the awesome/terrifying freedom

thank you thank you to all the well wishers on my opening weekend! the show went very very well, and was attended by donald lyons of the new york post, which i hate, but if they print a good review, i will make a brief single-article based exception to my hatred of all rupert murdoch owned media conglomerates.

john's blog makes reference to a moral conundrum posed by bloggawhat that has sucked me in. i will reprint highlights to save you clicking back and forth.

bloggawhat says:

I also have a philosophical question -- specifically, a trolley problem: Suppose a trolley is headed towards five people, but you can steer it so that it only hits one person instead. Some people, namely non-consequentialists, would say that you oughtn't divert the trolley. (I realize that this example is precisely the wrong one to motivate this conclusion, but the better example -- the "fat man" one -- would take too long to reinterpret as I'm about to do...) I have a challenge for such people: Suppose further that, as you are deciding whether to divert the trolley, Peter Singer drives by in a Prius and shouts some excellent utilitarian arguments that cause you pull the switch and divert the trolley. After diverting the trolley, you "realize" that you have made a terrible mistake by transgressing against your non-consequentialist beliefs. My question -- do you switch the trolley back, or do you leave it as it is? I've already considered this question at some length and failed to come up with a satisfying solution, but instead of writing all my arguments and risking carpel-tunnel syndrome, I'll see what all of you brilliant people come up with. I'll post objections to people's solutions here or on their websites. If nobody comes up with a satisfying solution, I think this ought to count against this sort of non-consequentialist intuition.

john says:

i would not divert the trolley, and if i diverted it once, i would divert it back.

i guess it would be fear of prosecution but also a belief that some deus ex machina could move the people out of the way or that the unknown of the future is an acceptable absolver of my inability to act. if i moved it once, i would move it back to correct the action to leave it on the course that it was before i acted. i'm sorry, i'm not a philosophy major and i'm not very smart but their seems to be a particular culpability to exerting action on a situation while remaining neutral, even with a potential power seems to leave it out on my hands.

so i did some searches on 'consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist' philosophy, which led me to an interesting article about biotechnology and how neatly the 'process vs. product' debate in biotechnology maps onto the 'consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist' debate in philosophy.

which of course got me thinking: which am i?

something about non-consequentialist thinking smacks of 'good intentions,' as in 'the road to hell is paved with.' sure, we're polluting the ecosystem, but we're gonna get a cure for cancer.. probably.. maybe.. but then intent is the only real reason to begin any undertaking - to cure cancer, a noble cause. the problem is that only actions and results are quantifiable - 'intents' can never really be judged. (heh, harkens back to my offensive comedy jag) so perhaps consequentialism is the only way to go: what's happening to the environment now? maybe we should find another way to cure cancer..

lets look at the story from a (admittely amoral) consequentialist perspective:
so lizzie grubman is driving the trolley and her intent is to kill as many people as possible - she sees that she's probably going to hit five people if she does nothing. but then this guy drives by and says that if she switches tracks she will only kill the ugly girl on the end, instead of the other four, richer hotter bitchier girls. she switches tracks because ugly girls deserve to die. but should she only kill the ugly girl? do four richer-prettier bitches equal one ugly girl? does it matter if she switches back? what's a drunk road rager to do? after pondering consequentialism vs. non-consequentialism, lizzie lets go of the wheel. she realizes that it's a win/win sit: no such thing as bad press, baby!

okay, here's my real answer:

if i'm truly a non-consequentialist, then after diverting the train once, i should not divert again, because diverting again would make me a hypocrite. i had already transgressed my non-con thinking once by switching tracks. if i switch again to achieve a new end, namely: restoring my non-con status, i'm actually still working towards a specific consequence. so my answer (if i explained it well enough) is no, i would not divert the train again. i made the mistake of diverting once. diverting again only makes me more of a consequentialist (unless i'm diverting because i decide that the original track is a more scenic route).