This is a course about justice and we begin with a story. Suppose youre the driver of a trolley car, and your trolley car is hurtling down the track at 60 miles an hour. And at the end of the track, you notice five workers working on the track. You try to stop but you cant, your brakes dont work. You feel desperate because you know that if you crash into these five workers, they will all die. Lets assume you know that for sure. And so you feel helpless until you notice that there is, off to the right, a side track and at the end of that track, there is one worker working on the track. Your steering wheel works, so you can turn the trolley car, if you want to, onto the side track killing the one but sparing the five. Heres our first question: whats the right thing to do? What would you do? Lets take a poll. How many would turn the trolley car onto the side track? Raise your hands. How many wouldnt? How many would go straight ahead? Keep your hands up those of you who would go straight ahead. A handful of people would, the vast majority would turn. Lets hear first, now we need to begin to investigate the reasons why you think its the right thing to do. Lets begin with those in the majority who would turn to go onto the side track. Why would you do it? What would be your reason? Whos willing to volunteer a reason? Go ahead. Stand up. Because it cant be right to kill five people when you can only kill one person instead. It wouldnt be right to kill five if you could kill one person instead. Thats a good reason. Who else? Does everybody agree with that reason? Go ahead. Well I was thinking its the same reason on 9/11 with regard to the people who flew the plane into the Pennsylvania field as heroes because they chose to kill the people on the plane and not kill more people in big buildings. So the principle there was the same on 9/11. Its a tragic circumstance but better to kill one so that five can live, is that the reason most of you had, those of you who would turn? Yes? Lets hear now from those in the minority, those who wouldnt turn. Yes. Well, I think thats the same type of mentality that justifies genocide and totalitarianism. In order to save one type of race, you wipe out the other. So what would you do in this case? You would, to avoid the horrors of genocide, you would crash into the five and kill them? Presumably, yes. You would?-Yeah. Okay. Who else? Thats a brave answer. Thank you. Lets consider another trolley car case and see whether those of you in the majority want to adhere to the principle: better that one should die so that five should live. This time youre not the driver of the trolley car, youre an onlooker. Youre standing on a bridge overlooking a trolley car track. And down the track comes a trolley car, at the end of the track are five workers, the brakes dont work, the trolley car is about to careen into the five and kill them. And now, youre not the driver, you really feel helpless until you notice standing next to you, leaning over the bridge is a very fat man. And you could give him a shove. He would fall over the bridge onto the track right in the way of the trolley car. He would die but he would spare the five. Now, how many would push the fat man over the bridge? Raise your hand.How many wouldnt? Most people wouldnt. Heres the obvious question. What became of the principle better to save five lives even if it means sacrificing one? What became of the principlethat almost everyone endorsed in the first case? I need to hear from someone who was in the majority in both cases. How do you explain the difference between the two? Yes. The second one, I guess, involves an active choice of pushing a person downwhich I guess that person himself would otherwise not have been involved in the situation at all. And so to choose on his behalf, I guess, to involve him in something that he otherwise would have escaped is, I guess, more than what you have in the first case where the three parties, the driver and the two sets of workers, are already, I guess, in the situation. But the guy working, the one on the track off to the side, he didnt choose to sacrifice his life any more than the fat man did, did he? Thats true, but he was on the tracks and. This guy was on the bridge.Go ahead, you can come back if you want. All right. Its a hard question. You did well. You did very well. Its a hard question.Who else can find a way of reconciling the reaction of the majority in these two cases? Yes. Well, I guess in the first case where you have the one worker and the five, its a choice between those two and you have to make a certain choice and people are going to die because of the trolley car, not necessarily because of your direct actions. The trolley car is a runaway thingand youre making a split second choice. Whereas pushing the fat man over is an actual act of murder on your part. You have control over that whereas you may not have c