The Trolley Problem
Author(s): Judith Jarvis Thomson
Source: The Yale Law Journal , May, 1985, Vol. 94, No. 6 (May, 1985), pp. 1395-1415
Published by: The Yale Law Journal Company, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/796133
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Comments
The Trolley Problem
Judith Jarvis Thomsont
I.
Some years ago, Philippa Foot drew attention to an extraordinarily interesting
problem.' Suppose you are the driver of a trolley. The trolley
rounds a bend, and there come into view ahead five track workmen, who
have been repairing the track. The track goes through a bit of a valley at
that point, and the sides are steep, so you must stop the trolley if you are
to avoid running the five men down. You step on the brakes, but alas they
don't work. Now you suddenly see a spur of track leading off to the right.
You can turn the trolley onto it, and thus save the five men on the straight
track ahead. Unfortunately, Mrs. Foot has arranged that there is one
track workman on that spur of track. He can no more get off the track in
time than the five can, so you will kill him if you turn the trolley onto
him. Is it morally permissible for you to turn the trolley?
Everybody to whom I have put this hypothetical case says, Yes, it is.2
Some people say something stronger than that it is morally permissible for
you to turn the trolley: They say that morally speaking, you must turn
it-that morality requires you to do so. Others do not agree that morality
t Professor of Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. B.A., Barnard College 1950,
Cambridge University 1952; M.A., Cambridge University 1956; Ph.D., Columbia University 1959.
Many people have given me helpful criticism of this essay's many successive reincarnations over the
years; I cannot list them all-for want of space, not of gratitude. Most recently, it benefited from
criticism by the members of the Yale Law School Civil Liability Workshop and the Legal Theory
Workshop, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto.
1. See P. FOOT, The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect, in VIRTUES AND
VICES AND OTHER ESSAYS IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY 19 (1978).
2. I think it possible (though by no means certain) that John Taurek would say No, it is not
permissible to (all simply) turn the trolley; what you ought to do is flip a coin. See Taurek, Should
the Numbers Count?, 6 PHIL. & PUB. AFF. 293 (1977). (But he is there concerned with a different
kind of case, namely that in which what is in question is not whether we may do what harms one to
avoid harming five, but whether we may or ought to choose to save five in preference to saving one.)
For criticism of Taurek's article, see Parfit, Innumerate Ethics, 7 PHIL. & PUB. AFF. 285 (1978).
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The Yale Law Journal Vol. 94: 1395, 1985
requires you to turn the trolley, and even feel a certain discomfort at the
idea of turning it. But everybody says that it is true, at a minimum, that
you may turn it-that it would not be morally wrong in you to do so.
Now consider a second hypothetical case. This time you are to imagine
yourself to be a surgeon, a truly great surgeon. Among other things you
do, you transplant organs, and you are such a great surgeon that the organs
you transplant always take. At the moment you have five patients
who need organs. Two need one lung each, two need a kidney each, and
the fifth needs a heart. If they do not get those organs today, they will all
die; if you find organs for them today, you can transplant the organs and
they will all live. But where to find the lungs, the kidneys, and the heart?
The time is almost up when a report is brought to you that a young man
who has just come into your clinic for his yearly check-up has exactly the
right blood-type, and is in excellent health. Lo, you have a possible donor.
All you need do is cut him up and distribute his parts among the five who
need them. You ask, but he says, "Sorry. I deeply sympathize, but no."
Would it be morally permissible for you to operate anyway? Everybody to
whom I have put this second hypothetical case says, No, it would not be
morally permissible for you to proceed.
Here then is Mrs. Foot's problem: Why is it that the trolley driver may
turn his trolley, though the surgeon may not remove the young man's
lungs, kidneys, and heart?" In both cases, one will die if the agent acts,
but five will live who would otherwise die-a net saving of four lives.
What difference in the other facts of these cases explains the moral difference
between them? I fancy that the theorists of tort and criminal law will
find this problem as interesting as the moral theorist does.
II.
Mrs. Foot's own solution to the problem she drew attention to is simple,
straightforward, and very attractive. She would say: Look, the surgeon's
choice is between operating, in which case he kills one, and not
operating, in which case he lets five die; and killing is surely worse than
letting die4-indeed, so much worse that we can even say
(I) Killing one is worse than letting five die.
3. I doubt that anyone would say, with any hope of getting agreement from others, that the
surgeon ought to flip a coin. So even if you think that the trolley driver ought to flip a coin, there
would remain, for you, an analogue of Mrs. Foot's problem, namely: Why ought the trolley driver
flip a coin, whereas the surgeon may not?
4. Mrs. Foot speaks more generally of causing injury and failing to provide aid; and her reason
for thinking that the former is worse than the latter is that the negative duty to refrain from causing
injury is stricter than the positive duty to provide aid. See P. FOOT, supra note 1, at 27-29.
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Trolley Problem
So the surgeon must refrain from operating. By contrast, the trolley
driver's choice is between turning the trolley, in which case he kills one,
and not turning the trolley, in which case he does not let five die, he
positively kills them. Now surely we can say
(II) Killing five is worse than killing one.
But then that is why the trolley driver may turn his trolley: He would be
doing what is worse if he fails to turn it, since if he fails to turn it he kills
five.
I do think that that is an attractive account of the matter. It seems to
me that if the surgeon fails to operate, he does not kill his five patients
who need parts; he merely lets them die. By contrast, if the driver fails to
turn his trolley, he does not merely let the five track workmen die; he
drives his trolley into them, and thereby kills them.
But there is good reason to think that this problem is not so easily
solved as that.
