Question

PHILOSOPHY QUESTION :Philippa Foot (1920-2010), a British philosopher who taught at UCLA, first introduced the modern version of the Trolley Problem in 1967.

A runaway trolley that is barreling toward five people who are tied to the tracks and you have access to a lever that can switch the trolley to a rail where there is only one person tied to the track, would you pull the lever? Almost everyone says they would pull the lever.

A runaway trolley that is barreling toward five people who are tied to the tracks you see a fat man (sorry this is not PC. Today the fat man is sometimes replaced by a large man carrying a huge backpack) standing close to the tracks. You realized that you can push the fat man onto the tracks thus stopping the trolley and saving the five. The fat man would unfortunately be killed. You, by the way, are too small to stop the trolley. Would you push the fat man? Almost everybody would say that they would not push the fat man.

Is this essentially the same situation—sacrifice one and save five? Or is there something essentially different? How do you think a utilitarian would respond?

Answer 1

answer-

In both situation i would save the five by sacrificing one because if there is a choice to save either one or five then it would be logical to save five also if we see it from perspective of utilitarian theory in which decision is ethical which brings happiness and welfare to greatest number of people.so by this we can say that if we save five then we are saving families of five people means more people in number or five people are more in number and one sacrifice for five would be ethical from utilitarian theory.