4/19/2023 0 Comments Trony onlineThe trolley problem, as it came to be known, was first identified as such by the American philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, whose essay “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem” (1976) spawned a vast academic literature on the topic. Trolley problem, in moral philosophy, a question first posed by the contemporary British philosopher Philippa Foot as a qualified defense of the doctrine of double effect and as an argument for her thesis that negative duties carry significantly more weight in moral decision making than positive duties. Because utilitarianism seems unable to rationally reconcile those intuitions, the trolley problem has been used to critique it. By most people’s intuitions, however, the first action would be right and the second would be wrong. Accordingly, in the trolley problem, it would be right for the trolley driver to redirect the runaway vehicle so that only one person is killed instead of five it would also be right for a magistrate to execute one innocent person to save five others. Utilitarianism holds that an action is right if it maximizes happiness for the agent and for everyone affected.
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