Let us begin by looking at a case that is in some ways like Mrs. Foot's
story of the trolley driver. I will call her case Trolley Driver; let us now
consider a case I will call Bystander at the Switch. In that case you have
been strolling by the trolley track, and you can see the situation at a
glance: The driver saw the five on the track ahead, he stamped on the
brakes, the brakes failed, so he fainted. What to do? Well, here is the
switch, which you can throw, thereby turning the trolley yourself. Of
course you will kill one if you do. But I should think you may turn it all
the same.5
Some people may feel a difference between these two cases. In the first
place, the trolley driver is, after all, captain of the trolley. He is charged
by the trolley company with responsibility for the safety of his passengers
and anyone else who might be harmed by the trolley he drives. The bystander
at the switch, on the other hand, is a private person who just
happens to be there.
Second, the driver would be driving a trolley into the five if he does not
turn it, and the bystander would not-the bystander will do the five no
harm at all if he does not throw the switch.
I think it right to feel these differences between the cases.
Nevertheless, my own feeling is that an ordinary person, a mere bystander,
may intervene in such a case. If you see something, a trolley, a
boulder, an avalanche, heading towards five, and you can deflect it onto
5. A similar case (intended to make a point similar to the one that I shall be making) is discussed
in Davis, The Priority of Avoiding Harm, in KILLING AND LETTING DIE 172, 194-95 (B. Steinbock
ed. 1980).
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The Yale Law Journal Vol. 94: 1395, 1985
one, it really does seem that-other things being equal-it would be permissible
for you to take charge, take responsibility, and deflect the thing,
whoever you may be. Of course you run a moral risk if you do, for it
might be that, unbeknownst to you, other things are not equal. It might
be, that is, that there is some relevant difference between the five on the
one hand, and the one on the other, which would make it morally preferable
that the five be hit by the trolley than that the one be hit by it. That
would be so if, for example, the five are not track workmen at all, but
Mafia members in workmen's clothing, and they have tied the one workman
to the right-hand track in the hope that you would turn the trolley
onto him. I won't canvass all the many kinds of possibilities, for in fact
the moral risk is the same whether you are the trolley driver, or a bystander
at the switch.
Moreover, second, we might well wish to ask ourselves what exactly is
the difference between what the driver would be doing if he failed to turn
the trolley and what the bystander would be doing if he failed to throw
the switch. As I said, the driver would be driving a trolley into the five;
but what exactly would his driving the trolley into the five consist in?
Why, just sitting there, doing nothing! If the driver does just sit there,
doing nothing, then that will have been how come he drove his trolley into
the five.
I do not mean to make much of that fact about what the driver's driving
his trolley into the five would consist in, for it seems to me to be right to
say that if he does not turn the trolley, he does drive his trolley into them,
and does thereby kill them. (Though this does seem to me to be right, it is
not easy to say exactly what makes it so.) By contrast, if the bystander
does not throw the switch, he drives no trolley into anybody, and he kills
nobody.
But as I said, my own feeling is that the bystander may intervene. Perhaps
it will seem to some even less clear that morality requires him to
turn the trolley than that morality requires the driver to turn the trolley;
perhaps some will feel even more discomfort at the idea of the bystander's
turning the trolley than at the idea of the driver's turning the trolley. All
the same, I shall take it that he may.
If he may, there is serious trouble for Mrs. Foot's thesis (I). It is plain
that if the bystander throws the switch, he causes the trolley to hit the
one, and thus he kills the one. It is equally plain that if the bystander does
not throw the switch, he does not cause the trolley to hit the five, he does
not kill the five, he merely fails to save them-he lets them die. His choice
therefore is between throwing the switch, in which case he kills one, and
not throwing the switch, in which case he lets five die. If thesis (I) were
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Trolley Problem
true, it would follow that the bystander may not throw the switch, and
that I am taking to be false.
III.
I have been arguing that
(I) Killing one is worse than letting five die
is false, and a fortiori that it cannot be appealed to to explain why the
surgeon may not operate in the case I shall call Transplant.
I think it pays to take note of something interesting which comes out
when we pay close attention to
(II) Killing five is worse than killing one.
For let us ask ourselves how we would feel about Transplant if we made
a certain addition to it. In telling you that story, I did not tell you why the
surgeon's patients are in need of parts. Let us imagine that the history of
their ailments is as follows. The surgeon was badly overworked last
fall-some of his assistants in the clinic were out sick, and the surgeon
had to take over their duties dispensing drugs. While feeling particularly
tired one day, he became careless, and made the terrible mistake of dispensing
chemical X to five of the day's patients. Now chemical X works
differently in different people. In some it causes lung failure, in others
kidney failure, in others heart failure. So these five patients who now need
parts need them because of the surgeon's carelessness. Indeed, if he does
not get them the parts they need, so that they die, he will have killed
them. Does that make a moral difference? That is, does the fact that he
will have killed the five if he does nothing make it permissible for him to
cut the young man up and distribute his parts to the five who need them?
We could imagine it to have been worse. Suppose what had happened
was this: The surgeon was badly overextended last fall, he had known he
was named a beneficiary in his five patients' wills, and it swept over him
one day to give them chemical X to kill them. Now he repents, and would
save them if he could. If he does not save them, he will positively have
murdered them. Does that fact make it permissible for him to cut the
young man up and distribute his parts to the five who need them?
I should think plainly not. The surgeon must not operate on the young
man. If he can find no other way of saving his five patients, he will now
have to let them die-despite the fact that if he now lets them die, he will
have killed them.
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The Yale Law Journal Vol. 94: 1395, 1985
We tend to forget that some killings them
do include them where the act by which the agent kills takes time to cause
death-time in which the agent can intervene but does not.
In face of these possibilities, the question arises what we should think
of thesis (II), since it looks as if it tells us that the surgeon ought to operate,
and thus that he may permissibly do so, since if he operates he kills
only one instead of five.
