A Philosophical Trick Question
For years one of my conversation pieces while discussing the various life decisions about school, employment, place to live, etc., was to pose “the fundamental philosophical question.” What would you do if you won the lottery? That is, if you didn’t need money what would you do with your life? How would you spend your time? What was really of value to you? Clearly I am not a professional philosopher. I have never even had a course in philosophy.
Notwithstanding my lack of philosophical bona fides, here I write about a theoretical philosophical dilemma called the Trolley Problem.
From Wikipedia, “The trolley problem is a series of thought experiments in ethics, psychology, and artificial intelligence involving stylized ethical dilemmas of whether to sacrifice one person to save a larger number. The series usually begins with a scenario in which a runaway trolley or train is on course to collide with and kill a number of people (traditionally five) down the track, but a driver or bystander can intervene and divert the vehicle to kill just one person on a different track.”
Clearly, the sense of the problem as posed behooves a utilitarian response. More precisely, you are led to make a calculation, one versus five, to determine the greatest good. The equivalent of the trolley problem was posed in the Sanhedrin about 2000 years ago. In the Biblegate
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
