exchange will be one life for five lives.

The utilitarian view calls for a one-person tram to be steered on the tracks. According to simple utilitarianism, such a decision would not only be allowed, but morally the best option (the other option is no action). An alternative point of view is that since there is already a moral injustice in this situation, the transition to another track involves the participation of a person in this moral injustice, and she becomes partially responsible for death, and in case of inaction, no one will be responsible. An opponent of action can also point to incommensurability human life. According to some interpretations moral duty, the mere presence in such a situation and the possibility of influencing it creates an obligation to do so. If so, the decision to do nothing would be considered immoral if one values ​​the life of five over one.

Bound problems

The initial trolley problem becomes more interesting when compared to other moral dilemmas.

Fat person

One of them was suggested by Judith Jarvis Thomson:

As before, the trolley rushes along the path in the direction of five people. You are standing on the bridge she will pass under, and you can stop her by dropping something heavy on the rails in front of her. By chance, a very fat man is standing next to you on the bridge; and your only option to stop the trolley is to throw this person off the bridge onto the tracks, which will lead to the death of this person, but saving five. Do you have to do so?

This description of the problem is met with considerable resistance; the majority of people who, in the main wording, agreed to the death of one person in order to save five, in this version categorically do not agree with this in the second case. This led scholars to attempt to find relevant moral differences between the two cases.

One clear difference is that in the first case, the "doer" does not intend to harm anyone - harming one person is only a side effect of moving the trolley from one track to another away from five. However, in the second case, hurting one person is part of the plan to save five. Shelley Kagan considers and finally rejects precisely this argument in her work The Limits of Morality.

You can also insist that the difference between the two options is that in the second you intend to cause the death of one person to save five, and this is wrong, but in the first you do not intend this. Such a proposal is in fact an application of the doctrine double effect stating that you can choose an action with bad side effects, but deliberate harm (even for a good goal) is wrong. Action utilitarians reject this, as do some non-utilitarians, such as Peter Unger, who denies that there is a significant moral difference between hurting someone or putting a person in harm's way. However, rule utilitarianism may not support such actions, as it may say that pushing a fat person off a bridge violates the rule that one should look for ways to ensure the greatest happiness. the largest number of people.

Another difference is that the first option looks like an airplane pilot who has lost control and is about to fall into a dense populated area. Even if he knows for sure that innocent people will die, if he directs the plane to a less populated area - people who "have nothing to do with it" - he will still return the plane without a doubt. And if you donate own life to save others is considered noble, then the moral or legal permission to kill an innocent person to save five people may be an example of insufficient justification.

fat thief

A further development of this example includes the option that the fat man is actually the thief who endangered the five people. In such a case, pushing the thief, which would entail his death, especially to save five innocent people, seems not only moral, but for some it is both fair and imperative. This option is actually similar to another famous thought experiment, the time bomb scenario, which forces a choice between two morally questionable actions. Some scientific work consider this scenario only a variant of the trolley problem.

Ring variant

Claiming what's wrong use the death of one person to save five faces a problem in such cases:

As before, the trolley is speeding along the path in the direction of five people, and you can direct it along a different path. However, in this case, this other path reconnects to the main one, and changing the path still leaves the minecart on the path to run over five. However, there is one fat man on the side track, who, when the cart kills her, will stop this cart on the way to five. Or will you move the arrow?

The only difference between this option and the original problem is that a piece of track has been added, seems like a minor difference (especially if the minecart still won't pass over that piece). So, if in the original problem we decided that it was possible or necessary to move the arrow, intuitively we can assume that the answer should not change. However, in this case, the death of one person is actually part of a plan to save five.

The ring option may not be fatal to the "use of man as a means" argument. Such an assumption was made by M. Costa in his 1987 article "Another Trolley Ride", in which he notes that if we do nothing in this scenario, in fact we will allow five to become a means to save a friend. If we don't do anything, then the cart's collision with five will slow it down and prevent it from making a circle and killing a friend. Since in any case, someone will become a means to save another, we have the right to count the number. This approach requires reducing the weight of the moral difference between action and permission to act.

However, such judgments can no longer be applied if such minor changes, which means that one person is never in danger, even in the absence of five. Or even without changing the path if this one person is in highest point way, and five - in the low one, and the trolley will not reach a friend. Therefore, the question was not answered.

Even in a situation where people are not tied to the path by some kind of criminal, but are simply on the move and have no way to warn them, an out-of-control trolley is like an out-of-control aircraft. 5 or 500 or 1 or 100 people will die as a result of an accident, it is already underway and it is important to minimize the loss of lives, despite the fact that these 1 or 100 are actually "used" to save 5 or 500 hundred people (and their property) in less populated area actually stop the plane. Responsibility for this lies with criminal negligence, which caused the accident itself (aircraft crash).