There are two ways in which we can go here. First, we can say: (II)
does tell us that the surgeon ought to operate, and that shows it is false.
Second, we can say: (II) does not tell us that the surgeon ought to operate,
and it is true.
For my own part, I prefer the second. If Alfred kills five and Bert kills
only one, then questions of motive apart, and other things being equal,
what Alfred did is worse than what Bert did. If the surgeon does not
operate, so that he kills five, then it will later be true that he did something
worse than he would have done if he had operated, killing only
one-especially if his killing of the five was murder, committed out of a
desire for money, and his killing of the one would have been, though misguided
and wrongful, nevertheless a well-intentioned effort to save five
lives. Taking this line would, of course, require saying that assessments of
which acts are worse than which other acts do not by themselves settle the
question what it is permissible for an agent to do.
But it might be said that we ought to by-pass (II), for perhaps what
Mrs. Foot would have offered us as an explanation of why the driver may
turn the trolley in Trolley Driver is not (II) itself, but something more
complex, such as
(II') If a person is faced with a choice between doing something
here and now to five, by the doing of which he will kill them, and
doing something else here and now to one, by the doing of which he
will kill only the one, then (other things being equal) he ought to
choose the second alternative rather than the first.
We may presumably take (II') to tell us that the driver ought to, and
hence permissibly may, turn the trolley in Trolley Driver, for we may
presumably view the driver as confronted with a choice between here and
now driving his trolley into five, and here and now driving his trolley into
one. And at the same time, (II') tells us nothing at all about what the
surgeon ought to do in Transplant, for he is not confronted with such a
choice. If the surgeon operates, he does do something by the doing of
which he will kill only one; but if the surgeon does not operate, he does
not do something by the doing of which he kills five; he merely fails to do
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Trolley Problem
something by the doing of which he would make it be the case that he has
not killed five.
I have no objection to this shift in attention from (II) to (II'). But we
should not overlook an interesting question that lurks here. As it might be
put: Why should the present tense matter so much? Why should a person
prefer killing one to killing five if the alternatives are wholly in front of
him, but not (or anyway, not in every case) where one of them is partly
behind him? I shall come back to this question briefly later.
Meanwhile, however, even if (II') can be appealed to in order to explain
why the trolley driver may turn his trolley, that would leave it entirely
open why the bystander at the switch may turn his trolley. For he
does not drive a trolley into each of five if he refrains from turning the
trolley; he merely lets the trolley drive into each of them.
So I suggest we set Trolley Driver aside for the time being. What I
shall be concerned with is a first cousin of Mrs. Foot's problem, viz.: Why
is it that the bystander may turn his trolley, though the surgeon may not
remove the young man's lungs, kidneys, and heart? Since I find it particularly
puzzling that the bystander may turn his trolley, I am inclined to
call this The Trolley Problem. Those who find it particularly puzzling
that the surgeon may not operate are cordially invited to call it The
Transplant Problem instead.
IV.
It should be clear, I think, that "kill" and "let die" are too blunt to be
useful tools for the solving of this problem. We ought to be looking within
killings and savings for the ways in which the agents would be carrying
them out.
It would be no surprise, I think, if a Kantian idea occurred to us at this
point. Kant said: "Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own
person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means
only." It is striking, after all, that the surgeon who proceeds in Transplant
treats the young man he cuts up "as a means only": He literally
uses the young man's body to save his five, and does so without the young
man's consent. And perhaps we may say that the agent in Bystander at
the Switch does not use his victim to save his five, or (more generally)
treat his victim as a means only, and that that is why he (unlike the
surgeon) may proceed.
But what exactly is it to treat a person as a means only, or to use a
person? And why exactly is it wrong to do this? These questions do not
have obvious answers.6
6. For a sensitive discussion of some of the difficulties, see Davis, Using Persons and Common
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The Yale Law Journal Vol. 94: 1395, 1985
Suppose an agent is confronted with a choice between doing nothing, in
which case five die, or engaging in a certain course of action, in which
case the five live, but one dies. Then perhaps we can say: If the agent
chooses to engage in the course of action, then he uses the one to save the
five only if, had the one gone out of existence just before the agent started,
the agent would have been unable to save the five. That is true of the
surgeon in Transplant. He needs the young man if he is to save his five;
if the young man goes wholly out of existence just before the surgeon
starts to operate, then the surgeon cannot save his five. By contrast, the
agent in Bystander at the Switch does not need the one track workman on
the right-hand track if he is to save his five; if the one track workman goes
wholly out of existence before the bystander starts to turn the trolley, then
the bystander can all the same save his five. So here anyway is a striking
difference between the cases.
It does seem to me right to think that solving this problem requires
attending to the means by which the agent would be saving his five if he
proceeded. But I am inclined to think that this is an overly simple way of
taking account of the agent's means.
One reason for thinking so7 comes out as follows. You have been thinking
of the tracks in Bystander at the Switch as not merely diverging, but
continuing to diverge, as in the following picture: pick up figure 1
Consider now what I shall call "the loop variant" on this case, in which
the tracks do not continue to diverge-they circle back, as in the following
picture:
Sense, 94 ETHICS 387 (1984). Among other things, she argues (I think rightly) that the Kantian idea
is not to be identified with the common sense concept of "using a person." Id. at 402.
7. For a second reason to think so, see infra note 13.
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Trolley Problem
Let us now imagine that the five on the straight track are thin, but thick
enough so that although all five will be killed if the trolley goes straight,
the bodies of the five will stop it, and it will therefore not reach the one.
On the other hand, the one on the right-hand track is fat, so fat that his
body will by itself stop the trolley, and the trolley will therefore not reach
the five. May the agent turn the trolley? Some people feel more discomfort
at the idea of turning the trolley in the loop variant than in the original
Bystander at the Switch. But we cannot really suppose that the presence
or absence of that extra bit of track makes a major moral difference
as to what an agent may do in these cases, and it really does seem right to
think (despite the discomfort) that the agent may proceed.
