There is a tendency to conflate class issues with race issues in America, and I think that really muddles the debate somewhat.

Does it make it absolutely moral to make that assumption? Of course not, people should be treated without regard to previous biases, etc. But it doesn't mean the statistical inference is invalid.

"The idea is not that people are or are not utilitarian; it’s that they will cite being utilitarian when it behooves them. People are aren’t using these principles and then applying them. They arrive at a judgement and seek a principle."

This is why I don't put much stock in ethical theory--if intuition is a good enough moral guide that we use it to refute ethical theories, why do we need a theory? More damningly, on what other grounds can we possibly criticize an ethical theory?

I'm certainly representative. I like having the government provide my children's health care and enjoy living in a safe city. What a shocking surprise, I advocate those principles that I perceive (rightly or wrongly) as providing me with the things I like.

http://www.amazon.com/Ill-Gotten-Gains-Evasion-Blackmail-Kin...

Maybe I need a cycling top that says "I don't carry a donor card"

A typical response is that these sorts of mental games are silly, but how people answer these questions actually forms the basis of legal systems throughout the world.

Another good question is ask them why they don't become civil engineers - good drains save a lot more people than doctors ever did.

After that he gave up biking and switched to tennis.

He also discovered that drivers gave a female cyclist much more space - although since he did the experiment himself in a blonde wig he did consider that perhaps they just give unconvincing transvestites more room !

If you want to get to work fast, take the train.

[1] I don't buy the safety argument one bit--cars put cyclists in danger far more than cyclists put cars in danger.

I ride my bike to work (almost) every day and do about 100 miles of road riding a week in addition to that. Rarely do I have problems on the streets of Chicago, because I choose wide roads that are "off the beaten path" and there is plenty of room for cars to use the other 3 lanes (giving me one to myself). People interact safely because it doesn't inconvenience them.

The other day, though, I had an interesting encounter with the driver of (you guessed it) an SUV. I was waiting to go straight through an intersection where there is only one lane for left turns, going straight, and turning right. I'm stopped at the red light. The car comes up behind me, and the driver gets out of the car and asks if I can "get off the road" so she can "make a right on red". I told her the lane is not marked for that, and I tried to choose the safest position for myself while waiting for the light to change. This annoys her, so she drives over the curb, onto the sidewalk... and has to wait for pedestrians crossing the street. The light turns green and there are pedestrians crossing the other way, so there she waits... stuck on the sidewalk.

The reason I don't feel bad about making her wait is that if there was a car there waiting to turn left or go through, then she'd be stuck, too. But the mentality of drivers is "us vs. them"; a car is a normal, a red light is normal... but a bike in my way! That's some selfish bastard (her words) stealing 15 seconds of my life!

Now I know why most people drive to work -- they don't want to get yelled at (or be endangered by) other drivers. You have to have a thick skin if you want to cycle and survive. And thus the cycle continues; "those damn cyclists need to get off my God-given roads, because someone told me that the one time I wanted to ride my bike to the store."

If a bicyclist wants to be equivalent to an automobile on areas that are designated for travel by automobile, then that bicyclist should be able to safely travel with other automobiles. If they cannot do so, they should not travel on those roads. The same rational as to why you don't see bicyclists on highways.

I see your request as me deciding that I want to drive my car down the train tracks and then asking trains to work around what the limitations of my car are on the tracks.

It just isn't sustainable, but sustainable infrastructure costs too much money. So it's time to get rid of the cars, and let bikes fill the gap while we wait for proper mass transit to become affordable.

It's already happened everywhere except the US.

Your vision of the future basically kills every suburb and urban area and would reduce humans to extremely high population densities in highly concentrated areas. Leading to problems of it's own. But we're really off-topic at this point.

Interestingly enough, you said above you are in chicago. The area I am talking about above is in the western suburbs of chicago.

Not really a solution. The problem is the sheer energy required to move a 1-2 ton steel cage, not the specific source of that energy, though petroleum is an especially bad one.

"You could increase the amount of telecommuting allowed by the workforce."

