The philosophical position is that if they pull the lever, they become personally responsible for the resulting deaths. If they don’t pull the lever, that’s sad so many people die, but it’s the responsibility of the people running the train and who tied all those groups to the tracks. They have no personal blame in that case.
It’s not an intuitive position to many of us, but philosophers take it seriously.
I keep trying to explain this to people, maybe this graphic will work.
The philosophical position is that if they pull the lever, they become personally responsible for the resulting deaths. If they don’t pull the lever, that’s sad so many people die, but it’s the responsibility of the people running the train and who tied all those groups to the tracks. They have no personal blame in that case.
It’s not an intuitive position to many of us, but philosophers take it seriously.