Should You Kill the Fat Man?

http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/fatman/Default.aspx

The rest of them on the home page are interesting as well.

Well that was fun in a terrible sort of way.

I didn't kill the fat man.

Sided with the majority on everything. Just call me sheep

I feel like we already had a thread on here discussing relatively the same thing.

Same as Dag.

Moral consistency of 67% (bottom 35%).

II fucked up on the "Is it always wrong to kill someone" question though. For some reason I was only thinking of good people. I didn't think of someone who might be endangering someones life.

I killed the fat man.

But no one is fat enough to stop a train, cold logic powers through nonsense. If he really was fat enough to cause the train to stop he was probably gonna die in a few days from heart problems/weight issues/his own gravity pulling sharp objects into him, it would indeed be a miracle that he doesn't crush his own organs with his weight if he is fat enough to stop a train, let alone stand up to watch this situation.

Another problem would be if the fat man the same guy that placed the nuclear bomb, in which case you suddenly just killed a lot more people by not torturing first, or indeed using him to just save the 5 lives.

I may have over-analyzed this tool of analyzing

Who says it's a normal-size train? They keep referring to it as a trolley too.

I reckon if I got hit by a trolley the city would sue me for fucking up their whip.

For the record. I did not kill the fat man, did not torture him either. Although weirdly I did kill that 1 innocent person. Which was pretty inconsistent with my overall perspective.

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I took most of these test. My favorites was probably In the Face of Death.

The god one was quite humorous too.

I got a consistency score of 100%. I said torture was always wrong, I disagreed that morality is about maximising happiness, I said that it's always wrong to cause another person's death and that I should always save the lives of innocent people. I didn't divert the train nor did I kill or torture the fat man at any point.

I got a consistency score of 100%.

I diverted the train and i pushed the fat man (twice) and i tortured him.

Your moral consistency score is 83%

So basically its moral absolutism v relativity?

1- Interesting. You do not believe there is any general moral requirement to maximise the happiness of the greatest number of people, yet you think that Casey Jones ought to divert the train. There's no contradiction here, but it would be interesting to know what thoughts motivated your decision. For now, though, let's see what you make of the scenario below.

2- This time your response is consistent with your belief that morality is not just a matter of maximising the happiness of the greatest number of people. Moreover, previous research has indicated that most people agree with you that the fat man should not be thrown off the bridge. Have a look at the scenario below. It'll be interesting to see whether you maintain your new found consistency.

3- Your response that it would not be right to throw the saboteur off the bridge shows that you do not think that his responsibility for the failure of the train's brakes is reason enough to end his life in order to save the lives of five other people. This view is consistent with your belief that morality is not just a matter of maximising the happiness of the greatest number of people. However, it would be interesting to know how you think the case of the saboteur differs from the first scenario where you said that it would be right to divert a train so that it kills only one person rather than five. The scenario below should help to clarify just how much moral importance you assign to general happiness.

4- Your response that the fat man should be tortured is in direct contradiction with your earlier claim that torture is always wrong. However, it does make sense in terms of some of the other responses you have given. In particular, on at least one occasion you have responded that it would be right to end the life of one person to save the lives of some other greater number of people. It would be strange then if you did not think it might sometimes be right to torture a person if by doing so it might be possible to save all those people whose lives would otherwise be lost in a nuclear explosion. Perhaps then you should revisit your blanket opposition to torture.

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I don't agree with the last question. For the last question, it's still wrong to commit torture. But torture is the lesser of two evils so it's forgivable.

Ché Guayaba wrote:I reckon if I got hit by a trolley the city would sue me for fucking up their whip.

For the record. I did not kill the fat man, did not torture him either. Although weirdly I did kill that 1 innocent person. Which was pretty inconsistent with my overall perspective.

_____

I took most of these test. My favorites was probably In the Face of Death.

The god one was quite humorous too.

I did that quiz and I answered it was wrong to kill the boy, the children, but it was okay to kill the guy on Track B. The reason my response is different on the last one than the first one is because in the first question, it said there was a possibility of being saved later. However, there is a certainty of being saved in the last scenario if you killed the 4th guy.

b) Would it bother you or disgust you to watch somebody eating their pet cat as an evening meal?

Reminds me of eating my rabbit.

Anyways, it depends. Are they eating it out of desperation? If yes, then it's fine. If no, then it would bother me not because it's a pet, but because it's a cat.

Moral consistency score of 92%.

They weren't impressed with me not diverting/stopping the train but torturing the fat man though.