• FunkyStuff [he/him]
    ·
    11 months ago

    I don't know a whole lot about moral philosophy, but isn't the only moral thing to do here not to pull the lever? From a Kantian perspective, pulling the lever can only be ethical if everyone pulling the lever would also be ethical, but that leads to the worst outcome. From a utilitarian perspective, the lives of your loved ones are no more valuable the the strangers' in the middle, so you would maximize utility by preventint the most deaths. From a cynical perspective, self interested rational actors are likely to decide to pull the lever, so you'd stand to lose more from pulling the lever and most certainly achieving the worst case scenario, than you'd gain from the off chance that the other party made the same calculation and decided against taking the risk. From a natural law perspective either choice can be acceptable so long as the intention behind the action is not to kill any person, and the deaths fall into double effect. So maybe there you could justify pulling the lever.