On the other hand, we should notice that the agent here needs the one
(fat) track workman on the right-hand track if he is to save his five. If the
one goes wholly out of existence just before the agent starts to turn the
trolley, then the agent cannot save his five8-just as the surgeon in Transplant
cannot save his five if the young man goes wholly out of existence
just before the surgeon starts to operate.
Indeed, I should think that there is no plausible account of what is
involved in, or what is necessary for, the application of the notions "treating
a person as a means only," or "using one to save five," under which
the surgeon would be doing this whereas the agent in this variant of Bystander
at the Switch would not be. If that is right, then appeals to these
notions cannot do the work being required of them here.
V.
Suppose the bystander at the switch proceeds: He throws the switch,
thereby turning the trolley onto the right-hand track, thereby causing the
one to be hit by the trolley, thereby killing him-but saving the five on the
straight track. There are two facts about what he does which seem to me
to explain the moral difference between what he does and what the agent
in Transplant would be doing if he proceeded. In the first place, the bystander
saves his five by making something that threatens them instead
threaten one. Second, the bystander does not do that by means which
themselves constitute an infringement of any right of the one's.
As is plain, then, my hypothesis as to the source of the moral difference
between the cases makes appeal to the concept of a right. My own feeling
8. It is also true that if the five go wholly out of existence just before the agent starts to turn the
trolley, then the one will die whatever the agent does. Should we say, then, that the agent uses one to
save five if he acts, and uses five to save one if he does not act? No: What follows and is false. If the
agent does not act, he uses nobody. (I doubt that it can even be said that if he does not act, he lets
them be used. For what is the active for which this is passive? Who or what would be using them if
he does not act?).
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The Yale Law Journal Vol. 94: 1395, 1985
is that solving this problem requires making appeal to that concept-or to
some other concept that does the same kind of work.9 Indeed, I think it is
one of the many reasons why this problem is of such interest to moral
theory that it does force us to appeal to that concept; and by the same
token, that we learn something from it about that concept.
Let us begin with an idea, held by many friends of rights, which Ronald
Dworkin expressed crisply in a metaphor from bridge: Rights
"trump" utilities.10 That is, if one would infringe a right in or by acting,
then it is not sufficient justification for acting that one would thereby
maximize utility. It seems to me that something like this must be correct.
Consideration of this idea suggests the possibility of a very simple solution
to the problem. That is, it might be said (i) The reason why the
surgeon may not proceed in Transplant is that if he proceeds, he maximizes
utility, for he brings about a net saving of four lives, but in so doing
he would infringe a right of the young man's.
Which right? Well, we might say: The right the young man has against
the surgeon that the surgeon not kill him-thus a right in the cluster of
rights that the young man has in having a right to life.
Solving this problem requires being able to explain also why the bystander
may proceed in Bystander at the Switch. So it might be said (ii)
The reason why the bystander may proceed is that if he proceeds, he
maximizes utility, for he brings about a net saving of four lives, and in so
doing he does not infringe any right of the one track workman's.
But I see no way-certainly there is no easy way-of establishing that
these ideas are true.
Is it clear that the bystander would infringe no right of the one track
workman's if he turned the trolley? Suppose there weren't anybody on the
straight track, and the bystander turned the trolley onto the right-hand
track, thereby killing the one, but not saving anybody, since nobody was
at risk, and thus nobody needed saving. Wouldn't that infringe a right of
the one workman's, a right in the cluster of rights that he has in having a
right to life?
So should we suppose that the fact that there are five track workmen on
the straight track who are in need of saving makes the one lack that
right-which he would have had if that had not been a fact?
But then why doesn't the fact that the surgeon has five patients who are
in need of saving make the young man also lack that right?
I think some people would say there is good (excellent, conclusive) reason
for thinking that the one track workman lacks the right (given there
9. I strongly suspect that giving an account of what makes it wrong to use a person, see supra text
accompanying notes 6-8, would also require appeal to the concept of a right.
10. R. DWORKIN, TAKING RIGHTS SERIOUSLY ix (1977).
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Trolley Problem
are five on the straight track) lying in the fact that (given there are five on
the straight track) it is morally permissible to turn the trolley onto him.
But if your reason for thinking the one lacks the right is that it is permissible
to turn the trolley onto him, then you can hardly go on to explain its
being permissible to turn the trolley onto him by appeal to the fact that he
lacks the right. It pays to stress this point: If you want to say, as (ii) does,
that the bystander may proceed because he maximizes utility and infringes
no right, then you need an independent account of what makes it be the
case that he infringes no right-independent, that is, of its being the case
that he may proceed.
There is some room for maneuver here. Any plausible theory of rights
must make room for the possibility of waiving a right, and within that
category, for the possibility of failing to have a right by virtue of assumption
of risk; and it might be argued that that is what is involved here, i.e.,
that track workmen know of the risks of the job, and consent to run them
when signing on for it.
But that is not really an attractive way of dealing with this difficulty.
Track workmen certainly do not explicitly consent to being run down
with trolleys when doing so will save five who are on some other
track-certainly they are not asked to consent to this at the time of signing
on for the job. And I doubt that they consciously assume the risk of it at
that or any other time. And in any case, what if the six people involved
had not been track workmen? What, if they had been young children?
What if they had been people who had been shoved out of helicopters?
Wouldn't it all the same be permissible to turn the trolley?
So it is not clear what (independent) reason could be given for thinking
that the bystander will infringe no right of the one's if he throws the
switch.
