One great way to talk about the difference between Kantian Ethics (Deontology) a

Question

One great way to talk about the difference between Kantian Ethics (Deontology) and Utilitarian Ethics (Consequentialism) is through what philosophers know as "The Trolley Problem. According to the trolley problem, you're walking along one day on a hill when you come across a rail switch for some train tracks you spy in the distance. From your vantage point, you see several people tied to those tracks just after the rails split. In one direction, there is one person tied up; in the other, there are five people tied up. To your horror, a train is speeding in the direction of the five people tied to the tracks! You have a choice to make: do you do nothing, and let the train kill the five people? Or do you pull the rail switch, saving the five, but killing the one person bound to the other tracks? Since Utilitarian Ethics is all about maximizing happiness in the world while minimizing suffering, it would suggest that you should pull the switch and save the five people, with only the one on the other set of tracks dying. Kantianism, on the other hand, says that you should never treat someone as a means alone you have to treat him/her as an end as well! So according to Kantianism, you shouldn't pull the level and switch the tracks, because by doing so, you're treating the one person as a means to saving the other five! Given the constraints of this thought problem, what would you do? Which set of ethical principles do you think works best in this type of scenario?

Explanation / Answer

In such kind of a scenario, the best route to take would perhaps be what the utilitarian perspective would proposes. In my view, the Kantian view is too idealistic for real world problems and in a dilemma such as this, one must weigh the consequences of one’s actions. Treating a single human as an end in itself is a good thought otherwise but in this scenario, it would cost five other human lives. To me, the bigger picture is much more important.

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