Essay On Trolley Dilemma

During the evaluation of four articles that focus on self-regulation, anxiety, and fear effecting consciousness and moral responsibility, the different author’s present their arguments and views on how these emotional capacities and the ability to obtain self-regulation affect the decision making of an agent and whether or not they should be held fully morally responsible for their actions and decisions. In this paper, I will be explicating three different views on the capacities of self-regulation, anxiety, and fear on moral responsibility among children, individuals in the workplace, and psychopaths. I will then bring forth another view on how anxiety affects an individual’s view on the “trolley dilemma”. To begin, I will discuss …show more content…
The first is called the switch dilemma. In this dilemma, there is a train headed towards five people who are tied onto a train track and are about to be killed. However, in this dilemma, there is an option to flip a switch to lead the train to another track where only one individual will be killed (31). The second dilemma is called the footbridge dilemma. In this case, there is a train headed towards five people who are on a train track about to be killed, but there is an option to push a large person in front of the train to stop it from killing the five but ultimately killing the larger individual (31). From these dilemmas, there are two tendencies that people sway towards. The first is known as the utilitarian tendency, which claims that the sacrifice of one to save more people increases the interests of the collective (29). The second tendency is referred to as deontological, which claims that treating an innocent life as a means to save more lives violates individual rights (29). Amongst these two tendencies, it is common to view that the utilitarian tendency in the switch dilemma is judged morally better than in the footbridge dilemma when individuals are not under any type of