While that would help, it would also be useful if you could, for instance, buy groceries or really just leave the house without having to bring the steel cage with you.

"I would think those things are more likely in the US than making everyone ride a bike."

The current infrastructure policy in the US can be described as "making everyone drive a car", even if they live in cities which are easily large enough to make other solutions more practical. I don't want to make anyone ride a bike--but I sure want to allow people to safely ride bikes if they so choose, maybe even encourage it.

The suburbs were created 50-60 years ago in the era of cheap petroleum and post-war infrastructure development. They aren't anything important to be preserved or saved--for various reasons it would be more accurate to view them as a failed social experiment.

It just seems that that path is more likely than everyone in the suburbs giving up their homes and communities and moving within biking distance of home and work. I support initiatives that allow people to safely ride bikes. What I don't particularly like is expecting multi-ton vehicles driving at high speeds to negotiate 1/10th ton people going much slower speeds. There has to be a better/safer solution.

Very few people die because they get hit from behind, despite that seeming like the most likely way to get hit. Drivers use the "see and avoid" principle -- if they see you, then it's likely they'll avoid you. If they can't see you (because you're way off to the side of the road), then they have no opportunity to avoid you.

When you "take the lane" as a cyclist and drive your bicycle with traffic, it's very hard to not see you. People will get annoyed, honk, and call you a bastard, but you'll get to your destination safely. And for me, being able to safely go anywhere I want on 20 pounds of steel is much more important than letting a few cars get to the next red light a few seconds faster.

Anyway, we don't need any new infrastructure for cyclists. We need automobile drivers to have a better attitude, and learn to share their resources.

The worst is when the bike lane is sandwiched between automobile traffic on one side and parked cars on the other. That way, not only do you have the problem you point out, but there's also the risk of going headfirst into some guy and his open car door.

The only special cycling facilities I want are those signs that say "bicycles have equal use of road" and the picture of the bicycle on all the lanes. Those make drivers aware that I am not being an ass and trying to delay them, but am rather trying to find a compromise between banning cars and me dying on my bike.

They are pretty good about doing this in Chicago, and I don't detect much resentment that I exist. It's even better in Seattle. (They don't even need signs there anymore, everyone is used to all the bikes.)

Same on sidewalks - I'm jogging along and the sidewalk is crowded with old people that can't maintain a 50min 10K time, they should get out of my way.

BTW, I have a Subura WRX STI (2006).

I even beat the neighbors Porsche on the bike - I don't have the STI and the WRX is detuned in this market so it can't beat the Porshce on it's own!

The ride back home was not as fast, though.

First, you're putting people in a position where they are on the boundaries of what they consider acceptable. Anything that affects those boundaries, will affect their choice.

Conservatives in general have no problem with tribalism. In the abstract any life is equal to any other life, but it is only reasonable that I should personally protect the lives of my tribe (be that ethnic group, social class, country) more diligently than I do another tribe. So conservatives tilt towards protecting their tribe.

Liberals are not only not comfortable with overt tribalism, they are sensitive to accusations of racism. So when pushed to the boundary, they won't tell the interviewer that they'll kill the black guy - that could be seen as racist. But the white guy doesn't have that protection, so off he goes.

Liberals no more want to off the white guy than conservatives do the black. But silly things like "my tribe" or "I don't want to be seen as racist" affect choices on the boundary.

That is not to say that there are not liberal tribes - there clearly are - but the mores that they have push them away from straightforward acceptance of tribalism.

I might say "yes, I would push Chip/Tyrone over the rail", because I really do believe that's the best thing to do. But if I were actually faced with that dilemma and had to murder someone, could I do it?

This particular scenario seems an odd one because I simply can't conceive a situation in which I could ever be confident a falling fat man would stop a moving train. My instinct would surely be to trust everything I'd previously learned about the laws of physics.

In the 'switching the track' example, on the other hand, the worst case scenario is that your actions have no effect on the outcome and no additional people die than would have died otherwise.

For instance, I may believe that we should be as consistent as possible in our moral views because society functions better that way. This is a utilitarian argument, but it has deontological implications. Likewise I may feel that my absolute morals requires me always to sacrifice one person for the many. This is a moralistic position which looks like harsh determinism.

