The Importance of the Trolley Problem

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

While the trolley problem is merely hypothetical and is highly unlikely to ever become a real situation, it is a game of the mind that argues for or against saving five lives by indirectly killing one person. Because of this, the trolley problem is not a wasteful argument; it is highly important because it develops the thoughts of killing verses letting people be killed.

So what is the trolley problem? If a trolley was going on a track towards a group of five people and a bystander had the choice of pulling a lever for the trolley to only hit one person on an opposing track, what would be the morally right thing to do?

“Killing and letting die apart, in fact, it’s a lovely, nasty difficulty” because it is very difficult to determine the accurate morality and the correct decision of what to do in the given situation. I could not agree more with this statement by Walter E. Block quoted this in his work: The Trolley: a Libertarian Analysis, for how can a person ever make such a decision to kill one to save five or let five die in front of him. Whoa, what a conundrum that would truly be, to be put in such a situation.

There are also different versions and similar scenarios of the trolley problem, all important to philosophy because they are ultimately given as arguments of morality and the issue of killing or letting die. Would you…