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Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Let's Philosophize. 欢迎回来【知乎哲也】.

Hi TJ.

Hi Lulu. Thanks for having me back.

What's the question you’re gonna ask me today？

Lulu, do you think that we should kill people to save other people？

Okay! That is a rather strange question. Do you mean like killing bad people？

Well, I mean they might be bad people, but uh, it's hard to know, right？What I'm talking about is a philosophy problem called The Trolley Problem. I don't know if you've heard of it before.

电车问题, but enlighten us anyway.

So, it's from a 1967 philosophy paper by a philosopher called Philippa Foot, and she said I'll use her words and it's a little bit academic but I think it should be okay.

“it may rather be supposed that he is the driver of a runaway tram [trolley] which he can only steer from one narrow track on to the other; five men are working on one track and one man on the other; anyone on the track he enters is bound to be killed.”

就是说有这么一个失控的有轨电车, 然后在这个司机现在有1个选择要做, 就是两边的这2个铁轨在他自己在的这条轨上有5个人, 然后另外1条轨上有1个人, 如果他不变轨, 他就会直接把这5个人弄死。如果他要做一步操作, 变到另外一条轨道上, 就会杀死另外一条轨道上的那个人。

So, this is the famous trolley problem. Well, if that is the question, you’re gonna ask me, I would say I will change track because killing one person is better than killing five people？

Right, and that's a very intuitive logic, right？That 90% of people that you ask, say that uh, they would do the same thing, that they would switch the track, kill five people. And of course, we assuming these men are all working on the tracks, they do the same job. We don't know about their families, right？They all have families but five families unless this one man has a very very big family, I think the odds are that similar numbers of people will be upset per person, so it seems to make sense that you pick 5 over 1.

Sounds like simple math, right？

But not all the philosophers agree with that.

So, you have about 70% of philosophers that say you should switch and then about 10% say you don't switch, and the rest just don't know, they're not really sure.

We like to admit that we don't know. So, there are different ways of looking at this problem and we’re gonna deal with two different ways of solving this problem. These are also the two most classic ways of looking at any kind of moral problem in western philosophy.

If you meet a professor, then it's very likely they'll study one of these two different schools.

So, the first one is the utilitarian, and this is the utility of the action, that is how useful it is.

叫功利主义, 对吧？功利主义或者效益主义.

Right. And how they define the utility of something is usually the pleasure or the pain that it causes.

So again, you can think of this very mathematically. In fact, they do these kinds of calculations where they think about how many people would help, how many people would harm. And then choose the right action from this information. So, it's a pretty… it's an intuitive way of looking at the problem, I think.

Yeah, but TJ, actually it can be very dangerous because if you're just simply weighing, now that I think about it, if you’re just simply saying that more people's happiness that's more important because of the number compared with one person's happiness.

So, for example, if by hurting one person, we can make sure ten people are happy. Then utilitarianism would tell you it's okay to hurt that person because in exchange of ten people's happiness, which must be more important than one person's happiness, right？

So, there's another famous example that they use, which is very similar to the Trolley Problem where they say what if I’m a doctor, I know if I cut this one person up, they came to the hospital for a routine operation. But I know if I take all of the different body parts that I can save five people, should I kill them and take the body parts?

That’s scary, that is very scary.

And we want to say no, right？Our intuition is, that's terrible, right？That's a really, really bad thing. So, then the question is, why is that different to the Trolley Problem？And we have this idea that we have certain kind of rights, that we have certain rights and duties to each other. So, Kant is the most famous person that supports this kind of theory that we call Deontological Theory.

Okay, I think you're saying that what is the difference, right？I think the difference is intention like if you choose to kill one person, especially when they're not in that situation, you just said a healthy person. You’re gonna take, rip out all of his parts to save other people. Then you are violating, someone who is not even in this. Right?

Right! So, there's the connection, but the worker on the tracks is kind of innocent too. He's just doing his job, cleaning whatever. There's been some mistake. He's as innocent as the man in the hospital, right？

Oaky, so when you're saying the Kantian theory就是康德的这个理论, you mentioned Deontology?