Or -- as implied here -- we can just make it up as we go along, mixing and matching.

This study did nothing to disentangle these terms, choosing instead to define them in such broad and contrasting ways as to create a question where none (or a much deeper one) exists.

In short, you should study what you can clearly separate and identify. To do otherwise is to waste your time. And ours.

A summary (not written by me): According to Haidt's (2001) social intuitionist model (SIM), an individual's moral judgment normally arises from automatic 'moral intuitions'. Private moral reasoning—when it occurs—is biased and post hoc, serving to justify the moral judgment determined by the individual's intuitions.

http://www.mc.edu/campus/academics/BIO/emotional%20dog%20rat...

Similarly, when we talk about Tyrone vs. Chip, this is a question of a poor man vs. a rich man. But more to the point, "Chip Ellsworth III" evokes a sterotype of the rich Connecticut blueblood, a parasite aristocrat.

A much more interesting study would actually look at people in different clothes, with different skin tones. This just measures people's reaction to someone whose father was overly proud of his lineage and is likely a rich socialite.

Obviously this says something about my politics, but again it doesn't necessarily say anything vis-a-vis deontology vs. utilitarianism. Again, my impression of the name "Chip" is that he's a worthless individual who contributes nothing to society.

However, even if we assume that both are model citizens, it stands to reason that the death of the hypothetical lower-class black man is going to put his family through significant hardship, while Chip's family has enough money that mostly people will be getting a sudden unexpected influx of cash. So the question really becomes: kill one man, or kill one man and ruin his family's chance at a decent life.

Why would you say that?

If you'll grant me for the sake of argument that the war is justified, then the Iraqi people are every bit as guilty as we are. In both cases, we (and the Iraqis) have allowed our respective governments to do immoral things. The fact that Iraq is not a democracy might temper the blame that we assign, but the fact is that they've failed to rise up to overthrow their evil government. When evil things are being enabled by the contribution one makes to the society, it is (I believe) morally required that it be stopped. (And I note that I am guilty of failing to do so, underscoring the point of the OP)

I am similarly perplexed by people damning the US government, yet maintaining the nobility of our soldiers. If the war is wrong, then the soldiers are wrong for following the orders to fight it. "We did as we were told" is not a moral defense.

If we're talking about collateral damage _in Iraq_ though, it's reasonable to assume firstly that the American (civilian or otherwise) consciously chose to be there, which means they certainly accepted an elevated level of risks and secondly it is reasonably probable that they actively supported and are actively profiting from the war. Choosing a job with an oil company in Basra implies a much greater acceptance of the risks and ethical implications of being there than simply not choosing to overthrow the government. All you can tell about an Iraqi in Iraq is that they haven't managed to get out yet.

The hawk would no doubt approach with a different line; it is less probable that the American is actively or passively supporting hostile combatants attempting to prolong the war not to mention more likely the American happens to be their old buddy from school.

Either way both are making ostensibly reasonable value judgements.

I would say that our nation is us, and the same is true of the Iraqis. The bad things that my nation does (including the entity that it allows to govern) is my responsibility, especially because its acts are enabled because of my production (i.e., taxes, technology I develop, etc.).

The very same thing is true of Iraqis. They allowed their government to continue to run things the way they are.

You might argue that we live in a democracy, and thus change is easier for us. I would reply that (a) the form of government doesn't matter, in the final accounting a government cannot survive without the acquiescence of its people; and (b) fundamental changes in the USA might actually be more difficult, because its government is stable, entrenched, and incredibly strong.

It's actually an interesting reframing of the original problem: allowing a particular regime to remain in power and embark on a very wrong course of action might be the "least worst" option that is practically possible. In all but the worst case regime the rational utilitarians fearing the consequences of violent revolution actually find themselves in agreement with the pacifist absolutists.

It might be that a realistic examination reveals that regime change would be too "expensive", or risks failure either because the current regime wins, or because the replacement is no better ("the king is dead; long live the king").

