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Would You Kill One Person to Save

Five?
Understanding the “Trolley Dilemma”

by Emrys Westacott
Updated February 19, 2018

Philosophers love to conduct thought experiments. Often these involve rather bizarre
situations, and critics wonder how relevant these thought experiments are to the real world.
But the point of the experiments is to help us clarify our thinking by pushing it to the
limits. The “trolley dilemma” is one of the most famous of these philosophical imaginings.

The Basic Trolley Problem

A version of this moral dilemma was first put forward in 1967 by the British moral philosopher
Phillipa Foot, well-known as one of those responsible for reviving virtue ethics.

Here’s the basic dilemma: A tram is running down a track and is out control. If it continues on
its course unchecked and undiverted, it will run over five people who have been tied to the
tracks. You have the chance to divert it onto another track simply by pulling a lever. If you do
this, though, the tram will kill a man who happens to be standing on this other track. What
should you do?

The Utilitarian Response

For many utilitarians, the problem is a no-brainer. Our duty is to promote the greatest
happiness of the greatest number. Five lives saved is better than one life saved. Therefore,
the right thing to do is to pull the lever.

Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism. It judges actions by their consequences. But

there are many who think that we have to consider other aspects of action as well. In the
case of the trolley dilemma, many are troubled by the fact that if they pull the lever they will
be actively engaged in causing the death of an innocent person. According to our normal
moral intuitions, this is wrong, and we should pay some heed to our normal moral intuitions.

So-called “rule utilitarians” may well agree with this point of view. They hold that we should
not judge every action by its consequences. Instead, we should establish a set of moral rules

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to follow according to which rules will promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number
in the long term. And then we should follow those rules, even if in specific cases doing so
may not produce the best consequences.

But so-called “act utilitarians” judge each act by its consequences; so they will simply do the
math and pull the lever. Moreover, they will argue that there is no significant difference
between causing a death by pulling the lever and not preventing a death by refusing to pull
the lever. One is equally responsible for the consequences in either case.

Those who think that it would be right to divert the tram often appeal to what philosophers call
the doctrine of double effect. Simply put, this doctrine states that it is morally acceptable to do
something that causes a serious harm in the course of promoting some greater good if the
harm in question is not an intended consequence of the action but is, rather, an unintended
side-effect. The fact that the harm caused is predictable doesn’t matter. What matters is
whether or not the agent intends it.

The doctrine of double effect plays an important role in just war theory. It has often been used
to justify certain military actions which cause “collateral damage.” An example of such an
action would be the bombing of an ammunition dump that not only destroys the military target
but also causes a number of civilian deaths.

Studies show that the majority of people today, at least in modern Western societies, say that
they would pull the lever. However, they respond differently when the situation is tweaked.

The Fat Man on the Bridge Variation

The situation is the same as before: a runaway tram threatens to kill five people. A very
heavy man is sitting on a wall on a bridge spanning the track. You can stop the train by
pushing him off the bridge onto the track in front of the train. He will die, but the five will be
saved. (You can’t opt to jump in front of the tram yourself since you aren’t big enough to stop
it.)

From a simple utilitarian point of view, the dilemma is the same — do you sacrifice one life to
save five? — and the answer is the same: yes. Interestingly, however, many people who
would pull the lever in the first scenario would not push the man in this second scenario. This
raises two questions:

The Moral Question: If Pulling the Lever Is Right, Why Would Pushing the Man Be
Wrong?

One argument for treating the cases differently is to say that the doctrine of double effect no
longer applies if one pushes the man off the bridge. His death is no longer an unfortunate
side-effect of your decision to divert the tram; his death is the very means by which the tram
is stopped. So you can hardly say in this case that when you pushed him off the bridge you
weren’t intending to cause his death.

A closely related argument is based on a moral principle made famous by the great German
philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). According to Kant, we should always treat people

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as ends in themselves, never merely as a means to our own ends. This is commonly known,
reasonably enough, as the “ends principle.” It is fairly obvious that if you push the man off the
bridge to stop the tram, you are using him purely as a means. To treat him as the end would
be to respect the fact that he is a free, rational being, to explain the situation to him, and
suggest that he sacrifice himself to save the lives of those tied to the track. Of course, there
is no guarantee that he would be persuaded. And before the discussion had got very far the
tram would have probably already passed under the bridge!

The Psychological Question: Why Will People Pull the Lever but Not Push the Man?

Psychologists are concerned not with establishing what is right or wrong but with
understanding why people are so much more reluctant to push a man to his death than to
cause his death by pulling a lever. The Yale psychologist Paul Bloom suggests that the
reason lies in the fact that our causing the man’s death by actually touching him arouses in
us a much stronger emotional response. In every culture, there is some sort of taboo against
murder. An unwillingness to kill an innocent person with our own hands is deeply ingrained in
most people. This conclusion seems to be supported by people’s response to another
variation on the basic dilemma.

The Fat Man Standing on the Trapdoor Variation

Here the situation is the same as before, but instead of sitting on a wall the fat man is
standing on a trapdoor built into the bridge. Once again you can now stop the train and save
five lives by simply pulling a lever. But in this case, pulling the lever will not divert the
train. Instead, it will open the trapdoor, causing the man to fall through it and onto the track in
front of the train.

Generally speaking, people are not as ready to pull this lever as they are to pull the lever that
diverts the train. But significantly more people are willing to stop the train in this way than are
prepared to push the man off the bridge.

The Fat Villain on the Bridge Variation

Suppose now that the man on the bridge is the very same man who has tied the five innocent
people to the track. Would you be willing to push this person to his death to save the five? A
majority say they would, and this course of action seems fairly easy to justify. Given that he is
willfully trying to cause innocent people to die, his own death strikes many people as
thoroughly deserved. The situation is more complicated, though, if the man is simply
someone who has done other bad actions. Suppose in the past he has committed murder or
rape and that he hasn’t paid any penalty for these crimes. Does that justify violating Kant’s
ends principle and using him as a mere means?

The Close Relative on the Track Variation

Here is one last variation to consider. Go back to the original scenario–you can pull a lever to
divert the train so that five lives are saved and one person is killed–but this time the one

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person who will be killed is your mother or your brother. What would you do in this case? And
what would be the right thing to do?

A strict utilitarian may have to bite the bullet here and be willing to cause the death of their
nearest and dearest. After all, one of the basic principles of utilitarianism is that everyone’s
happiness counts equally. As Jeremy Bentham, one of the founders of modern utilitarianism
put it: Everyone counts for one; no-one for more than one. So sorry mom!

But this is most definitely not what most people would do. The majority may lament the
deaths of the five innocents, but they cannot bring themselves to bring about the death of a
loved one in order to save the lives of strangers. That is most understandable from a
psychological point of view. Humans are primed both in the course of evolution and through
their upbringing to care most for those around them. But is it morally legitimate to show a
preference for one’s own family?

This is where many people feel that strict utilitarianism is unreasonable and unrealistic. Not
only will we tend to naturally favor our own family over strangers, but many think that we
ought to. For loyalty is a virtue, and loyalty to one’s family is about as basic a form of loyalty
as there is. So in many people’s eyes, to sacrifice family for strangers goes against both our
natural instincts and our most fundamental moral intuitions.

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