Hypothetical, Counterfactual Trams

Considered as in the foregoing, what is the compulsion of the problem? It only makes sense in a made-up world in which things happen only one way. I think the probability of the TP ever actually happening is very small. If it did happen, it probably would not be on account of some inevitability built into the trolley car, the tracks, the passengers or the victims; rather, it would be an astounding coincidence. If it were not (as in Aristotle) an accident, a coincidence or happening, somebody or something would have to be responsible for the situation  If so, that agency would be morally responsible for all that happens, not the people we focussed on. In such a case, bringing our attention to the putative moral agent, victims, etc is a magician's trick, a diversion to keep our attention away from what is really going on. In other words, there is no moral problem at all for our hero, because the problem is rigged. It almost doesn't matter what that person does. Do nothing and many die: that would be a sin of omission. Do something and one dies: a sin of commission.

There is an assymetry in the problem, because knowingly flipping the switch is a positive act which results in a death. On the other hand, doing nothing may be permissible depending on the circumstances: one might not be compelled.to intervene. The statement of the problem asks us to choose between killing one or many faceless people. But, what if straight ahead we find Hitler, Stalin, Tojo, Osama bin Laden and George W Bush, neatly tied across the tracks, and on the other track we see Mother Teresa. I, for one, would be disinclined to intervene against fate. On the other hand, who would not flip the switch if, on the one track there is a drunken bum, and on the other one's family or friends? There are many other what ifs which might urge our decision one way or the other. Does not the mere possibility of those hypotheticals militate against any action? Or, if we act, are we not excused from any moral responsiblity, because we know not what we do? This last question reveals a possible contradiction in the problem: if the moral agent has perfect knowledge, how come the victims are faceless?

The problem is Utilitarian in nature: a calculation of the greatest good for the greatest number. For a Utilitarian, it probably doesn't matter whether the victims are faceless. In fact, anonymous victims simplify the problem by making it a straightforward comparison of the numbers: saving two is probably always better than saving one. It is only later, when we discover that we have slain Mother Teresa, that we might regret out choice; but, then, what is done is done. Utilitarians make their decisions based on what is known, not on what might be, so the fixity of the TP enthralls them. Even if such decisions might be very difficult, for example, weighing up Mother Teresa against a loving spouse and young children, the agent can assign some weight to the alternatives. The difficulty with a Utilitarian solution is not just the regrets, but that Utilitarians can always support the lesser of two evils based on their calculations. The effect of a series of such decisions is merely to slow down the growth of evil, not to increase the amount of good. For Utilitarians, the TP can be the start down the slippery slope.

There are lots of everyday things missing from the TP. What about passengers who become frightened when the tram runs away? Many people are paralyzed in situations like that, so do nothing. If anything does happen, it is most often hysteria and panic. People follow the crowd, trampling to death those unable to stand up or keep up. They aren't accountable for their actions, because they don't know what to do or what they are doing. In the situation, they do not make any voluntary decisions, because voluntary decisons require weighing alternatives, not just acting. Further, moral judgements are voluntary choices made by application of appropriate moral maxims, or reasoning from ethical principles. Is this what happens when people are trapped in a runaway vehicle?
 

What about runaway trains that run off the tracks and roll over? Wouldn't that happen, if the trolley is diverted to a siding? How do we know the tram will hit anyone at all, whether or not the agent acts. Isn't it possible that more people would be injured or killed by diversion to a siding than by simple going straight ahead? We need to know more about the passengers on this tram before any moral decision can be made.

My point is, of course, that the TP attempts to simplify the world in order to capture a truth about morality, but actually complicates the problem by loading it with too many hypothetical conditions. I want to ask a lot of counterfactual questions, what if this or what if that, in order to get a handle on how we might solve the problem. What sort of criteria actually apply, and when do we use them?

Again, the Public Health problem, which occurs in the world of living beings, is far more suitable for analysis and discussion just because it is far messier. Here we deal with the lives of actual people, not hypotheticals. As in arguments before Courts and investment advice, hypothecation in ethical analysis is to be strongly discouraged. Of course, prediction (assignment of cause and effect) is almost unavoidable in moral judgement because the intention to do something usually presupposes the efficacy of the action (or omission). (Intentions that are merely wishes might reflect a person's character, but are not of concern here.) For my present purposes, I distinguish "prediction" from "hypothecation," where prediction is about something the agent believes will happen, whereas hypothecation is abstract, not tied to the performance of any particular action or event. Hypothecation may occur in the presentation and consideration of options, and may become prediction when an option is selected. Prediction is always involved in carrying out decisions, even if only at the neural level, as in 'do this' means wiggling one's little fnger. The Public Health problem involves prediction, because it specifies that a certain fraction of the population will be harmed by whatever is done based on assumed causal relations.

The important key word in the Public Health problem is "risk." Unlike the TP, it is not assumed the world is on a track to a certain future. The Public Health problem allows of as many possible futures as one cares to introduce, each of which has a probability or a likelyhood. That statistic is the risk of that future. In any calculation of risk, there is always the risk of something not happening, which is just (100% - risk). The reason many possible futures can be considered is that all of them, together with the unassigned (leftovers), always add up to 100%. Risk allows us to be arbitrary in our divisions of the world, since we only calculate the probabilities of  ∑ⁿ_i=1 (r_i) == 1.

The maximum extent to which moral responsibiliy is assignable in a risky world is just the probability of an untoward event, which is expressed in a counterfactual. The TP assigns 100% responsibility to an unfortunate person trapped in a world not of its construction, now careening out of control for reasons unknown toward its predestined fate. Aristotelians and followers of St. Thomas Aquinas may understand the TP; I don't.

While I am not in a position to discuss the Public Health problem at length just now, it is far more deserving of philosophical attention than the TP. I think the two are quite different problems, although the Public Health problem is sometimes suggested as a real world example of the hypothetical TP. They differ in their assumptions about the world, and in their assumptions about what a moral agent knows about the world. Those are critical differences in the philosophical analysis of moral judgement which makes the two qualitatively different, so one is not an instance of the other.

Further, one of the major applications of the philosophy of judgement under conflict is the theory of justice and war. That is, in delivering justice and prosecuting war, almost every supposed good is accompanied by some degree of evil. Solomon's choice was not the first, and certainly not the last, when no really good option is available. In fact, the choices most people make most of the time are laden with some unavoidable disadvantage; e.g., the car payments, insurance, taxes and other burdens that go with the car. Of course, there are advantages to cars; e.g., unlike trams, they can steer around people stuck in the middle of the road, thus reducing the numbers of victims. It seems to me the Public Health problem offers far more insight to, say, the problem of war, than does the TP, because we start out with a problem of mixed goods and evils, rights and wrongs and we are not assured of a just outcome.

If the ancient practice of philosophy is to have any relevance to our Twenty-First Century world, it behooves us to pay attention to the sorts of philosophical problems that urgently press on us