I think, moreover, that there is some reason to think that the bystander
will infringe a right of the one if he throws the switch, even though it is
permissible for him to do so. What I have in mind issues simply from the
fact that if the bystander throws the switch, then he does what will kill
the one. Suppose the bystander proceeds, and that the one is now dead.
The bystander's motives were, of course, excellent-he acted with a view
to saving five. But the one did not volunteer his life so that the five might
live; the bystander volunteered it for him. The bystander made him pay
with his life for the bystander's saving of the five. This consideration
seems to me to lend some weight to the idea that the bystander did do him
a wrong-a wrong it was morally permissible to do him, since five were
saved, but a wrong to him all the same.
Consider again that lingering feeling of discomfort (which, as I said,
some people do feel) about what the bystander does if he turns the trolley.
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The Yale Law Journal Vol. 94: 1395, 1985
No doubt it is permissible to turn the trolley, but still . . . but still ....
People who feel this discomfort also think that, although it is permissible
to turn the trolley, it is not morally required to do so. My own view is
that they are right to feel and think these things. We would be able to
explain why this is so if we supposed that if the bystander turns the trolley,
then he does do the one track workman a wrong-if we supposed, in
particular, that he infringes a right of the one track workman's which is
in that cluster of rights which the workman has in having a right to life.11
I do not for a moment take myself to have established that (ii) is false. I
have wished only to draw attention to the difficulty that lies ahead of a
person who thinks (ii) true, and also to suggest that there is some reason
to think that the bystander would infringe a right of the one's if he proceeded,
and thus some reason to think that (ii) is false. It can easily be
seen that if there is some reason to think the bystander would infringe a
right of the one's, then there is also some reason to think that (i) is
false-since if the bystander does infringe a right of the one's if he proceeds,
and may nevertheless proceed, then it cannot be the fact that the
surgeon infringes a right of the young man's if he proceeds which makes it
impermissible for him to do so.
Perhaps a friend of (i) and (ii) can establish that they are true. I propose
that, just in case he can't, we do well to see if there isn't some other
way of solving this problem than by appeal to them. In particular, I propose
we grant that both the bystander and the surgeon would infringe a
right of their ones, a right in the cluster of rights that the ones' have in
having a right to life, and that we look for some other difference between
the cases which could be appealed to to explain the moral difference between
them.
Notice that accepting this proposal does not commit us to rejecting the
idea expressed in that crisp metaphor of Dworkin's. We can still say that
rights trump utilities-if we can find a further feature of what the bystander
does if he turns the trolley (beyond the fact that he maximizes
utility) which itself trumps the right, and thus makes it permissible to
proceed.
VI.
As I said, my own feeling is that the trolley problem can be solved only
by appeal to the concept of a right-but not by appeal to it in as simple a
way as that discussed in the preceding section. What we were attending to
11. Many of the examples discussed by Bernard Williams and Ruth Marcus plainly call out for
this kind of treatment. See B. WILLIAMS, Ethical Consistency, in PROBLEMS OF THE SELF 166 (1973);
Marcus, Moral Dilemmas and Consistency, 77 J. PHIL. 121 (1980).
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Trolley Problem
in the preceding section was only the fact that the agents would be killing
and saving if they proceeded; what we should be attending to is the means
by which they would kill and save.1" (It is very tempting, because so much
simpler, to regard a human act as a solid nugget, without internal structure,
and to try to trace its moral value to the shape of its surface, as it
were. The trolley problem seems to me to bring home that that will not
do.)
I said earlier that there seem to me to be two crucial facts about what
the bystander does if he proceeds in Bystander at the Switch. In the first
place, he saves his five by making something that threatens them instead
threaten the one. And second, he does not do that by means which themselves
constitute infringements of any right of the one's.
Let us begin with the first.
If the surgeon proceeds in Transplant, he plainly does not save his five
by making something that threatens them instead threaten one. It is organ-failure
that threatens his five, and it is not that which he makes
threaten the young man if he proceeds.
Consider another of Mrs. Foot's cases, which I shall call Hospital.
Suppose [Mrs. Foot says] that there are five patients in a hospital
whose lives could be saved by the manufacture of a certain gas, but
that this will inevitably release lethal fumes into the room of another
patient whom for some reason we are unable to move.18
Surely it would not be permissible for us to manufacture the gas.
In Transplant and Hospital, the five at risk are at risk from their ailments,
and this might be thought to make a difference. Let us by-pass it.
In a variant on Hospital-which I shall call Hospital'-all six patients
are convalescing. The five at risk are at risk, not from their ailments, but
from the ceiling of their room, which is about to fall on them. We can
prevent this by pumping on a ceiling-support-mechanism; but doing so
will inevitably release lethal fumes into the room of the sixth. Here too it
is plain we may not proceed.
Contrast a case in which lethal fumes are being released by the heating
12. It may be worth stressing that what I suggest calls for attention is not (as some construals of
"double effect" would have it) whether the agent's killing of the one is his means to something, and
not (as other construals of "double effect" would have it) whether the death of the one is the agent's
means to something, but rather what are the means by which the agent both kills and saves. For a
discussion of "the doctrine of double effect," see P. FOOT, supra note 1.
13. Id. at 29. As Mrs. Foot says, we do not use the one if we proceed in Hospital. Yet the
impermissibility of proceeding in Hospital seems to have a common source with the impermissibility
of operating in Transplant, in which the surgeon would be using the one whose parts he takes for the
five who need them. This is my second reason for thinking that an appeal to the fact that the surgeon
would be using his victim is an over-simple way of taking account of the means he would be employing
for the saving of his five. See supra note 7.
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The Yale Law Journal Vol. 94: 1395, 1985
system in the basement of a building next door to the hospital. They are
headed towards the room of five. We can deflect them towards the room
of one. Would that be permissible? I should think it would be-the case
seems to be in all relevant respects like Bystander at the Switch.
