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Boulders and Trolleys

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2011

D. W. HASLETT
D. W. HASLETT*
Affiliation:
University of [email protected]
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Abstract

This discussion attempts to show that the elusive solution to the trolley problem lies hidden in the solution to another perennial problem in moral philosophy: the ducking puzzle. The key to solving the ducking puzzle is an important, but overlooked, exception to our obligation not to harm others, an exception for ‘fair competition’, which, it is argued here, is also the key to solving the trolley problem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , September 2011 , pp. 268 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 Foot formulates the problem and proposes her solution in Foot, Philippa, ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect’, Oxford Review 5 (1967), pp. 5–15Google Scholar; reprinted, among other places, in Ethics: Problems and Principles, ed. John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza (Orlando, FL, 1992), pp. 60–7. The page reference here to this essay is from Fischer and Ravizza, Ethics.

2 Judith Jarvis Thomson, ‘The Trolley Problem’, The Yale Law Journal (1985), pp. 1395–1415, reprinted in Fischer and Ravizza, Ethics, pp. 279–92, from which the page references here to this essay come. See also an earlier article by Thomson entitled ‘Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem’, originally printed in The Monist (1976), pp. 204–17, and reprinted in Fischer and Ravizza, Ethics, pp. 69–77.

3 Boorse, Christopher and Sorensen, Roy A., ‘Ducking Harm’, The Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988), pp. 115–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Fisher and Ravizza, Ethics, pp. 77–91.

4 A preliminary version of this solution was set out in Haslett, D. W., ‘Murder and the Exception for Fair Competition’, Social Theory and Practice 29 (2003), pp. 631–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The final version is set out here.

5 A good sample of the many discussions of the trolley problem have been printed, or reprinted, in Fischer and Ravizza, Ethics.

6 More precisely, according to this presupposition we have no ‘categorical’ obligation to help those in need, as opposed to an obligation to help that we have voluntarily undertaken through a special commitment or relationship (a ‘commitment’ obligation), or through some wrong we have committed (a ‘restitutional’ obligation). In defense of this presupposition, see Haslett, D. W., ‘Values, Obligations, and Saving Lives’, Morality, Rules and Consequences, ed. Hooker, Brad, Mason, Elinor and Miller, Dale E. (Edinburgh, 2000), pp. 71–104Google Scholar.

7 Foot, ‘The Problem of Abortion’, p. 65.

8 According to how the case of Transplant is usually formulated, it is not a bystander who kills Bailey; rather it is the surgeon in charge of the five patients who, in the best interests of her patients, kills him. Had it been the surgeon who killed Bailey, her obligation not to kill – a ‘categorical’ obligation – would not have stood unopposed; it would have been in conflict with the Surgeon's ‘commitment’ obligation to act is in the best interests of her patients. But, in a conflict between a categorical and a commitment obligation, morality requires that we give priority to the categorical obligation. So by killing Bailey, the surgeon would have been just as guilty of wrongful homicide as was Allie. This is explained fully in Haslett, D. W., ‘Conflicts and Commitment Obligations’, Public Affairs Quarterly 18 (2004), pp. 319–36Google ScholarPubMed.

9 Thomson, ‘The Trolley Problem’, p. 281.

10 Thomson, ‘The Trolley Problem’, p. 282.

11 Boorse and Sorensen, ‘Ducking Harm’.

12 Scott v. Sheperd, 2 Wm. Blackstone 893, 96 Eng. Rep. 525 (1773).

13 Boorse and Sorensen, ‘Ducking Harm’, p. 124.

14 Haslett, ‘Murder and the Exception for Fair Competition’, sects. 3–7.

15 For an explanation of the difference between moral ‘obligations’ and moral ‘values’, see Haslett, ‘Values’, esp. sect. 3.

16 If the person standing by the switch had a special obligation of care to one of the five, a ‘commitment’ obligation – if, say, one of the five were the person's eight-year-old daughter – then this person would indeed be obligated to shift the danger. On the other hand, if the one were the person's eight-year-old daughter, then this person would be obligated not to shift it. But, as we have seen, with a special obligation such as this to one of those stuck on the track, this person would no longer qualify as a ‘bystander’.

17 Thomson herself, in ‘The Trolley Problem’, appears to have been working toward a solution somewhat like the one defended here. See especially p. 285. She now claims, however, that the trolley problem is not really a problem after all. (See Thomson, Judith Jarvis, ‘Turning the Trolley’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 36 (2008), pp. 359–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.) What she now claims is that, in spite of most people's moral intuitions to the contrary, it actually is no more permissible for A, the bystander in Bystander by the Switch, to kill the one to save the five stuck on the track than it is for Allie, the bystander in Transplant, to kill Bailey to save the five in need of transplants. This is because, she says, you should never do a good deed (such as save the five stuck on the track) unless you bear the entire ‘cost’ yourself. But, if the theoretical framework set out here is sound, cases such as Bystander at the Switch are an exception to this otherwise sound generalization, an exception derivable, ultimately, from the exception for fair competition.