What would you?

Would you pull the lever?

  • Yes

    Votes: 1 100.0%

  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    1
P

Postmaster

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Does anyone remember Codes question about the train? What would you do if a train carrying 200 pasengers going towards a cliff edge. You can save them all by pulling a lever but in doing so you are diverting the train on a track with a trapped little girl.
http://www.interfaith.org/forum/what-would-you-do-11072.html

I voted for the train to go off the edge. The reason for me in choosing this option was because if I was stuck on the track instead of the little girl and the lever was right next to me, out of all honesty I dont think I would be able to pull the lever to save the 200 people. Call me selfish but the time given to me to make such an decision would not be enough to fight my own powerful instinct of survival.

So I empathised with the little girl and thought that the option to save the 200 people would be at her discretion, after all shes on a track the train never had any intension of going through. And so with the discretion belonging to the little girl I have no right pulling the lever even if she chose to save the people because shes also a minor.

How would people vote if they were stuck under the track and had the oppertunity to save the people on the train by pulling the lever and killing themselves, would you do it?
 
I'm not good at these hypotheticals. The only thing I know for certain is when the moment comes, I'd be able to make a decision, and afterword tell you what I did and contemplate whether it was right or not.

After code's queery, I was sent a video which showed the very same thing...and at the end it was a marketing tool, proslytizing for Jesus...he pulled the lever.

I felt used. I just don't like games like that I suppose.
 
wil said:
I'm not good at these hypotheticals. The only thing I know for certain is when the moment comes, I'd be able to make a decision, and afterword tell you what I did and contemplate whether it was right or not.
Click to expand...

Since you are there afterwards to tell you have already told us ;)

I would like to think I'd choose my own death over 200 others... but it would be difficult to pull it in that pinch I would imagine.... who knows?
 
Postmaster said:
How would people vote if they were stuck under the track and had the oppertunity to save the people on the train by pulling the lever and killing themselves, would you do it?
Click to expand...

If I were stuck "under" the track, I'd let the train pass over me, climb out of the hole I was in, dust myself off and go on with my day.
 
I hate "lifeboat" questions. They are inevitably tragic, and at root unresolvable (at least in my ethical system). They invite "answers" in ways that say nothing about the non-lifeboat issues of day to day life.

E.g., one might be tempted to answer the OP question in a utilitarian fashion, but this wouldn't mean that utilitarianism necessarily applies to day-to-day ethical concerns. And you might never encounter a true lifeboat dilemma in your entire life.

I consider such questions a virtual dead end in ethics, at best having value only to a military commander in wartime, or of course to people in lifeboats.

That said...

How would people vote if they were stuck under the track and had the oppertunity to save the people on the train by pulling the lever and killing themselves, would you do it?
Click to expand...

I don't think I can give an abstract answer to this question. "It all depends on everything" is my best answer. I'd have to be in that situation to know how I would react and justify (or regret) my actions. I would, for instance, have to ask myself "would I be able to live with myself at the expense of all of those lives?" I would probably not have enough time to think to be sure of my choice in the situation.

The principle that I would most likely fall back on is to preserve my self-respect and even my mental health, or to die if this was impossible. Yes, this is an egoistic principles, but then I am an ethical egoist of a sort.


eudaimonia,

Mark
 
Tao_Equus said:
Since you are there afterwards to tell you have already told us ;)
Click to expand...
Namaste Tao,

Yeah, I wasn't thinking about that, Freudian answer? Anywho, still don't know how I'd react. And I suppose if I'd made the other decision, it could be I'd have to wait a little longer to tell you.
 
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