The trolley problem’s lever and fat man variants differ in felt moral weight.

Evidence

Philosophers still get into tangles trying to answer ethical conundrums of this kind. Sartre’s puzzle has something in common with a famous thought experiment, the ‘trolley problem’. This proposes that you see a runaway train or trolley hurtling along a track to which, a little way ahead, five people are tied. If you do nothing, the five people will die — but you notice a lever which you might throw to divert the train to a sidetrack. If you do this, however, it will kill one person, who is tied to that part of the track and who would be safe if not for your action. So do you cause the death of this one person, or do you do nothing and allow five to die? (In a variant, the ‘fat man’ problem, you can only derail the train by throwing a hefty individual off a nearby bridge onto the track. This time you must physically lay hands on the person you are going to kill, which makes it a more visceral and difficult dilemma.) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 32

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the trolley problem and its fat man variant, key to understanding the Sartre dilemma that follows.
• XREF: connects to: Human morality is contingent rather than invariant across circumstances. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 390

Broader Connections

• Human morality is contingent rather than invariant across circumstances. #qualifies (0.80) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 390