Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
But what if the trolley-stopping weight on the bridge was a rather obese man
who just happened to be minding his own business? Should we toss him off the
bridge to stop our horrible trolley from killing the five people? This is something
more problematic, as most of us would agree, although we can't seem to put our
fingers on exactly why. If you were to approach it mathematically, it would seem to
be similar to the original solution: One person dies so that five may live. That doesn't
seem satisfying—or even comfortable to us, though. Bentham's seven rules don't
seem to address anything that would make this scenario different from the original
siding-based one, either. So what is the issue?
FIGURE 9.5
In its various forms, the Trolley Moral Dilemmas provide different
insights into not only relative tragedy but the morality of active vs. passive
roles in a tragedy. For example,
allowing
one person to die to save
others is different from
killing
one person to save others.
Looking back at the two examples, there is a difference between the original
man on the siding and the one on the bridge. In the latter, we are actually using the
man (presumably against his will) to stop the trolley. He would not be involved at
all if it weren't for us bringing him into the problem through our decision. In the
former, we are not using the individual to save the five people on the main line—
we are using the
siding
to save them. The hapless human on the siding just
happens
to be on the siding. It's not
our
fault. The five people on the main line would have
been saved by utilizing the siding whether the single person was present or not. The
difference, therefore, is the fact that we chose specifically to cause the death of the
man on the bridge as a tool rather than as a side effect of an action.
