The trolley problem has its origins as a set of thought experiments in both ethics and philosophy. The dilemmas that are presented are often stylized in such a way that encourages the participant to debate whether the sacrifice of one person for the sake of many is fair or advantageous. The varying opinions on each dilemma may be swayed by sensitive details, and as such, one of these was labeled as the trolley problem, though it too has variations. The primary and most basic scenario can be refed to as ‘Bystander at the Switch’ or simply, ‘Switch’. In this hypothetical situation, a runaway trolley is going down railway tracks and is on its way to running over five people tied to them.
The participant is stood near a lever, which will turn the cart onto a different track and avoid killing the five people. However, the other track also has a person on it, but they are alone. As such, the participant has two options. They may either do nothing and which will result in the death of the five people or they may pull the lever and kill one person. This scenario was created in order to generate responses on which of the two options was more ethical or right.
This format of ethical decision problems was first by Philippa Foot in 1967, as an aspect of an analysis she was conducting on abortion debates and the doctrine of double effect (Graham, 2017). The issue was expanded by Judith Thomson who created variations that led to increasingly improbable situations such as having a fat man stop the trolley, after which his organs may be donated, or is killed in indirect ways that begin to explore causation and responsibility (Graham, 2017).
Other philosophers continued to add to the dilemma by making the lone person on the other track the participant’s child or another family member. In the current century, the trolley problem can be encountered in empirical studies on moral psychology with implementation in the ethics of autonomous vehicle design. This suggests that the programming of self-driving vehicles may reflect human morality when a collision is unavoidable and the program will have to choose whom or what to collide with.
Though the trolley problem has applicable possibilities, real-life incidents, and survey data, it is the subject of much criticism. Much of the criticism stems from the fact that the dilemma is too extreme, unlikely, and not grounded in reality and therefore lacks educational significance. It has deeper characteristics that may adversely affect participants such as encouraging cold and calculating responses towards very hypothetical situations. Additionally, human agency is often taken out of the equation, as the participant must choose between two options and has no freedom to leave the situation. As such, these issues can also be seen within practical applications of the trolley problem. Recent studies aim to evade the intrinsic inequality of the dilemma in the programming of autonomous vehicles.
In my opinion, due to the bias towards certain groups, the improbability of the provided dilemmas, as well as the restriction of the freedom of the participant, the trolley problem is inherently unfair. Certain studies were able to differentiate and collect the different contributions that create unfair behavior and features of such ethically-guided programming (Holstein & Dodig-Crnkovic, 2018). Though the economic, technical, and even social factors of new technology may be addressed with limited bias, the ethical aspects will always be swayed by the values and opinions of certain groups or individuals. As such, I believe it to be largely unfitting for the judgment of morality and ethics of a participant.
References
Graham, P. A. (2017). Thomson’s Trolley Problem. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 12(2), 168-190. Web.
Holstein, T., & Dodig-Crnkovic, G. (Eds). (2018). Avoiding the intrinsic unfairness of the trolley problem. Association for Computing Machinery. Web.