A17 · Right and Wrong 對與錯
Would You Pull the Lever? 你會拉下拉桿嗎？
Five people on the track, one on the siding, and your hand on the switch. Then a footbridge, a loop, a hospital, and a third track with you on it. What your answers show about the rules you live by.
軌道上有五個人，岔道上有一個人，而你的手在轉轍器上。然後是一座天橋、一條環狀軌道、一間醫院，以及你自己站在上面的第三條軌道。你的答案，透露了你賴以生活的規則。
Almost everyone will turn a runaway trolley from five people toward one, and almost no one will push a man off a bridge to get the same result. The puzzle is to say what the difference is, and whether it is a reason or only a feeling.
幾乎每個人都願意把失控的電車從五個人那裡轉向一個人；卻幾乎沒有人願意為了同樣的結果，把一個人從橋上推下去。難題在於說出兩者的差別是什麼，以及那個差別是一個理由，還是只是一種感覺。
中文翻譯Every paragraph has a Chinese translation. Tap 中譯▾ under a paragraph to open that one, or use Show Chinese · 顯示中譯 at the top to open them all. 每一段都有中譯：點段落下方的「中譯」只開那一段，或按上方的「顯示中譯」一次全部打開。
The essay · 課文
Would You Pull the Lever? 你會拉下拉桿嗎？
01The switch 轉轍器
A trolley is running out of control down a track. Ahead of it are five people who cannot get clear in time. You are standing beside a switch. If you pull the lever, the trolley will turn onto a side track, where one person is standing. He will be killed and the five will live. If you do nothing, the five will die. The case was invented in 1967 by the English philosopher Philippa Foot, who put a driver at the controls, and reshaped in 1976 by the American Judith Jarvis Thomson, who moved the choice to a bystander and gave the problem its name. When the question is put to large numbers of people, in many countries, around nine in ten say that they would pull the lever. Five deaths are worse than one, and it seems absurd to let the worse thing happen when a movement of the hand would prevent it.
一輛電車失去控制，沿著軌道衝下來。前方有五個人，來不及躲開。你站在一個轉轍器旁邊。如果你拉下拉桿，電車會轉到岔道上；那裡站著一個人。他會被撞死，而那五個人會活下來。如果你什麼也不做，那五個人會死。這個案例是英國哲學家芙特在 1967 年發明的，她讓一位駕駛握著操縱桿；1976 年，美國哲學家湯姆森重新塑造了它，把抉擇交給一位旁觀者，並且給了這個問題它的名字。把這個問題拿去問許多國家的許多人，大約十個人當中有九個說會拉下拉桿。五個人死比一個人死更糟；而當手動一下就能避免，卻任由更糟的事發生，似乎是荒謬的。
02The footbridge 天橋
Thomson then changed one thing. There is no side track. You are on a footbridge over the line, and beside you stands a very large stranger. If you push him off, his body will stop the trolley before it reaches the five. He will die. You are too light to do it by jumping yourself. The numbers are the same as before, five lives for one, and the same nine in ten now say that they would not push. Some are indignant at being asked. This pair of answers is the trolley problem. If saving the greater number justified pulling the lever, it should justify the push, and if killing an innocent man forbids the push, it should forbid the lever. Either the two cases differ in some way that matters morally, or one of our two reactions is a mistake.
接著湯姆森改了一個地方。沒有岔道了。你在一座橫跨軌道的天橋上，身旁站著一個非常胖的陌生人。如果你把他推下去，他的身體會在電車撞到那五個人之前把它擋住。他會死。你自己跳下去是擋不住的，你太輕了。數字跟先前一樣：五條命換一條命；而同樣那十分之九的人，現在說他們不會推。有些人對於被問到這種問題感到憤慨。這一對答案，就是電車難題。如果「救多數」足以證成拉下拉桿，它就應該也證成那一推；如果「殺死一個無辜的人」禁止了那一推，它就應該也禁止拉桿。要嘛這兩個情況有某種在道德上要緊的差別，要嘛我們這兩種反應當中，有一個是錯的。
03Counting 計數
One school says that the second reaction is the mistake. For the utilitarian, an act is right if it produces the best total outcome for everyone affected, and John Stuart Mill stated the creed in a sentence: “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” On that standard the two cases are one case. Five people will live or one will, and the route by which the trolley is stopped does not appear in the sum. Our horror at the push is real, the utilitarian grants, and useful, since people who find it easy to shove strangers off bridges are dangerous to live among. But a feeling that serves us well in general can mislead in a particular case.
