My college professor and his scenarios..

[Oklyps]

I've been staring at this scenario for a week...

Sarah is a ten year old girl who enjoys playing by the train tracks and watching the train pass each day at 12:00 noon. She lives in a small town where there is a junction of the tracks. Engineer Bill (a retired train operator) sits at the train depot next to the juncture. The tracks in one direction dangle over the edge of a deep ravine, because the bridge that used to support the tracks was destroyed during the Civil War. On one particular day, Sarah came to the tracks a bit before noon and discovered a lever that she had not seen before. Not knowing what the lever was for, she decided to move the lever, switching the tracks in the direction of the ravine. In doing so, she fell and became stuck between the rails of the tracks. Engineer Bill ran to free her before the train came through but found that he was presented with a serious dilemma. If he switches the tracks back in the proper direction so as to prevent the train with its one hundred passengers from going into the ravine, he will directly kill Sarah. If he allows the train to go off the cliff, Sarah will live. These two courses of action are his only alternatives. Issue: What is Bill’s moral responsibility?

Do nothing and the little girl dies?
Save the little girl and the people on the train die?

What would you do?

[Im_Gin]

One life is not close to equal to one hundred. You directly kill her. The scenario is trying to cause some type of internal conflict because it gives you a sense of knowing Sarah. Just be rational and it is an easy decision.

[Lucky~9~Lives]

Qweird

Sarah is a ten year old girl who enjoys playing by the train tracks and watching the train pass each day at 12:00 noon. She lives in a small town where there is a junction of the tracks. Engineer Bill (a retired train operator) sits at the train depot next to the juncture. The tracks in one direction dangle over the edge of a deep ravine, because the bridge that used to support the tracks was destroyed during the Civil War. On one particular day, Sarah came to the tracks a bit before noon and discovered a lever that she had not seen before. Not knowing what the lever was for, she decided to move the lever, switching the tracks in the direction of the ravine. In doing so, she fell and became stuck between the rails of the tracks. Engineer Bill ran to free her before the train came through but found that he was presented with a serious dilemma. If he switches the tracks back in the proper direction so as to prevent the train with its one hundred passengers from going into the ravine, he will directly kill Sarah. If he allows the train to go off the cliff, Sarah will live. These two courses of action are his only alternatives. Issue: What is Bill’s moral responsibility?

Do nothing and the little girl dies?
Save the little girl and the people on the train die?

Neither.

Qweird

What would you do?

Not play with levers I don't know the purpose of.

[from blue to]

Well, Bill could just walk away and might as well, because of he gets involved he will be blamed for what deaths occur and people will likely overlook that he saved anyone because it's no fun getting all riled up to lynch someone who did a good deed.

[Oklyps]

iAwkwards

One life is not close to equal to one hundred. You directly kill her. The scenario is trying to cause some type of internal conflict because it gives you a sense of knowing Sarah. Just be rational and it is an easy decision.

Alright, but then we were thrown a similar conflict, which makes me want to overlook the previous conflict..

Two hundred years from now laws allow doctors to kill innocent people as long as by doing so the doctor will be able save more people than will be lost. In the year 2200 Joe the Janitor comes in to work at midnight in the emergency room of a local hospital. In the middle of mopping the floor (some things never change) 100 janitors from a local janitor convention, with varying life-threatening conditions, are admitted to emergency. One needs a heart, another needs a lung, and so on. They will all die shortly unless the doctor on duty does something. They are all innocent victims of a toxic spill that happened at the convention. The doctor knows that Joe, amazingly, is perfectly compatible with all the victims such that the doctor could save the 100 by killing Joe and distributing his body parts along with other bodily fluids. The operation that would be required is easily within the technology of the medical profession at this future time.

Question:
What is the doctor’s moral responsibility; to kill Joe or allow the 100 to die?
What if you were Joe?

[Sandokiri]

It's a variant of this.

