Would you kill your best friend?

^{Image from Mark Schaefer at Pixabay}

Is the title a bit dramatic? Perhaps I overstepped the mark or should I have placed: Would you kill a family member?, but I suppose it would also have an effect on ethics and morals when making a decision, a condition that possibly has not been taken into account in this exercise.

Not long ago, I made a comment (as usual) to a particular post, this post was about the dilemmas and decisions that a human being must constantly make and many times we drown in a glass of water when we try to decide which option is best to make.

Every day we are always making decisions, which shape our past, present, and future. Possibly that's why it's so hard for us to decide on the best option. All decisions have led us to where we are today. However, many of us get stuck thinking or making a decision and often we decide not to do anything (which is also a decision). That post reminded me of the train dilemma.

Let's take a look about this dilemma

The train's dilemma

The dilemma is as follows, a train goes in a hurry along a rail where there are 5 people tied up, but you have the opportunity to activate a command on the train's control panel to take a different rail and avoid killing those 5 people. The problem now arises because the new track will run over 1 person. Would you activate the command? Would you kill 5 or 1? (Obviously, it is a simpler panel than the one shown in the image).

This is an exercise conceived by the British philosopher Philippa Ruth Foot, who was against consequentialism, which bases its theories of ethics on the following premise: an action is judged good if it generates the greatest good possible, that is, if the amount of good surpasses the amount of evil. In short, the morality of an action depends only on its consequences, and here appears the famous phrase: the end justifies the means (Niccolò Machiavelli).

We usually measure important decisions that way, don't we? Remembering what Spock would say

Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

Therefore the correct action would be to activate the command to divert the train and kill only one person.

But for Philippa Foot, morality comes from people's virtues and principles. So the act of killing (even one person) would be considered a bad decision. So from my point of view, that person would not do anything, therefore, he/she would not be guilty of not killing anyone?

What would you do? Does this dilemma have a solution?

The previous experiment, most people choose to save 5 people and kill 1. Although there is a smaller group that decides not to do anything (will they be virtualists?).

Have you thought about what your decision would be? I would also decide to activate the train's command and avoid killing the 5 people. However, if the person is a relative of mine... It is regrettable what will happen to the 5 people...

Especially if it's my best friend. I'm sorry for all of you, 5 strangers, you will die. I guess I’m a virtualist.

Well, hold your thoughts ...

There is another version created by the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, which changes things for all of us, who follow Spock philosophy (consequentialism, more specifically utilitarianism, where the best action is the one that maximizes utility).

This woman (women always creating controversies), changed the rules of the dilemma. The same train is going to run over the 5 people, but now to avoid this catastrophe, you will have to push a very fat man over the railroad tracks, in such a way that by his weight the train will stop (obviously killing the fat man).

It's the same scenario, either you kill 5 or you kill 1. But this experiment changed the results of the previous one. The utilitarians wrinkled... (as we would say here, in my country, hehe), that is, the utilitarians refused to push the fat man.

The point is that now you have to physically kill someone, which is why there are very few who decided to do it. Perhaps not only the virtues play a role in the moral decision, the mere fact of thinking that I will be imprisoned for killing a fat man, who possibly dies of obesity, will avoid my action of pushing him.

What do you think?

Again, thank you very much for joining me so far.

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