Chapter 54 Summary

The trolley problem is a classic puzzle in applied ethics. Imagine yourself as the driver of a trolley, and as you come around a corner, you see five workers on the track before you. If you don’t turn the trolley, you will certainly kill them. You can turn down an alternate track, but if you turn the trolley, you see that you will kill one worker on the alternate track. Is it morally permissible to turn the trolley? Is it morally required to turn the trolley? Thomson compares this case to another story, about a transplant surgeon. May a transplant surgeon kill one healthy patient to use his organs to save the lives of five other people who need the transplants? Many people have different intuitions about the surgeon case than about the trolley case, but on the surface, each case appears to have a simple arithmetic of killing one to allow five to live. What makes the difference?