The observer effect of morality

  • 0 Replies
  • 697 Views
The observer effect of morality
« on: April 15, 2019, 05:22:55 AM »
The trolley problem is the single most popular example of a morality thought experiment. If a trolley was going along and it would run over four people, and you were by a lever that if you pulled it the trolley would be diverted onto a path containing one person, almost everyone would view it as a moral obligation to pull that lever and change the outcome from four people to two. By contrast, if the trolley was going down a single path and was going to run over four people, and you were on a bridge over the trolley and your one option was to push someone off that bridge to slow the trolley enough that it could stop in time, though the outcome would again go from four deaths to one, doing so is no longer viewed as a clear-cut moral obligation. Most people would not do so as it would involve taking an active role in killing that one person as opposed to the more passive pulling of a lever.
This has been studied in the field of human morality. Some use it to point out the evolutionary advantage of the psychopath, the kind of person that would not struggle to make the decision to save four rather than one even if they needed to be the one who killed, but this is not all that is examined. Why is the first situation viewed as morally better than the second? Is it just because we do not like to have blood on our hands? What is the moral difference between the two? The answer is that it brings in an uninvolved figure. There are consequences to our actions that are not as directly measured. In the first case the two trolley paths are equivalent end results, but in the second there is an additional weight to the pushing of the person off the bridge. If that is the moral answer then it is accepted that at any point, it is morally acceptable for anyone to die for the sake of a situation in which they have no stake and no involvement and no interest, and the person responsible should be praised. The result is not four lives against one but rather four lives against one life plus a subsequent climate of fear that will affect millions if not billions. Three lives are substantially smaller.

This brings up the next question. What if there were no other consequences to the second action, if it did once more come down to something as simple as four lives against one with nothing more? This is not a realistic situation, but neither is the trolley problem. If there was a way to ensure you would never be captured or found and that no one would know you or anyone was responsible for the pushing of the person of the bridge, if it was just considered an accident by all involved and there were no other consequences or attitudes affected by the act, would it then become morally acceptable? If the situation no longer has any consequences, if it is once more just a measure of four lives against one, does it simplify to the first case? Can the morality of an action depend on whether or not one is observed doing it?