However, given that analysis, it's still immoral to sit idly by and let events run their course. One would still have, at the very least, the obligation to (a) try to precipitate change in the long term; and (b) possibly contrive to minimize ones own contribution (by way of taxes and other support) to the current regime and its projects.

My impression is that the Iraqi people aren't doing a whole lot in either of those approaches (although I haven't studied it extensively, and what I do know is through the lens of the media). So while your claim may be correct in some cases, I don't see that it's applicable here.

In the article they said that conservatives favored killing the "black" man while liberals favored killing the "white" man. It isn't as clear as the background simply providing more data. The internal stereotype and moral values of the subject are also influencing it. It would be a terrible study if they had just lumped everyone into one big pool. It became interesting when they gathered other information about the subjects and then found correlations with their behavior.

Thus, it really isn't about what the common stereotypes are, but rather how two groups can perceive the same situation differently enough to make different decisions.

Thus my moral code is absolute, and I willing act immorally for a utilitarian outcome.

You need to build a driveway up to your new house, and there are two possible routes, each one with a single maple tree in the way. One of the trees is very old, but quite healthy, standing at least 50 feet high. The other was just planted a few months ago, so is still quite small.

You're not the one that's going to cut the trees down, and the cost to do so will be the same in both cases (let's say that the higher cost to cut down the bigger tree is offset by the fact that the person cutting it down wants the wood for himself) - which tree do you cut down, and why?

Now, this doesn't seem like a moral issue. Almost everyone would cut down the smaller tree, for several reasons: it would take less time to grow a new one of the same size, we wouldn't be destroying as much previous "work", etc. Very logical, can't really argue with it.

But I lied. When I said "maple tree", what I really meant was "human", and when I said "you need to build a path to your house," what I really meant was "we're all in a flimsy lifeboat, there's a nasty shark circling, and it wants it some tasty human gubbins[1], so we either need to toss overboard the 50 year old award winning medical research doctor with a loving family of six waiting for him at home, or a newborn baby. Or else we all die!"

[Edit: As I pointed out in response to some of the comments, I probably should have made the doctor younger, to avoid questions about whether he's already used up most of his potential. I'd encourage you to think about what age he'd need to be to change your decision...]

Anyone here actually willing to stand up and say they'd toss the baby? Because from a pure utilitarian point of view, it's the logical thing to do - a newborn baby is a roll of the dice, likely to turn out as a completely average adult, with zero expected value above and beyond any other newborn baby that the same couple has, so they might as well just make another one. OTOH the professor has proven himself to be near the top of the usefulness curve, and the expected value of his remaining years is likely far greater than that of the newborn, even after we factor in the mother's grief over losing her baby.

It's a rare person that would actually make the choice to toss the baby - I certainly don't think I could, but I can't really pin down my logic to anything more compelling (in a rational sense) than "But it's a baby, for God's sake, it just feels so wrong!"

[1]: A strained extension of the term "gubbins" (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gubbins) outside its usual meaning? Perhaps. But screw it, "gubbins" just sound like they would be so damned tasty, I stand firmly behind my use of the word.

We keep the tree around because of its aesthetic or productive value to us - i.e. the old maple tree is preferable (to us) over the younger. We are inclined, in this case, to preserve the "work" we've already done to raise the tree up to this point. We do not perceive the tree as conscious nor sentient.

The human, however, is, at least in our books. We care about the fact that the child has a lifetime of experiences that it has yet to experience - and we value said experiences, and most of us I think would agree that every human is reasonably entitled to experiencing the highs and lows of life.

I'm not sure if it's valid to harp on people for having different logic and/or morals when it comes to dealing with sentient subjects as opposed to not. It seems to me entirely logically consistent to treat the two differently.

However, some studies show that, depending on your definition of sentience, a baby might not fit into the category. There are many things (from memory: seeing moral consequences; some kinds of what if processes; understanding analogies) that aren't available to a person until 5-6 years old. Even trivial concepts such as the idea that an object still exists even when it's out of sight are not in the toolbox of a baby.