In Bystander at the Switch, something threatens five, and if the agent
proceeds, he saves the five by making that very thing threaten the one
instead of the five. That is not true of the agents in Hospital' or Hospital
or Transplant. In Hospital', for example, what threatens the five is the
ceiling, and the agent does not save them by making it threaten the one,
he saves them by doing what will make something wholly different (some
lethal fumes) threaten the one.
Why is this difference morally important? Other things being equal, to
kill a man is to infringe his right to life, and we are therefore morally
barred from killing. It is not enough to justify killing a person that if we
do so, five others will be saved: To say that if we do so, five others will be
saved is merely to say that utility will be maximized if we proceed, and
that is not by itself sufficient to justify proceeding. Rights trump utilities.
So if that is all that can be said in defense of killing a person, then killing
that person is not permissible.
But that five others will be saved is not all that can be said in defense of
killing in Bystander at the Switch. The bystander who proceeds does not
merely minimize the number of deaths which get caused: He minimizes
the number of deaths which get caused by something that already threatens
people, and that will cause deaths whatever the bystander does.
The bystander who proceeds does not make something be a threat to
people which would otherwise not be a threat to anyone; he makes be a
threat to fewer what is already a threat to more. We might speak here of
a "distributive exemption," which permits arranging that something that
will do harm anyway shall be better distributed than it otherwise would
be-shall (in Bystander at the Switch) do harm to fewer rather than
more. Not just any distributive intervention is permissible: It is not in
general morally open to us to make one die to save five. But other things
being equal, it is not morally required of us that we let a burden descend
out of the blue onto five when we can make it instead descend onto one.
I do not find it clear why there should be an exemption for, and only
for, making a burden which is descending onto five descend, instead, onto
one. That there is seems to me very plausible, however. On the one hand,
the agent who acts under this exemption makes be a threat to one something
that is already a threat to more, and thus something that will do
harm whatever he does; on the other hand, the exemption seems to allow
those acts which intuition tells us are clearly permissible, and to rule out
those acts which intuition tells us are clearly impermissible.
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Trolley Problem
VII.
More precisely, it is not morally required of us that we let a burden
descend out of the blue onto five when we can make it instead descend
onto one if we can make it descend onto the one by means which do not
themselves constitute infringements of rights of the one.
Consider a case-which I shall call Fat Man-in which you are standing
on a footbridge over the trolley track. You can see a trolley hurtling
down the track, out of control. You turn around to see where the trolley is
headed, and there are five workmen on the track where it exits from
under the footbridge. What to do? Being an expert on trolleys, you know
of one certain way to stop an out-of-control trolley: Drop a really heavy
weight in its path. But where to find one? It just so happens that standing
next to you on the footbridge is a fat man, a really fat man. He is leaning
over the railing, watching the trolley; all you have to do is to give him a
little shove, and over the railing he will go, onto the track in the path of
the trolley. Would it be permissible for you to do this? Everybody to
whom I have put this case says it would not be. But why?
Suppose the agent proceeds. He shoves the fat man, thereby toppling
him off the footbridge into the path of the trolley, thereby causing him to
be hit by the trolley, thereby killing him-but saving the five on the
straight track. Then it is true of this agent, as it is true of the agent in
Bystander at the Switch, that he saves his five by making something which
threatens them instead threaten one.
But this agent does so by means which themselves constitute an infringement
of a right of the one's. For shoving a person is infringing a
right of his. So also is toppling a person off a footbridge.
I should stress that doing these things is infringing a person's rights
even if doing them does not cause his death-even if doing them causes
him no harm at all. As I shall put it, shoving a person, toppling a person
off a footbridge, are themselves infringements of rights of his. A theory of
rights ought to give an account of what makes it be the case that doing
either of these things is itself an infringement of a right of his. But I think
we may take it to be a datum that it is, the job which confronts the theorist
of rights being, not to establish that it is, but rather to explain why it
is.
Consider by contrast the agent in Bystander at the Switch. He too, if he
proceeds, saves five by making something that threatens them instead
threaten one. But the means he takes to make that be the case are these:
Turn the trolley onto the right-hand track. And turning the trolley onto
the right-hand track is not itself an infringement of a right of anybody's.
The agent would do the one no wrong at all if he turned the trolley onto
the right-hand track, and by some miracle the trolley did not hit him.
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The Yale Law Journal Vol. 94: 1395, 1985
We might of course have imagined it not necessary to shove the fat
man. We might have imagined that all you need do to get the trolley to
threaten him instead of the five is to wobble the handrail, for the handrail
is low, and he is leaning on it, and wobbling it will cause him to fall over
and off. Wobbling the handrail would be impermissible, I should
think-no less so than shoving. But then there is room for an objection to
the idea that the contrast I point to will help explain the moral differences
among these cases. For it might be said that if you wobble the handrail,
thereby getting the trolley to threaten the one instead of the five, then the
means you take to get this to be the case are just these: Wobble the handrail.
But doing that is not itself an infringement of a right of anybody's.
You would do the fat man no wrong at all if you wobbled the handrail
and no harm came to him in consequence of your doing so. In this respect,
then, your situation seems to be exactly like that of the agent in Bystander
at the Switch. Just as the means he would be taking to make the trolley
threaten one instead of five would not constitute an infringement of a
right, so also would the means you would be taking to make the trolley
threaten one instead of five not constitute an infringement of a right.
What I had in mind, however, is a rather tighter notion of "means"
than shows itself in this objection. By hypothesis, wobbling the handrail
will cause the fat man to topple onto the track in the path of the trolley,
and thus will cause the trolley to threaten him instead of the five. But the
trolley will not threaten him instead of the five unless wobbling the handrail
does cause him to topple. Getting the trolley to threaten the fat man
instead of the five requires getting him into its path. You get the trolley to
threaten him instead of them by wobbling the handrail only if, and only
because, by wobbling the handrail you topple him into the path of the
trolley.
