Interesting philosophical question :)

[TheGreatErenan]

(01-22-2013 03:38 AM)aaronINdayton Wrote:  

(01-22-2013 03:22 AM)Erenan Wrote:  Suppose you are given the choice between one person's death and five people's deaths. Further suppose that you absolutely must choose one of these two options and that no other options are available. Which option do you choose?

I don't see how people dying is ever your choice. It would be your choice to kill someone, for whatever reasons. It would not be your choice for an accident to occur (runaway trolley) that will kill 5 people near you, that's an accident.

Obviously. I'm not arguing that it's realistic.

What I said is that it's an abstract scenario with no real-life context. My point is that the Trolley Problem is an attempt to apply such an abstract scenario to one that has some semblance of "real-life context," nevermind how unlikely such a scenario is to occur. This is so people will be more willing to respond and to try to make it seem more important.

I'm commenting more on the psychology of question posers and question responders than on the actual validity or usefulness of the question.

My question is about which question is preferable. The purely abstract one or the one with a contrived real-world context?