Solution: Use my magical powers to avoid the dilemma.

Rationale:

1. Since the train is daily, it is absurd to think that the bridge destruction could be anything but a short time before the dilemma, for it to have not been noticed and decisively fixed. We're dealing with a daily passenger run, and no rail company would risk the liabilities involved.

Since the destruction is established as being during the Civil War, our dilemma must be happening in the past.

2. Manual turnout switches aren't something that can be easily manipulated by a 10-year-old; they're not Skyrim portcullis switches. (Though they can be on smaller tracks, such as mine cart tracks, the railroad switches are far larger.)

Thus, we're living in a world where time travel is possible (so that I can change temporal locations to 150 years ago) and where average Civil War-era ten-year-old girls can solo-operate manual railroad switches (and somehow fall in after succeeding.) In such a world, I can make a reasonable claim to having magical powers.

And thus, I use my magic to avoid the dilemma.

[Ryo Tarn]

Qweird

I've been staring at this scenario for a week...

Sarah is a ten year old girl who enjoys playing by the train tracks and watching the train pass each day at 12:00 noon. She lives in a small town where there is a junction of the tracks. Engineer Bill (a retired train operator) sits at the train depot next to the juncture. The tracks in one direction dangle over the edge of a deep ravine, because the bridge that used to support the tracks was destroyed during the Civil War. On one particular day, Sarah came to the tracks a bit before noon and discovered a lever that she had not seen before. Not knowing what the lever was for, she decided to move the lever, switching the tracks in the direction of the ravine. In doing so, she fell and became stuck between the rails of the tracks. Engineer Bill ran to free her before the train came through but found that he was presented with a serious dilemma. If he switches the tracks back in the proper direction so as to prevent the train with its one hundred passengers from going into the ravine, he will directly kill Sarah. If he allows the train to go off the cliff, Sarah will live. These two courses of action are his only alternatives. Issue: What is Bill’s moral responsibility?

Do nothing and the little girl dies?
Save the little girl and the people on the train die?

What would you do?

Pull the lever to save the people on the train. I'd then radio the train to tell them to stop and rush to try and save the girl if possible. If not then that sucks, but you can't just let a train full of people die because one girl acted like an idiot.

Qweird

iAwkwards

One life is not close to equal to one hundred. You directly kill her. The scenario is trying to cause some type of internal conflict because it gives you a sense of knowing Sarah. Just be rational and it is an easy decision.

Alright, but then we were thrown a similar conflict, which makes me want to overlook the previous conflict..

Two hundred years from now laws allow doctors to kill innocent people as long as by doing so the doctor will be able save more people than will be lost. In the year 2200 Joe the Janitor comes in to work at midnight in the emergency room of a local hospital. In the middle of mopping the floor (some things never change) 100 janitors from a local janitor convention, with varying life-threatening conditions, are admitted to emergency. One needs a heart, another needs a lung, and so on. They will all die shortly unless the doctor on duty does something. They are all innocent victims of a toxic spill that happened at the convention. The doctor knows that Joe, amazingly, is perfectly compatible with all the victims such that the doctor could save the 100 by killing Joe and distributing his body parts along with other bodily fluids. The operation that would be required is easily within the technology of the medical profession at this future time.

Question:
What is the doctor’s moral responsibility; to kill Joe or allow the 100 to die?
What if you were Joe?

You let Joe live. If he's miraculously compatible with 100 people then he's far more valuable than the 100 people. You study his blood and genes to discover what it was about him that made him so compatible in the first place so you can save millions down the road.

[catspook]

I'm confused. In Sarah's case, you have it written as if the "do nothing" option is that Sarah lives and the passengers die, yet in your questions you have it phrased the other way around - that's actually an important issue for a lot of people. Can you clarify?

