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This is a course about justice

and we begin with a story.

Suppose you’re the driver of a trolley car,

and your trolley car is hurtling down the track

at 60 miles an hour. And at the end of the track

you notice five workers working on the track.

You try to stop but you can't,

your brakes don’t work.

You feel desperate because you know

that if you crash into these five workers,

they will all die.

Let’s assume you know that for sure.

And so you feel helpless until you notice

that there is, off to the right,

a side track and at the end of that track,

there is one worker working on the track.

Your steering wheel works, so you can turn the trolley car,

if you want to, onto the side track

killing the one but sparing the five.

Here’s our first question: what’s the right thing to do?

What would you do? Let’s take a poll.

How many would turn the trolley car

onto the side track? Raise your hands.

How many wouldn’t? How many would go straight ahead?

Keep your hands up those of you who would go straight ahead.

A handful of people would,

the vast majority would turn.

Let’s hear first, now we need to begin

to investigate the reasons why you think

it's the right thing to do.

Let’s begin with those in the majority who would turn to go

onto the side track. Why would you do it?

What would be your reason? Who’s willing to volunteer a reason?

Go ahead. Stand up.

Because it can't be right to kill five people

when you can only kill one person instead.

It wouldn’t be right to kill five if you could kill

one person instead. That’s a good reason.

That’s a good reason. Who else?

Does everybody agree with that reason? Go ahead.

Well I was thinking it’s the same reason on 9/11 with regard

to the people who flew the plane into the Pennsylvania field

as heroes because they chose to kill the people on the plane

and not kill more people in big buildings.

So the principle there was the same on 9/11.

It’s a tragic circumstance but better to kill one

so that five can live,

is that the reason most of you had,

those of you who would turn? Yes?

Let’s hear now from those in the minority,

those who wouldn’t turn. Yes.

Well, I think that’s the same type of mentality

that justifies genocide and totalitarianism.

In order to save one type of race,

you wipe out the other.

So what would you do in this case?

You would, to avoid the horrors of genocide,

you would crash into the five and kill them?

Presumably, yes.

You would? -Yeah.

Okay. Who else? That’s a brave answer.

Thank you.

Let’s consider another trolley car case

and see whether those of you in the majority

want to adhere to the principle

“better that one should die so that five should live.”

This time you’re not the driver of the trolley car,

you’re an onlooker. You’re standing on a bridge

overlooking a trolley car track.

And down the track comes a trolley car,

at the end of the track are five workers,

the brakes don’t work, the trolley car

is about to careen into the five and kill them.

And now, you’re not the driver, you really feel helpless

until you notice standing next to you,

leaning over the bridge is a very fat man.

And you could give him a shove.

He would fall over the bridge onto the track right in the way

of the trolley car. He would die

but he would spare the five.

Now, how many would push the fat man over the bridge?

Raise your hand.

How many wouldn’t?

Most people wouldn’t. Here’s the obvious question.

What became of the principle “better to save five lives

even if it means sacrificing one?”

What became of the principle that almost everyone endorsed

in the first case? I need to hear from someone

who was in the majority in both cases.

How do you explain the difference between the two? Yes.

The second one, I guess, involves an active choice

of pushing a person down which I guess that person himself

would otherwise not have been involved in the situation at all.

And so to choose on his behalf, I guess, to involve him

in something that he otherwise would have escaped is,

I guess, more than what you have in the first case

where the three parties, the driver and the two sets of workers,

are already, I guess, in the situation.

But the guy working, the one on the track

off to the side, he didn’t choose

to sacrifice his life any more than the fat man did, did he?

That’s true, but he was on the tracks and...

This guy was on the bridge.

Go ahead, you can come back if you want. All right.

It’s a hard question. You did well. You did very well.

It’s a hard question.

Who else can find a way of reconciling the reaction

of the majority in these two cases? Yes.

Well, I guess in the first case where you have the one worker

and the five, it’s a choice between those two

and you have to make a certain choice and people

are going to die because of the trolley car,

not necessarily because of your direct actions.

The trolley car is a runaway thing and you’re making a split second choice.

Whereas pushing the fat man over is an actual act

of murder on your part.

You have control over that whereas you may not have control

over the trolley car.

So I think it’s a slightly different situation.

All right, who has a reply? That’s good. Who has a way?

Who wants to reply? Is that a way out of this?

I don’t think that’s a very good reason

because you choose to- either way you have to choose

who dies because you either choose to turn and kill the person,

which is an act of conscious thought to turn,

or you choose to push the fat man over

which is also an active, conscious action.

So either way, you’re making a choice.

Do you want to reply?

I’m not really sure that that’s the case.

It just still seems kind of different.

The act of actually pushing someone over onto the tracks

and killing him, you are actually killing him yourself.

You’re pushing him with your own hands.

You’re pushing him and that’s different

than steering something that is going to cause

death into another.

You know, it doesn’t really sound right saying it now.

No, no. It’s good. It's good. What’s your name?

Andrew.

Andrew. Let me ask you this question, Andrew.

Yes.

Suppose standing on the bridge next to the fat man,

I didn’t have to push him, suppose he was standing over

a trap door that I could open by turning a steering wheel like that.

Would you turn?

For some reason, that still just seems more wrong.

Right?

I mean, maybe if you accidentally like leaned into the steering wheel

or something like that.

But... Or say that the car is hurtling

towards a switch that will drop the trap.

Then I could agree with that.

That’s all right. Fair enough.

It still seems wrong in a way that it doesn’t seem wrong

in the first case to turn, you say.

And in another way, I mean, in the first situation

you’re involved directly with the situation.

In the second one, you’re an onlooker as well.

All right. -So you have the choice of becoming involved or not

by pushing the fat man.

All right. Let’s forget for the moment about this case.

That’s good. Let’s imagine a different case.

This time you’re a doctor in an emergency room

and six patients come to you.

They’ve been in a terrible trolley car wreck.

Five of them sustain moderate injuries,

one is severely injured, you could spend all day

caring for the one severely injured victim

but in that time, the five would die.

Or you could look after the five, restore them to health

but during that time, the one severely injured person