A New Explanation to the Trolley Problem: Free Will and Autonomous Responsibility in the Moral Dilemma
Liu Qingping
1.Fudan Institute of Advanced Study in Social Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China; 2.School of Humanities, Wuhan College of Communication, Wuhan 430205, China
The trolley problem constitutes a typical moral dilemma, and the point lies in how to balance and compare the rights to life of five people and of one person in their conflict. In the past half century, people have put forward several solutions around it from the standpoints of consequentialism and deontology respectively. From the specific perspective of free will, this paper tries to analyze what kinds of autonomous responsibility the subject should take when choosing these solutions according to the normative bottom line of justice as ″no harm to human fellows″ or ″respect for human rights″. On the surface, the solution of saving five people at the cost of one person's death is completely in line with the utilitarian principle of ″the greatest happiness of the greatest majority″ and thus seems to be impeccable. No matter in which version, however, the subject has to bear the very responsibility for one person's death according to the bottom line of justice, with different degrees though. Firstly, in the extreme version where a doctor kills a healthy person in order to cure five patients, or a bystander throw a fat guy off the bridge to block the trolley, the subject should bear the extremely serious moral and even legal responsibility of intentionally murdering an innocent person, because, in order to achieve his good will of saving five people, he actively engaged in the criminal act of depriving the victim of her or his right to life. Secondly, if a bystander manipulates thetrolley and causes a person to die for saving five people in the original version, he or she still should take certain autonomous responsibility for the death of the person, although he or she has some reason to be praised for saving five people. Indeed, he or she did not at all ignore the life right of the victim, as he only ″caused″ the death of the innocent, not ″intentionally killed″ the innocent. In view of that his or her direct intervention indirectly caused the death of the person, yet, his or her great merits of saving five people still can't offset the negative consequence of his or her intervention. Finally, if the trolley driver makes the similar choice in the original version, he or she should also bear some responsibility for the loss of a person's life, though to a lesser extent mainly because it is his or her duty to manipulate the trolley. In another type of solution, by contrast, if the subject, as a passive bystander, refuses to intervene and thus let five people die, he or she should bear some autonomous responsibility for the negative consequences. Firstly, if the subject refuses to intervene because of indifference, he or she should be rightly condemned for her or his indifference. Secondly, if the subject refuses to intervene because he or she feels that the rights to life of five people and of one person are equally inviolable, he or she should not be condemned or punished externally, although he or she would feel guilty and remorse for his or her own painful inadequacy in this moral dilemma. Meanwhile, this situation also shows the defect of deontology: even if we strictly follow this or that moral obligation in the conflict of goods, we still cannot ignore its very negative consequences. In the moral dilemma, therefore, no matter how hard the subject makes a choice (including merely as a passive bystander without intervention) based on his or her free will, he or she should bear responsibility for the negative consequences of his or her free choice with varying degrees. This characteristic of no exemption is the crux of all moral dilemmas, and it also shows the inherent limitation of human existence from an angle, especially the severity and helplessness that no one can fully realize his or her free will in the conflict of goods.
刘清平. 电车难题新解:两难处境下的自由意志和自主责任[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2020, 6(3): 188-.
Liu Qingping. A New Explanation to the Trolley Problem: Free Will and Autonomous Responsibility in the Moral Dilemma. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2020, 6(3): 188-.