Transplantation

An alternative suggested by Judith Jarvis Thomson contains similar figures and results, but without the trolley:

Brilliant transplant surgeon five patients, each requiring a transplant various bodies, direct which each of them will die. Unfortunately, for the implementation of one transplant does not have available organs. A healthy young tourist, staying in the city in which the surgeon works, comes for a routine physical examination. During a physical, the surgeon learns that the hiker's organs are compatible with all five of his dying patients. Imagine also that if the tourist disappears, no one will suspect the surgeon.

Man in the yard

Peter Unger dismisses the traditional no-nonsense answers to the trolley problem. Here is one of his examples:

As before, the trolley rushes along the path in the direction of five people. You can change its path by directing another cart to collide with it. But if you do that, both will go out of the way and slide down the hill into the yard where the man in the hammock sleeps. She will die. Should you do?

The answers to this problem partially depend on whether the respondent has already encountered the standard trolley problem (because there is a desire to be consistent in the answers), but Unger notes that those who have not encountered such problems in this case are likely to say what to do is wrong.

Therefore, Unger believes that different responses to such problems are more based on psychology than on ethics - in his opinion, in this new formulation, the only difference is that the person in the yard does not seem to be particularly "involved" in what is happening. Unger believes that this is why people believe that the person in the yard is not a "legitimate participant", however, he believes that such a lack of her participation in this scenario does not create a moral difference.

Unger also reflects on problems that are complex to the standard trolley problem, which involve more than two consequences. In one such problem, one can do something that (a) saves five by killing four (occupants of one or more trolleys and/or sleeping in a hammock), (b) saves five and kills three, (c) saves five and kill two, (d) save five and kill one, or (e) do nothing and let five die. Most naive people, who are asked solutions to such a problem, Unger argues, will choose option (d), save five by killing one, even if such a choice requires doing something very similar to killing a fat man, as described in Thomson above.

This scenario is similar to the fact that when a crime is committed and someone calls the police; even if it is well known in advance that calling the police causes pedestrian and driver deaths in crashes every year, very few people want to disband the police in order to ensure that no innocent people die on the way to the crime scene. In the case where the "five" is "not locked" at the scene of the crime, it still falls under the option of directing the falling aircraft to a less populated area.

cognitive sciences

The trolley problem was first systematically imported from philosophy into the cognitive sciences by Hauser, Mikail et al. They proposed the hypothesis that factors such as gender, age, level of education and cultural foundation have little effect on people's judgments, in part because such judgments are produced by a subconscious "moral grammar" that is analogous in certain respects to subconscious linguistic grammars, which according to the philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky and his colleagues support the ordinary use of language (this thought regarding language has been strongly criticized by Dan Everett, as well as Evans and Levinson.) In particular, the data in the publication by Houser, Mikail et al. 2007 contains only 33 people, who did not grow up in an English-speaking system of education. The main car, Mark Houser, was fined 8 times by his then employer, Harvard University, per serious violations research and falsification of data, does not allow any data of his research to be perceived as reliable. More recent cross-cultural studies have shown many counterexamples to the idea of ​​a "Universal Moral Grammar".

neuroethics

Applying Neuroethic approaches to the trolley problem, psychologist Joshua Green, under the direction of Jonathan Cohen, set out to study the brain's response to moral and ethical puzzles through the use of functional MRI. In their more famous experiments, Green and Cohen to analyze the reactions of subjects to the morality of the answers both in the variant of the trolley with an arrow problem, and in the variant with a pedestrian bridge, similar to the variant of the trolley with a fat person. According to their hypothesis, when a person is faced with such conflicts, it causes both a strong emotional reaction, and sensible cognitive response, which often contradict each other. Based on the results of functional MRI, they found that situations that provoke a strong emotional response, such as the fat person scenario, show significantly higher brain activity in areas of the brain associated with response conflict. At the same time, more conflict-neutral scenarios, such as the relatively unemotional arrow option, result in more activity in areas of the brain associated with higher cognitive functions. Thus, appeal to potentially ethical ideas revolves around human ability rationale for making moral decisions.

Psychology

The trolley problem has been the subject of many polls, with over 90% of respondents choosing to kill one and save five. When the description of the situation is changed in such a way that that one is a relative or beloved partner, the willingness to sacrifice him is greatly reduced.

In 2012, participants made a choice by wearing a head-mounted display that showed virtual avatars of the trolley's victims, and performed a real-life simulation vehicle approaching. As the vehicle approached, the virtual avatars in its path began to scream before the collision. People who were more emotionally aroused were less likely to "kill" one.

View of professional philosophers

The results of a 2009 study, which were published in a 2013 paper by David Burge and David Chalmers, show that in the trolley problem, 68% of professional philosophers would switch the arrow (sacrificing one person to save five lives), 8% would not switch the arrow, and 24 % had a different view or found it difficult to answer.

Like an urban legend

In an urban legend that exists at least since the mid-1960s, the decision has been made by a drawbridge operator who must choose between a passenger train accident and the life of his four-year-old son. A Czech short film was made on this subject. Bridge with a similar story. This version is often also given as a deliberate allegory to the belief of some Christians that God sacrificed his son Jesus Christ.