The original assertion is that people are being logically inconsistent by wanting to sacrifice the young tree, yet reluctant to sacrifice the young child. Based on the premise of tree non-sentience, it is entirely logically consistent that the two cases be decided differently.

The problem with tree sentience in general is that we have yet to define "think" in the context you are using it.

The baby has no value, it won't be able to help with our decision making process to get back to shore, it won't be able to solve problems we may find along the way, if we get stranded somewhere it won't be able to build shelter or find food. At that point the baby is nothing but dead weight that requires a constant amount of resources without any returns.

Also, I'd like to point out that if you make your opinion known that you plan to throw the baby overboard, everyone else is probably going to want to throw you overboard anyway.

We'll assume for the purposes of this thought experiment that the shark just wants a nibble - he'll be satisfied for sure with either one.

Also an older scientist might be past his prime and have lower expected utility for the rest of his career while still expecting high pay.

Yes, I realized this after it was too late to edit (well, I still could edit, but people have already replied, so it wouldn't be fair) - I probably should have made the doctor younger.

But in any case, it brings up the question: how young is "young enough" to prefer throwing a baby overboard to throwing a highly promising child/teenager/adult? Is there a "young enough" age for you, or would you always toss the older person, no matter how likely they were to be exceptional for the rest of their life?

Meh. Then cut off your arm and give it to him. The problem with these philosophical experiments is controlling external variables. It just can't be done.

Does utilitarianism demand total knowledge? Can't you posit a baby exception wired into your brain (by evolution, $deity, whatever), obey it, and still be an orthodox utilitarian?

But then this could just be me trying to retrospectively justify my inclination to save the baby.

The moral line is between whether you're able to kill a person ("toss out to save somebody else" - our human killer brain is good with coming out with "good/valid" reasons to kill) or not. If you're able to kill, then it is just a small technical detail whom to kill and why.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall

This being said, I would _never_ realistically propose this. The risk of being lynched, or at least severely handicapped socially in a critical situation are not negligible. After all, who would you rather throw, a 50 year old doctor, or a guy who just proposed throwing a baby?

An amusing article about the trolley problem is "Brain Teaser" (http://www.mindspring.com/~mfpatton/harper%27s.htm) which satirizes these ethics problems by adding an absurd number of conditions such as a busload of orphans, transplant patients about to die, a brain in a vat, and the inventor of the pop-top can.

But the baby has almost no potential. Well, that's not entirely clear...

Let me be more specific: the baby has some potential, but since it's too young, we don't know where on the Bell curve of potential it lies. Our change in expected value by throwing the baby overboard and making a brand new one is zero (at least once we casually discard the mother's grief, and the general distaste for throwing babies to sharks :) ).

We have to evaluate this against throwing the doctor overboard and starting with a fresh baby - the doctor has already proven that he's somewhere near the top of the Bell curve, so in order to figure out the utility of that trade, we need to consider how much he's likely to accomplish over the rest of his life as compared to what an average baby will accomplish during theirs.

Perhaps making the doctor 50 years old was a bit much, as it does raise questions about how much life he actually has left, and whether the (say) 20 years that he'll actually be practicing can be considered as useful as the 80 years the newborn has in front of it. I think there's still an argument to be made that 20 years of work from a highly qualified researcher is worth "more" than an average lifetime lived by an average person, but it's not crystal clear.

Suppose I'd made the doctor a brilliant 25 year old making great strides in cancer research - would that make a difference to you?

A bit of indulgent nit-pickery: My first inclination would just be to move the younger tree. It wouldn't add significant costs to the investment of building a new road.

1. The tree issue is a false choice. Maybe I can just dig a hole and transplant the smaller one; perhaps I can modify my needs.

2a. From a callously practical point of view, the 50 year old doctor-professor will make a much larger and more satisfying meal for the hungry shark than the baby, which won't be much more than an appetizer.

Of course, we have to ask why we're putting the interest of humanity in general on such a pedestal, considering that society has yet to dispatch a rescue craft. Maybe we should keep the doctor around to treat the victims of future shark attacks or dehydration; in this sense 'society' looms only as large as our future life expectancy after the shark has gone. Then again, the doctor is heavier than the baby, and will consume a greater amount of food...

