quarta-feira, 29 de abril de 2009

double effect - a Dilemma

You’re standing by a railway line. An out-of-control trolley is heading towards you. Tragically, there are five people tied to the track ahead. It looks like they’ll all be killed. Fortunately you have a chance to save them. By turning a switch you can send the trolley hurtling down a spur, a side track, where, most unfortunately, one man is tied to the rails. But killing him would save the five.

There’s another option. A second switch would operate a trap door on an overhead footbridge, dropping an overweight unsuspecting train-spotter onto the track below, stopping the train (he’s large enough to do this), but, of course, killing the train-spotter. What should you do?

A ludicrous scenario? Maybe. But these, and other trolley problems, have been used by philosophers such as Judith Jarvis Thompson and Philippa Foot, to dissect and clarify our deepest intuitions about the morality of killing – about, for example, terrorism and euthanasia. Michael Otsuka is one of the leading experts on what’s been called Trolley-ology.


What do you do in this case?


For more go to this site:

http://www.open2.net/ethicsbites/trolleys-killing-double-effect.html

2 comentários:

  1. Well ...it's easy to say something like .. ow .. i'm gona do the first option and kill just 1

    Or Well i'm gona make a sacrifice and save 5 kiling 1 person .. but when we are on the real situation we can't just say it and do .. we have no time to think ...it's like ... when you are about to win a game of money and if you chose the right one you would get R$ 100,000,000 but if you make the wrong one you would lose every thing ...


    Well .. in my opinion .. i would as for a sacrificer ... he would do it to save the 5

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  2. It´s a so difficult question, but I think if I am in this situation I will try the first opition, because the other man is tied and don`t have an expectation to live. His sacrifice save the other five person.
    But I don`t wanna be in this situation and make this choice!

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