Assignment:
The Trolley Problem: Original Version
A train is hurtling down a track and you see that it is going to hit a group of 5 people and will certainly kill them all. However you happen to be standing next to a switch that can divert the train down another track where only a single person would be killed.
Would it be right to pull the switch?
Philippa Foot, The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect in Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978).
The Trolley Problem: The Fat Man
As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you - your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five.
Should you proceed?
Judith Jarvis Thomson, Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem, 59 The Monist 204-17 (1976).
Do you see any difference between these two cases that affected your answers to the questions raised?