The Trolley Argument

My aim is to address The Trolley Argument. It is based on the following two cases: 

ORGAN DISTRIBUTION
Jonathan kills his patient Nick and makes it look like an accident, after realizing that his blood is a match for five other patients in critical condition. Nick Is an organ donor and his organs are successfully transplanted into those five patients, saving their lives. No other organs arrived that day, and the five patients who will now live long, happy lives would have died had Jonathan not killed Nick for his organs.

TROLLEY DRIVER
Corrine is driving a trolley and sees five fraternity pledges tied to the tracks as part of an initiation ritual. The only way to avoid killing them is to swerve the trolley onto a side track at an upcoming junction. Corrine decides to steer the trolley onto the side, but killing the pledge master, who is asleep on the side track. The pledges all live long, healthy lives.
And here is the argument:
The Trolley Argument
(TR1) If there is no morally significant difference between two actions A and B, then: if
A is the right thing to do, then B is the right thing to do
(TR2) Diverting the trolley was the right thing to do
(TR3) There is no morally significant difference between diverting the trolley and killing
Nick
(TR4) So, killing Nick was the right thing to do

The idea behind the first premise of the argument is based on moral equivalence. When comparing

two actions, if you can’t find a reason for them to be morally different, then if the first action is either moral or immoral, so is the second action. For example, lying to your mom is morally equivalent to lying to your dad. Lying to your mom is just as good or bad as lying to your dad, unless you can explain why one of these actions is morally better or worse than the other. Otherwise, they both carry the immorality of lying, regardless to who that action refers to.

The idea behind the second premise of the argument is mostly obvious. The right thing to do is always the one that results in the highest overall levels of happiness. Corrine did the right thing by diverting the trolley because she saved five lives. She did kill an innocent person, but she would have killed five innocent people had she not diverted the trolley. Since her action resulted in the highest overall levels of happiness, she did the right thing.

The idea behind the third premise of the argument is that the acts of killing Nick and diverting the trolley are morally equivalent. In both cases, one innocent person is killed in order to save five other lives. There is nothing morally different between those two actions, since they produce the same results.

My plan is to challenge premise TR3 by showing that there is a morally significant difference between diverting the trolley and killing Nick. In section two, I will present my criticism of TR3 and then in section three I will anticipate and address an objection to my criticism.

My Defense Against The Trolley Argument
Rule Utilitarianism:
Performing a certain action is the right thing to do if and only if it is prescribed by the
collection of rules that, if adopted, would have the greatest positive effect on overall levels
of happiness.
Based on Rule Utilitarianism, the moral thing to do in both situations is to decide to save the five people instead of the one. However, when comparing Jonathan’s and Corrine’s situations, this is only true for Jonathan’s case. Killing Nick and diverting the trolley have morally significant differences.
First of all, Corrine is faced with a spontaneous decision and is supposed to figure out what to do

within seconds. She is in an unfamiliar situation, where she knows nothing about those pledges nor the pledge master. In contrast, Jonathan makes a decision under no stress, no rush, and in full knowledge of both his patients and Nick. Jonathan, therefore, has an advantage that doesn’t excuse his action from being immoral.

Furthermore, Nick and the pledge master are not on the same level of innocence, making the pledge master more morally permissible to kill than the five pledges. Specifically, the pledges are the pledge master’s responsibility. They ended up in those tracks because of the pledge master, since he is the one responsible for their initiation. By falling asleep on the side of the track, the pledge master knows that there’s a one in a million chance that a train can pass over him. He is doing something that is not usually normal, and Corrine could never expect to find people lying on the train tracks.

On the other hand, Nick goes to the doctor to get treated, not to get killed. Nick is not doing anything risky because going to the doctor is something usually normal. The pledge master had taken a risk by taking himself and his pledges to the train tracks. At the same time, Nick is not responsible for the five patients’ situation. He isn’t the one that put the other five lives in a risky situation, unlike the pledge master.

Therefore, the moral decision to make in Corrine’s situation is to kill the pledge master, while in Jonathan’s situation the moral decision is to not kill Nick.

Addressing an Objection to My Criticism
One might object that we can’t confirm that it’s the pledge master’s responsibility that the pledges are tied to those tracks. With that in mind, the pledge master is as innocent as Nick. Also, let’s say that Nick was in a car crash with the other five patients and he is the one responsible for their condition. Would it then be morally permissible for Jonathan to kill him? Of course not. Maybe he would deserve it more, but that doesn’t make it right for Jonathan to kill him. Even if someone deserves to die, it doesn’t make it morally permissible for someone else to kill him.

In addition, even if it’s more difficult for Corrine to make that decision, it doesn’t affect the morality of her action. Therefore, there can’t be a moral difference with what Jonathan is doing. Suppose

there’s a serial killer walking into a house and immediately stumbles upon twins on his left side and a girl on his right side. He freaks out because he wasn’t expecting to see them at the door and has to

make a quick decision on who to kill. After a few seconds, he decides to shoot the girl and kills her, then walks out. Is his action moral because he was under stress and in a rush? Of course not. The result of the situation is the same and nothing can change it.

My reply to the first objection would be that my argument isn’t supposing that anyone deserves to die. It is calculating who would deserve to die more or less. Corrine isn’t killing the pledge master because he deserved it and she wants to kill him. She’s killing the pledge master because the pledges deserve it less than he does. As for Nick, the kind of responsibility he holds of getting in a car crash with five people is not the same as the pledge master’s responsibility that I mentioned in my argument. Nick’s car crash would be the result of an accident that Nick obviously would have no control over. The pledge master had the control of not being in the tracks and falling asleep. Nick couldn’t possibly be in control of his doctor not killing him.

As for the second objection, I would reply that the intentions of a person do change the morality of their actions. Corrine did not want to kill the pledge master nor the five pledges. The serial killer entered that house with the intention to kill. Therefore, Corrine’s rush and stress during her action only allowed her to save as many lives as she could, and make her actions moral. Jonathan, however, intended to kill Nick and under no stress, making his action immoral.