[Oklyps]

catspook

I'm confused. In Sarah's case, you have it written as if the "do nothing" option is that Sarah lives and the passengers die, yet in your questions you have it phrased the other way around - that's actually an important issue for a lot of people. Can you clarify?

sorry about that. what i meant was would you pull the lever to save the passengers, killing sarah or save sarah and have the train go off the tracks killing the passengers?

[catspook]

Qweird

catspook

I'm confused. In Sarah's case, you have it written as if the "do nothing" option is that Sarah lives and the passengers die, yet in your questions you have it phrased the other way around - that's actually an important issue for a lot of people. Can you clarify?

sorry about that. what i meant was would you pull the lever to save the passengers, killing sarah or save sarah and have the train go off the tracks killing the passengers?

Got it, thanks. I honestly don't know what I would do, other than not get myself in that situation (really, that's my main problem with these kinds of dilemmas - they are often so artificial as to be meaningless). To answer the question "What is Bill’s moral responsibility?" I would say that it was to alert the train company of the dangerous set-up they had, and that kids were playing around in it. He should also have chased kids away whenever he saw them there. Really, the train company is at fault here and I would not blame Bill for whichever decision he made regarding pulling the lever.

If find the Joe one much easier - the doctor's responsibility is to not kill someone for their organs. It's tough luck for the other guys, but forced organ harvesting of a living person, especially if it would kill them, would so degrade the quality of life that it should never be made legal. Imagine living in a society that had those laws - it would by like living in the movie the Purge, only you wouldn't even know when it was coming *shivers*

[Lucky~9~Lives]

catspook

If find the Joe one much easier - the doctor's responsibility is to not kill someone for their organs. It's tough luck for the other guys, but forced organ harvesting of a living person, especially if it would kill them, would so degrade the quality of life that it should never be made legal. Imagine living in a society that had those laws - it would by like living in the movie the Purge, only you wouldn't even know when it was coming *shivers*

You make it sound like there's an association between legality and morality.

[CuAnnan]

Sandokiri

Solution: Use my magical powers to avoid the dilemma.

Q.F.E.

These problems always have a "but no reasonable approach will work", so we may as well start implementing the philosophically invalid ones.

[Fermionic]

He has no provable responsibility either way, he may do as he finds pleasing to his conscience, something that we are not arbiters of.

[Xiam]

Lucky~9~Lives

Not play with levers I don't know the purpose of.

But this individual is an engineer, who knows the purpose of the levers.

Qweird

iAwkwards

One life is not close to equal to one hundred. You directly kill her. The scenario is trying to cause some type of internal conflict because it gives you a sense of knowing Sarah. Just be rational and it is an easy decision.

Alright, but then we were thrown a similar conflict, which makes me want to overlook the previous conflict..

Two hundred years from now laws allow doctors to kill innocent people as long as by doing so the doctor will be able save more people than will be lost. In the year 2200 Joe the Janitor comes in to work at midnight in the emergency room of a local hospital. In the middle of mopping the floor (some things never change) 100 janitors from a local janitor convention, with varying life-threatening conditions, are admitted to emergency. One needs a heart, another needs a lung, and so on. They will all die shortly unless the doctor on duty does something. They are all innocent victims of a toxic spill that happened at the convention. The doctor knows that Joe, amazingly, is perfectly compatible with all the victims such that the doctor could save the 100 by killing Joe and distributing his body parts along with other bodily fluids. The operation that would be required is easily within the technology of the medical profession at this future time.

Question:
What is the doctor’s moral responsibility; to kill Joe or allow the 100 to die?
What if you were Joe?

Honestly, both this and the train question seem to be products of really shitty governing. I'd say better laws need to be in place. That dangerous train track needs to be repaired or scrapped for a newer, safer one, and this kill-innocent-people-to-save-others law is clearly ******** insane.

[Lucky~9~Lives]

Xiam

Lucky~9~Lives

Not play with levers I don't know the purpose of.

But this individual is an engineer, who knows the purpose of the levers.

Little girls can't be engineers.
- talk2hand