These moral hypotheticals are pointless. In terms of making difficult moral decisions, most people make their decision after imagining or reading about how someone they consider virtuous would do. In other words, it's "what would Jesus do?" not "let's imagine this hypothetical that is similar but not identical to the moral quandary I'm experiencing right now and use the answer I have for the hypothetical to inform my decision for the real deal."
For this lever problem, you can approach it in two angles:
Imagining a hypothetical decision: This is what would Jesus/Muhammad/Buddha/Confucius/Aristotle/Francis of Asisi/Tolstoy/Lenin/MLK or any other virtuous figure do? To adequately answer this question, this would entail studying and understanding the life of the virtuous person. And it doesn't necessarily need to be a famous person like Jesus. It could simply be a relative you admire. Your grandmother is the strongest person you've ever known, someone who faced so much bullshit in life but who faced and triumphed without compromising on her principles while having a defiant spirit, almost as if she's mocking her bad luck for not being able to crush her spirit. What would she do if faced with this situation?
Studying an actual decision: This means studying instances where the lever has actually been pulled/not pulled and understanding the ramifications that comes from either decision. I don't think this hypothetical has actually happened in real life, and no, I'm not talking about tough-decisions-that-carry-a-human-cost, but the actual situation of people tied up on rails about to be run over by a trolley. Obviously, if we had real-life examples, both of people who pulled the lever and people who didn't, we can compare and contrast between the two groups and come to a reasonable conclusion about which choice is better. I think the reason why the hypothetical has staying power is precisely because it hasn't actually happened in real life and lacks the real-life ramification of the decision that people can study. If everyone who pulls the lever in real-life becomes alcoholics suffering from PTSD while everyone who didn't pull the lever in real-life go on become vegan, then this would obviously have a huge effect on whether you personally would pull the lever. How could it not?
These moral hypotheticals are pointless. In terms of making difficult moral decisions, most people make their decision after imagining or reading about how someone they consider virtuous would do. In other words, it's "what would Jesus do?" not "let's imagine this hypothetical that is similar but not identical to the moral quandary I'm experiencing right now and use the answer I have for the hypothetical to inform my decision for the real deal."
For this lever problem, you can approach it in two angles:
Imagining a hypothetical decision: This is what would Jesus/Muhammad/Buddha/Confucius/Aristotle/Francis of Asisi/Tolstoy/Lenin/MLK or any other virtuous figure do? To adequately answer this question, this would entail studying and understanding the life of the virtuous person. And it doesn't necessarily need to be a famous person like Jesus. It could simply be a relative you admire. Your grandmother is the strongest person you've ever known, someone who faced so much bullshit in life but who faced and triumphed without compromising on her principles while having a defiant spirit, almost as if she's mocking her bad luck for not being able to crush her spirit. What would she do if faced with this situation?
Studying an actual decision: This means studying instances where the lever has actually been pulled/not pulled and understanding the ramifications that comes from either decision. I don't think this hypothetical has actually happened in real life, and no, I'm not talking about tough-decisions-that-carry-a-human-cost, but the actual situation of people tied up on rails about to be run over by a trolley. Obviously, if we had real-life examples, both of people who pulled the lever and people who didn't, we can compare and contrast between the two groups and come to a reasonable conclusion about which choice is better. I think the reason why the hypothetical has staying power is precisely because it hasn't actually happened in real life and lacks the real-life ramification of the decision that people can study. If everyone who pulls the lever in real-life becomes alcoholics suffering from PTSD while everyone who didn't pull the lever in real-life go on become vegan, then this would obviously have a huge effect on whether you personally would pull the lever. How could it not?