What I had in mind, then, is a notion of "means" which comes out as
follows. Suppose you get a trolley to threaten one instead of five by wobbling
a handrail. The means you take to get the trolley to threaten the one
instead of the five include wobbling the handrail, and all those further
things that you have to succeed in doing by wobbling the handrail if the
trolley is to threaten the one instead of the five.
So the means by which the agent in Fat Man gets the trolley to
threaten one instead of five include toppling the fat man off the footbridg
and doing that is itself an infringement of a right of the fat man's. By
contrast, the means by which the agent in Bystander at the Switch gets the
trolley to threaten one instead of five include no more than getting the
trolley off the straight track onto the right-hand track; and doing that is
not itself an infringement of a right of anybody's.
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Trolley Problem
VIII.
It is arguable, however, that what is relevant is not that toppling the fat
man off the footbridge is itself an infringement of a right of the fat man's
but rather that toppling him off the footbridge is itself an infringement of
a particularly stringent right of his.
What I have in mind comes out in yet another variant on Bystander at
the Switch. Here the bystander must cross (without permission) a patch of
land that belongs to the one in order to get to the switch; thus in order to
get the trolley to threaten the one instead of five, the bystander must infringe
a right of the one's. May he proceed?
Or again, in order to get the switch thrown, the bystander must use a
sharply pointed tool, and the only available sharply pointed tool is a
nailfile that belongs to the one; here too the bystander must infringe a
right of the one's in order to get the trolley to threaten the one instead of
five. May he proceed?
For my own part, I do not find it obvious that he may. (Remember
what the bystander will be doing to the one by throwing that switch.) But
others tell me they think it clear the bystander may proceed in such a
case. If they are right-and I guess we should agree that they are-then
that must surely be because the rights which the bystander would have to
infringe here are minor, trivial, non-stringent-property rights of no great
importance. By contrast, the right to not be toppled off a footbridge onto a
trolley track is on any view a stringent right. We shall therefore have to
recognize that what is at work in these cases is a matter of degree: If the
agent must infringe a stringent right of the one's in order to get something
that threatens five to threaten the one (as in Fat Man), then he may not
proceed, whereas if the agent need infringe no right of the one's (as in
Bystander at the Switch), or only a more or less trivial right of the one's
(as in these variants on Bystander at the Switch), in order to get something
that threatens five to threaten the one, then he may proceed.
Where what is at work is a matter of degree, it should be no surprise
that there are borderline cases, on which people disagree. I confess to having
been greatly surprised, however, at the fact of disagreement on the
following variant on Bystander at the Switch:
The five on the straight track are regular track workmen. The righthand
track is a dead end, unused in ten years. The Mayor, representing
the City, has set out picnic tables on it, and invited the convalescents
at the nearby City Hospital to have their meals there,
guaranteeing them that no trolleys will ever, for any reason, be
turned onto that track. The one on the right-hand track is a convalescent
having his lunch there; it would never have occurred to him
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The Yale Law Journal Vol. 94: 1395, 1985
to do so if the Mayor had not issued his invitation and guarantee.
The Mayor was out for a walk; he now stands by the switch."4
For the Mayor to get the trolley to threaten the one instead of the five, he
must turn the trolley onto the right-hand track; but the one has a right
against the Mayor that he not turn the trolley onto the right-hand
track-a right generated by an official promise, which was then relied on
by the one. (Contrast the original Bystander at the Switch, in which the
one had no such right.) My own feeling is that it is plain the Mayor may
not proceed. To my great surprise, I find that some people think he may.
I conclude they think the right less stringent than I do.
In any case, that distributive exemption that I spoke of earlier is very
conservative. It permits intervention into the world to get an object that
already threatens death to those many to instead threaten death to these
few, but only by acts that are not themselves gross impingements on the
few. That is, the intervenor must not use means that infringe stringent
rights of the few in order to get his distributive intention carried out.
It could of course be argued that the fact that the bystander of the original
Bystander at the Switch makes threaten the one what already threatens
the five, and does so by means that do not themselves constitute infringements
of any right of the one's (not even a trivial right of the one's),
shows that the bystander in that case infringes no right of the one's at all.
That is, it could be argued that we have here that independent ground for
saying that the bystander does not infringe the one's right to life which I
said would be needed by a friend of (ii).'5 But I see nothing to be gained
by taking this line, for I see nothing to be gained by supposing it never
permissible to infringe a right; and something is lost by taking this line,
namely the possibility of viewing the bystander as doing the one a wrong
if he proceeds-albeit a wrong it is permissible to do him.
Ix.
What counts as "an object which threatens death"? What marks one
threat off from another? I have no doubt that ingenious people can construct
cases in which we shall be unclear whether to say that if the agent
proceeds, he makes threaten the one the very same thing as already
threatens the five.
14. Notice that in this case too the agent does not use the one if he proceeds. (This case, along
with a number of other cases I have been discussing, comes from Thomson, Killing, Letting Die,
the Trolley Problem, 59 THE MONIST 204 (1976). Mrs. Thomson seems to me to have been blun
ing around in the dark in that paper, but the student of this problem may possibly find some of t
cases she discusses useful.).
15. See supra text accompanying notes 9-11.
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Trolley Problem
Moreover, which are the interventions in which the agent gets a thing
that threatens five to instead threaten one by means that themselves constitute
infringements of stringent rights of the one's? I have no doubt that
ingenious people can construct cases in which we shall all be unclear
whether to say that the agent's means do constitute infringements of stringent
rights-and cases also in which we shall be unclear whether to say
the agent's means constitute infringements of any rights at all.
