The Runaway Trolley Problem

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The prompt is true in the context of ethics: reason is the slave of the passions in the sense that practical reason alone cannot give rise to moral motivation. As a way of knowing, reason structures the world for us by laying a diagram of how objects and ideas are connected; however, this is merely cold information, devoid of any significance on its own. The passions, or emotions, will be the dominant driver for ethical activity because it is directly connected to our our personal preferences and how we feel about the choices we make. The impact of emotion in ethics can be emphasized in the widely known moral theory of utilitarianism, where the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct. Yet, while …show more content…
In the trolley problem, a runaway trolley is headed for five people who will be killed unless steps are taken to stop it. The only way to save them is to hit a switch that will turn the trolley onto an alternate track where it will kill one person instead of five. When people are presented with this dilemma, the most common answer is “yes,” they would switch the tracks in order to save the greatest number of people (Greene). This information shows how an individual’s emotion and reason are able to work together to see the ethical benefits of switching the tracks; the choice to save five produces the feeling of righteousness and minimal guilt while also appealing to the numerical side of reasoning, since five lives are greater than one. In this case, emotion, in conjunction with reason, helps the utilitarian cause. However, the second half of the trolley problem (also known as the footbridge problem) proves how emotions overrule the thoughts of reason in more ethically complex situations. In this alternate scenario, the only way to save the …show more content…
A study by marketing professor Deborah Small presented a group of volunteers with different advertisements for “Save the Children.” One advertisement told the story of Rokia, a little girl living in Mali, who “is desperately poor and faces a threat of severe hunger, even starvation” and that “her life will be changed for the better as a result of your financial gift” (Small); the second advertisement showed widespread statistics pertaining to starvation in Africa, including facts such as “food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than three million children” and “more than 11 million people in Ethiopia need immediate food assistance” (Small). The overwhelming majority said they would donate on the basis of the first advertisement as opposed to the second. This imbalanced willingness to donate can be once again attributed to the battle between emotion and reason in ethical decision-making. On a rational level, the volunteers should be more likely to donate as a result of the second advertisement because the large numbers clearly establish a greater number of victims that needed help. Utilitarianism would simply argue that the second group had an obligation to donate, since the “millions” statistic implies that more lives would be saved. In this context, purely rational thinking should lead to more charity. This is not the case, however, because of emotion’s greater impact on moral

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