So that's a very long word, but it just means theories that are based around certain rules and they can be a lot of different types of theories, but Kant is the most famous example of Deontology theory. And he would say there's just some things that you can just never do. One of those things is to kill someone. He would say it's violation of a certain basic human decency.

So, you should never kill anyone. This is his theory. Then you are, in a fact, by not switching the tracks, you are killing five people. Right？How do you justify that in the trolley scenario?

Kant would say that wasn't you that killed them.

The person that killed those five people was the person that didn't organize the work detail properly, or the person that made the wrong timetable for the trolley. Those are the people that are responsible for this. You're not responsible. You are just doing your duty.

Okay!

But when you take an action, then you're responsible for your actions, but you are not responsible for somebody else's actions.

Oh… I see.

So this is kind of… almost like fate, right？These people, you're in this situation, but you can't control it. What all you can control is if you let the trolley keep going, or you choose to kill someone.

Yeah, but honestly that doesn't mean that if I just do nothing, and let the trolley go on to the track of five people, and then kill them all. I don't think just using Kantian ethics, this would lift some of the weight on my conscience. I would still feel really guilty because I would still feel like it's because of my inaction has led to their death.

Right? So inaction is kind of an action, right？So, I definitely think that's a very Taoist, the way of looking at the problem that inaction is a kind of action. Just like if somebody says I love you, and then you don't say anything to them. You've actually said a lot right by not saying anything.

Exactly, by the inaction here, you are basically saying I’m not gonna save these five people because you could have saved them.

Right？But Kant would still say that this is a matter of the external world. So, you just have certain rules and all you have to do is you follow those rules and you're a good person. And that means never interfering in the world in a way, intervening or interfering so as to cause somebody death.

Okay.

So, there's a famous example in Kant. Kant was asked if a murderer came to your house, wanting to kill your friend, would you tell them that your friend was hiding in your house. And Kant famously said, yes, I would tell them. Well, it's a little bit more complicated than that, but for now, he said YES.

I’m so glad I’m not his friend.

You're my friend and that's almost as bad, I think. But he still maintains that you shouldn't lie in that situation. He still says that you can't lie and that you have to stick to telling the truth and the same thing for killing people as well.

I see. So deontology中文有时候把它翻译成义务论, it basically means all of your actions should be following certain principles like preset principles. And it doesn't matter what the situation is, you have these basic lying in the sand and then you just follow them. You would just have a clear conscience, that is the gist of it, isn’t it?

Of course, it always gets complicated when you get down to the details, but that's the overall idea.

Yeah. By the way, TJ what would you choose？How would you choose as someone who's studying philosophy.

I think I would only really know what to do in that situation when it was in front of me. So, there was a TV show in 2017 where they put people in this situation. So, it's one of those TV shows where they have a hidden camera and they film people without them knowing.

So, they didn't know it was fake.

No.

They thought it was real?

Right. They thought there's a real trolley and real people. And then they…for the TV show, they saw what these people do. And most of the people didn't do it.

This is not a scientific experiment, but when it comes down to it, in that very moment, when you have to press a button to take away somebody's life, most people, I don't know, maybe they're too scared, right？

Or maybe they just froze.

Right, right. But I think that you can't really understand those situations without the experience.

I’m always a little bit weary as a philosopher to take everything as an abstract problem as I think we need to have that kind of emotional engagement with people to really see it.

Exactly.

So, once I get my train driver's license, and I’ve driven a train for 10 years, then maybe I’ll be able to tell you what I would do.

Yeah, I guess because of that, over 20% of philosophers did not give an answer. Perhaps they're thinking exactly like you do right now.

Right.

Like Socrates said, I know that I don't know,

Yeah. and that's about the gist of it.

Okay. This is a very, very well-known problem. So, if you have your answer and you have your justification, leave us a comment in the comment section, what would you do or what would you not do？

Thank you, TJ, for coming to the show and bringing us this very popular, very well-known problem.

Thank you for having me.

We'll see you next time.

See you next time~