The Trolley Problem Of The Monist - 1624 Words

Judith Jarvis Thomson presents an ethical dilemma entitled The Trolley Problem in The Monist. The problem describes a situation in which a trolley car is moving quickly and out of control on a train track towards five people who are tied to the tracks; you have the power to pull a lever, change the direction of the trolley car and save those five people – at the expense of the life of one person who is on the track the car was diverted to (Thomson 1397). The choice to be made is not just about whether or not one should pull the lever though. The problem dictates a choice about whether one would kill, in the case of choosing to pull the lever to kill the one person and save the five, or letting die, in which case nothing is done and the five are killed because of the lack of action taken (Thomson 1398). Thomson believes it would be incorrect to turn the trolley and willingly choose to kill one person, rather than allow the five to die, but the philosophies of Immanuel Kant a nd John Stewart Mill must be analyzed to determine whether they would agree with Thomson, or have a different view from Thomson as well as one another. When considering J.J. Thomson’s Trolley Problem, the philosophies of Kant and Mill must be fully analyzed and expressed to determine the most plausible perspective to be taken by both philosophers on the issue. There are strengths, weaknesses and criticisms of both ethical arguments, and these will be considered as well in the analysis. The ethicalShow MoreRelatedArguments against Act Utilitarianism Essay1224 Words   |  5 Pagesnumber of examples have been produced to highlight the unjust results AU can produce, the most common of these is the organ harvest debate. An early example of the organ harvest debates appears in J. J. Thomson’s ‘Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem’, from 1976. Thomson’s organ harvest debate is as follows - â€Å"David is a great transplant surgeon. Five of hi s patients need new parts; one needs a heart, the others need respectively, liver, stomach, spleen, and spinal cord-but all are of theRead MoreTorts study notes Essay17110 Words   |  69 PagesReview of Law Economics.40 While these scholars do not always agree with the Posner premise that common-law rules are presumptively efficient, they follow Posner’s general approach in giving scrupulous attention to specific common law doctrines and problems.41    Discussed above has been the development of schools of thought that emphasize either a corrective justice or a deterrence rationale for tort law. What should be observed next is the extent to which each school commonly downplays or disparages