But is it negligence? You’re foreign to the situation. You just happened to be nearby the switch as it is unfolding. There’s no implication of your involvement in anything that’s happening. You can just stand there and do nothing, not be involved, and four people die. You neither took any action that caused them to perish, nor do you have anything to do with the trolley, or the operation of it, or anything. You just happened to be close enough to throw the switch.
Is it negligence to do nothing? You’re not otherwise involved. Are you now guilty or responsible for not doing something when you could have done something?
If you have the cognizance and capacity to act but don’t you are negligent, it becomes a matter of individual human capacity and a truth only to the individual as to where that line begins and ends for any given situation. It’s not determinable by an outside observer because it’s entirely reliant on the individuals capacity for comprehension. But there are limits, negligence is not always determinable but there are still standards that are enforced for the safety of others, such as in a car accident, where fault is determined by circumstance not capacity.
That is certainly an interesting opinion on the matter. I’m not sure that’s what the law would agree with; but this exercise is not really about the law.
I hope you can appreciate that different people with different moral and ethical priorities would either agree with you or disagree with you about this. The point of the mental exercise is to foster discussion on these kinds of discussions. That’s exactly what has happened. Clearly you believe that the moral dilemma has an obvious solution. That is absolutely a valid perspective on it.
But is it negligence? You’re foreign to the situation. You just happened to be nearby the switch as it is unfolding. There’s no implication of your involvement in anything that’s happening. You can just stand there and do nothing, not be involved, and four people die. You neither took any action that caused them to perish, nor do you have anything to do with the trolley, or the operation of it, or anything. You just happened to be close enough to throw the switch.
Is it negligence to do nothing? You’re not otherwise involved. Are you now guilty or responsible for not doing something when you could have done something?
If you have the cognizance and capacity to act but don’t you are negligent, it becomes a matter of individual human capacity and a truth only to the individual as to where that line begins and ends for any given situation. It’s not determinable by an outside observer because it’s entirely reliant on the individuals capacity for comprehension. But there are limits, negligence is not always determinable but there are still standards that are enforced for the safety of others, such as in a car accident, where fault is determined by circumstance not capacity.
That is certainly an interesting opinion on the matter. I’m not sure that’s what the law would agree with; but this exercise is not really about the law.
I hope you can appreciate that different people with different moral and ethical priorities would either agree with you or disagree with you about this. The point of the mental exercise is to foster discussion on these kinds of discussions. That’s exactly what has happened. Clearly you believe that the moral dilemma has an obvious solution. That is absolutely a valid perspective on it.