2b. Everyone else in this boat must be a Nobel prize winner or something if the successful medical researcher is the most disposable person after the baby. It's another false choice, in that it bolsters the hearer's ego while simultaneously limiting their choices - this exercise doesn't cater for the suggestion that one might sacrifice themselves to save both doctor and baby, for example - although the sad fact is that few people would, so in that sense it's accurately predicated on humans' general selfishness.

However, as a false choice it's dangerously seductive, and politicians work this one (or an inverted version) all the time: "We can't increase the debt (lifeboat)! Should we give a tax cut to the rich so they can create jobs (proven success) or waste it on giving welfare to bums (unknown outcome)?" or alternatively "My opponent is soft on crime. Are we going to get tough on criminals (proven bad) now or wait for some other innocent to die (unknown probability)?" You can construct endless variations on this, regardless of your political leanings: just stick with the formula of "Time is running out - do you want distasteful alternative A or repulsive alternative B?" and just tailor your argument to the known biases of whatever group you are addressing.

Underlying this argument is the implicit threat that if you don't make a choice, you'll be chosen instead. Republicans hint that not voting for the wealthy folks' interests could cause them to cut your job, Democrats murmur that the rich might find themselves sinners in the hands of an angry mob. Broad arguments that suggest joint stakes and responsibility (eg raise some taxes and cut some spending) tend to upset everyone, which is why they're only ever offered by politicians who are leaving office anyway.

2c. Value of the baby is unpredictable. Certainly if you take 100 babies and measure something (anything) about them now or in the future, you'll get a nice Gaussian distribution. But an individual baby's future is no more predictable than an individual roll of a dice. You are not any more likely to throw a 3 or a 4 than a 1 or a 6 or a 2 or a 5, even though the average of 100 throws will converge on a value of 3.5. Evaluating the probability in light of the doctor being a '6' is seductive, but only as long as you keep sidestepping the question of who else is in this boat that makes the doctor seem 2nd-most disposable. If the baby is the child of two world-class geniuses (neither of whom we would throw out before the doctor), then the probability of its future utility is high.

We could also wonder about what the average person will be capable of in 50 years' time thanks to technology, vs. the skilled person of today. Their relative utility to society then may be lower than that of the doctor to society today, but it might be larger in absolute terms. I am particularly wary of assuming the doctor's future utility over 25 years of natural life will exceed that of the average person's 50 years.

But the unpredictability of the individual is the more important factor. Suppose there are 100 lifeboats, none of which know about the others. If all 100 follow your advice and toss the babies, those with excellent future potential will be lost as surely as those of average or lesser potential.

2d. But the big issue here is the moral question, and here we have more rational responses than 'it's a baby, it feels so wrong!' Factors of weight, food consumption, shark appetite and life outcome probabilities aside, the basic argument against such a course is the defenseless nature of the baby; s/he cannot volunteer, acquiesce or even resist being thrown to the hungry shark the way the 50 year old doctor can, and this gives us an excellent reason to refuse the idea.

Is it because of a moral obligation towards defenseless beings? Sort of, but it's not rooted in any abstract philosophy. It's rooted in our self-interest: if we are in favor of sacrificing the defenseless, then then we are advertising our utility calculus to others in the boat. True, we are not sacrificing the baby because of its defenselessness, but we are not letting the fact mitigate against the utility function either. In a future round, we might throw out someone who's asleep because their wakeful utility is similarly imponderable; that increases the danger for all, since all need to sleep; nor can we exclude ourselves, since we began with the position that circumstances brook no delay.

Even if none of us sleep, or more sharks will arrive before we can, revealing our utility calculus allows everyone else to model it for themselves in relation to everyone else. Anyone expecting to be on the wrong end of a future comparison - the doctor/professor, for example - has an enormous incentive to throw us overboard first. Such a person can make a rather compelling argument that 'after me, you're next' to everyone whose assessed utility would be lower than our own; only those for whose survival we are willing to sacrifice ourselves have an incentive to let us remain. We have already demonstrated that we consider ourselves to be at least two steps away from being expendable simply by proposing the baby go overboard; on a practical level we might expect the mother to vote the interests of her baby, and so be similarly expendable to the extent that we consider her objections to increase the risk for the whole group.