But it is surely a mistake to look for precision in the concepts brought
to bear to solve this problem: There isn't any to be had. It would be
enough if cases in which it seems to us unclear whether to say "same
threat," or unclear whether to say "non-right-infringing-means," also
seemed to us to be cases in which it is unclear whether the agent may or
may not proceed; and if also coming to see a case as one to which these
expressions do (or do not) apply involves coming to see the case as one in
which the agent may (or may not) proceed.
X.
If these ideas are correct, then we have a handle on anyway some of the
troublesome cases in which people make threats. Suppose a villain says to
us "I will cause a ceiling to fall on five unless you send lethal fumes into
the room of one." Most of us think it would not be permissible for us to
accede to this threat. Why? We may think of the villain as part of the
world around the people involved, a part which is going to drop a burden
on the five if we do not act. On this way of thinking of him, nothing yet
threatens the five (certainly no ceiling as yet threatens them) and a fortiori
we cannot save the five by making what (already) threatens them instead
threaten the one. Alternatively, we may think of the villain as himself a
threat to the five. But sending the fumes in is not making him be a threat
to the one instead of to the five. The hypothesis I proposed, then, yields
what it should: We may not accede.
That is because the hypothesis I proposed says nothing at all about the
source of the threat to the five. Whether the threat to the five is, or is
caused by, a human being or anything else, it is not permissible to do
what will kill one to save the five except by making what threatens the
five itself threaten the one.
By contrast, it seems to me very plausible to think that if a villain has
started a trolley towards five, we may deflect the trolley towards
one-other things being equal, of course. If a trolley is headed towards
five, and we can deflect it towards one, we may, no matter who or what
caused it to head towards the five.
I think that these considerations help us in dealing with a question I
drew attention to earlier. Suppose a villain says to us "I will cause a
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The Yale Law Journal Vol. 94: 1395, 1985
ceiling to fall on five unless you send lethal fumes into the room of one."
If we refuse, so that he does what he threatens to do, then he surely does
something very much worse than we would be doing if we acceded to his
threat and sent the fumes in. If we accede, we do something misguided
and wrongful, but not nearly as bad as what he does if we refuse.
It should be stressed: The fact that he will do something worse if we do
not send the fumes in does not entail that we ought to send them in, or
even that it is permissible for us to do so.
How after all could that entail that we may send the fumes in? The
fact that we would be saving five lives by sending the fumes in does not
itself make it permissible for us to do so. (Rights trump utilities.) How
could adding that the taker of those five lives would be doing what is
worse than we would tip the balance? If we may not infringe a right of
the one in order to save the five lives, it cannot possibly be thought that
we may infringe the right of that one in order, not merely to save the five
lives, but to make the villain's moral record better than it otherwise would
be.
For my own part, I think that considerations of motives apart, and
other things being equal, it does no harm to say that
(II) Killing five is worse than killing one
is, after all, true. Of course we shall then have to say that assessments of
which acts are worse than which do not by themselves settle the question
of what is permissible for a person to do. For we shall have to say that,
despite the truth of (II), it is not the case that we are required to kill one
in order that another person shall not kill five, or even that it is everywhere
permissible for us to do this.
What is of interest is that what holds inter-personally also holds intrapersonally.
I said earlier that we might imagine the surgeon of Transplant
to have caused the ailments of his five patients. Let us imagine the
worst: He gave them chemical X precisely in order to cause their deaths,
in order to inherit from them. Now he repents. But the fact that he would
be saving five lives by operating on the one does not itself make it permissible
for him to operate on the one. (Rights trump utilities.) And if he
may not infringe a right of the one in order to save the five lives, it cannot
possibly be thought that he may infringe the right of that one in order, not
merely to save the five lives, but to make his own moral record better than
it otherwise would be.
Another way to put the point is this: Assessments of which acts are
worse than which have to be directly relevant to the agent's circumstances
if they are to have a bearing on what he may do. If A threatens to kill five
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Trolley Problem
unless B kills one, then although killing five is worse than killing one,
these are not the alternatives open to B. The alternatives open to B are:
Kill one, thereby forestalling the deaths of five (and making A's moral
record better than it otherwise would be), or let it be the case that A kills
five. And the supposition that it would be worse for B to choose to kill the
one is entirely compatible with the supposition that killing five is worse
than killing one. Again, the alternatives open to the surgeon are: Operate
on the one, thereby saving five (and making the surgeon's own moral record
better than it otherwise would be), or let it be the case that he himself
will have killed the five. And the supposition that it would be worse for
the surgeon to choose to operate is entirely compatible with the supposition
that killing five is worse than killing one.
On the other hand, suppose a second surgeon is faced with a choice
between here and now giving chemical X to five, thereby killing them,
and operating on, and thereby killing, only one. (It taxes the imagination
to invent such a second surgeon, but let that pass. And compare Trolley
Driver.) Then, other things being equal, it does seem he may choose to
operate on the one. Some people would say something stronger, namely
that he is required to make this choice. Perhaps they would say that
(II') If a person is faced with a choice between doing something here
and now to five, by the doing of which he will kill them, and doing
something else here and now to one, by the doing of which he will
kill only the one, then (other things being equal) he ought to choose
the second alternative rather than the first
is a quite general moral truth. Whether or not the second surgeon is morally
required to make this choice (and thus whether or not (II') is a general
moral truth), it does seem to be the case that he may. But this did
seem puzzling. As I put it: Why should the present tense matter so much?
It is plausible to think that the present tense matters because the question
for the agent at the time of acting is about the present, viz., "What
may I here and now do?," and because that question is the same as the
question "Which of the alternatives here and now open to me may I
choose?" The alternatives now open to the second surgeon are: kill five or
kill one. If killing five is worse than killing one, then perhaps he ought to,
but at any rate he may, kill the one.
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