The above thought experiment is usually introduced to demonstrate 'consequentialism' as a moral theory.There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:
Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?
- 1. Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
2. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
- Consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act (or omission from acting) is one that will produce a good outcome.
Consequentialists hold in general that an act is right if and only if the act (or on some views, the rule under which it falls) will produce, will probably produce, or is intended to produce, a greater balance of good over evil than any available alternative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism
I have argued consequentialism and its related morality are not morality-proper, i.e. they are pseudo-morality.
Now what if in the following scenario,
- 1. Option 1 kill 6 billion people
2. Option 2 kill 5.5 billion people
Then a year later a similar scenario is presented,
- 1. Option 1 kill 2 billion people
2. Option 2 kill 1.5 billion people
Theoretically consequentialism appear to be logical and rational but it is really a stupid moral theory in terms of being-human, i.e. in the humanity sense.
Do you agree consequentialism is fundamentally flawed and bankrupt as a moral theory, thus cannot be morality-proper?
If not, why?