On the other hand, if we argue for the survival of the baby, we are advertising our unwillingness to make decisions about unknowables and to defend the vulnerable, an attractive quality to everyone on the boat who is not fully assured of their own survival and social utility. Given the prevalence and success fo tit-for-tat strategies in iterated prisoner's dilemma games, it's probably in our interest to identify ourselves as cooperators rather than defectors. I say probably since there's always the possibility of being on a boat full of defectors...in which case it might be better to take one's chances with the shark, who is at least honest about his intentions.

If this seems a rather involved reply, it's because I've thought about this in more than purely hypothetical terms. A day after her birth, my wife was taken aboard a ship which was part of a refugee convoy of 8 vessels. There was a storm on the second or third night of the journey, and 6 of the boats sank, with no survivors. Besides the horrifying experience my in-laws endured, I'd say she outscores me on a social utility scale too.

On reflection, perhaps a better reframing of this thought experiment (to avoid many of the issues that others have brought up) would be that a murderer has broken into your house and tied you up, along with a baby and a highly accomplished but relatively young person, and offers you the choice of which one of the others he's going to kill, along with a credible assurance that he'll kill all of you if you don't choose one (and you're not allowed to pick yourself, just because), and he'll really let the remaining two of you free once you've made a choice. Further, you're not allowed to discuss with the others, so there's no opportunity for anyone to sacrifice themselves.

From just thinking about such "experiments", I'd say that such an event is so outside the experience of most people that they simply would not have a mechanism for making such a decision. The somewhat less painful issues around "the right to die" are still very distressing when you are actually confronted with them. For example, consider the unwillingness of soldiers to fire in combat: http://www.historynet.com/men-against-fire-how-many-soldiers...

Certainly, some people do make such decisions in times of war or times of disaster. I doubt, however, that those folks have dealt with such brutal dilemas would find an evening of exchanging philosophical hypotheticals on the subject terribly enlightening.

So the opportunity cost of inaction beats action. The study should at least require some form of action of roughly equal cost(liabilities and pyhsical action) to occur in order to zero out this input.

I'd also like to rebuff the "action == moral code" statement. There is nothing more common than action that flies in the face of your moral code. Thus the "let he who is without sin" truism.

Effecting a utilitarian outcome despite your moral code does not make it moral in the eyes of the person acting, and it can denote either courage or cowardice.

Interesting. You state that Casey Jones should divert the train, yet this will cause the death of the person trapped on the railway siding. This seems to be inconsistent with your belief that it is always wrong to cause another person's death. It is somewhat perplexing that you responded this way, since you do not believe that this course of action is necessiated by any general moral requirement to maximise the happiness of the greatest number of people. More of this later. For now, let's see what you make of the scenario below.

Choosing to let 1 person die so that 5 can live does not mean I find that action moral. It's simply the better of two options.

Admittedly, that question isn't my favorite, as both options are relatively passive. How do you feel about the situations where a more active role is required? Would you push the man over the railing to save 5?

What if it's pushing a philanthropist onto the rails to save 5 serial killers?

I'm not entirely sure what's the goal of this exercise. I'd imagine that in real life, regardless of who's getting killed, most people would simply let things run their courses since inaction is generally less risky than action.

Then, if confronted, I'd guess most people would probably come up with a justification that was favorable to them (i.e. thay would get them out of trouble's way), not follow some strict ethic model.

I'm not very convinced that the assumption that people have a fixed moral system is correct. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense (evolutionarily speaking) to optimize for some abstract ideal consistency rather than fitting into a group. As far as living in a society goes, telling your social circle that you shun all forms of human killing is one thing, actually making a life-or-death decision when there are tricky caveats is completely different.

You feel this way, but many people will avoid switching the train.

The point of the experiments is to see if (statistically) more or fewer people are willing to switch the train based on the race of the people involved.

And that's why we call it utilitarianism.