有一個學派說，錯的是第二種反應。對效益主義者來說，一個行為如果對所有受影響的人產生了最好的總體結果，它就是對的；彌爾用一句話陳述了這個信條：「行為之為對，與它們增進幸福的傾向成比例；行為之為錯，與它們產生幸福之反面的傾向成比例。」照這個標準，這兩個情況是同一個情況。活下來的不是五個人，就是一個人；至於電車是經由哪一條路徑被擋下來的，並不出現在那筆總帳裡。效益主義者承認，我們對那一推的恐懼是真實的，而且是有用的，因為那些覺得把陌生人推下橋很容易的人，是不宜與之共處的危險人物。但是，一種在一般情況下對我們很有用的感覺，在某個特定的情況裡可能誤導我們。
The difficulty comes in a hospital. Five patients are dying for want of organs: two need kidneys, two need lungs, one needs a heart. A healthy traveler comes in for a checkup, and he happens to be a match for all five. A surgeon could quietly take him apart and save them. Five for one once more, and here almost nobody, utilitarians included, is willing to say yes. Most utilitarians reply that a society in which doctors did such things would be a terrified and miserable one, so that the rule against it has the best results. That answers the practical question. It leaves the suspicion that the rule is doing work the theory cannot do.
困難出現在一間醫院裡。五位病人因為等不到器官而瀕臨死亡：兩位需要腎，兩位需要肺，一位需要心臟。一位健康的旅客進來做健康檢查，而他碰巧跟這五位全都配對得上。一位外科醫師可以悄悄地把他拆開，救活他們。又是五個換一個；而在這裡，幾乎沒有人（效益主義者也包括在內）願意說「好」。多數效益主義者回答：一個醫師會做這種事的社會，會是一個驚恐而悲慘的社會；所以禁止它的那條規則，才有最好的結果。這回答了實際的問題。它留下了一個疑慮：那條規則正在做的事，是這個理論自己做不到的。
04Means and side effects 手段與附帶結果
The opposing school says that some things may not be done to a person whatever the gain. Kant’s formula is the best known: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only.” The man on the bridge is used. His body is the tool by which the five are saved, and if he were absent the plan would fail. The man on the side track is not used. If he were absent, pulling the lever would work just as well, and better. His death is a side effect of saving the five and no part of how they are saved.
相對的那個學派說：有些事，不管能得到多少好處，都不可以對一個人做。康德的公式最為人所知：「你要這樣行動：對待人性，不論是在你自己的人格裡，還是在任何別人的人格裡，在每一個情況下都同時當作目的，絕不僅僅當作手段。」橋上的那個人是被「用」了。他的身體，是那五個人賴以得救的工具；假如他不在場，這個計畫就會失敗。岔道上的那個人並沒有被用。假如他不在場，拉下拉桿照樣行得通，而且更好。他的死，是救那五個人的附帶結果，並不是他們「如何」得救的一部分。
Catholic moral theology had a name for this distinction seven centuries earlier. According to the doctrine of double effect, which goes back to Thomas Aquinas on killing in self-defense, a person may sometimes do what he foresees will cause a death, provided that he does not intend the death, either as his end or as his means, and that the good achieved is great enough. A doctor may give a dying patient enough morphine to stop the pain, knowing that it will shorten life. He may not give it in order to shorten life. Foot introduced the trolley in the course of examining this doctrine. It explains the common pair of answers neatly, and it explains the surgeon.
天主教的倫理神學，早七個世紀就給了這個區分一個名字。依照「雙重效果原則」（它可以追溯到多瑪斯・阿奎那談自衛殺人），一個人有時候可以做他預見會造成死亡的事，只要他並不「意圖」那個死亡（不管是當作目的，還是當作手段），而且所達成的善夠大。醫師可以給瀕死的病人足以止痛的嗎啡，明知這會縮短生命。他不可以為了縮短生命而給。芙特就是在檢視這條原則的過程中，引進了電車。它俐落地解釋了常見的那一對答案，也解釋了那位外科醫師。
05The loop 環狀軌道
Thomson then built a case to break it. Suppose the side track does not run off into the distance. It loops around and rejoins the main line behind the five, so that a trolley sent down it would come back and kill them from the other direction, except that the one man on the loop is heavy enough to stop it. Now if you pull the lever, his body is the means by which the five are saved, exactly as on the bridge. If he were absent, the plan would fail. The doctrine of double effect says that you may not pull. Yet most people feel that the loop is much more like the first case than the second, and say that they would pull. An extra length of rail behind five people can hardly make the moral difference between the permitted and the forbidden. If that is right, our reactions are not tracking the distinction between means and side effect after all.
接著，湯姆森造了一個案例來打破它。假設岔道並不是通向遠方。它繞一個圈，在那五個人的後方接回主線；所以一輛被送上岔道的電車會繞回來，從另一個方向撞死他們，除非環道上的那一個人夠重，足以把它擋下來。現在，如果你拉下拉桿，他的身體就是那五個人賴以得救的手段，跟橋上的情況一模一樣。假如他不在場，計畫就會失敗。雙重效果原則說，你不可以拉。然而，多數人覺得環狀軌道比較像第一個案例，而不像第二個，並且說他們會拉。五個人後方多出來的一段鐵軌，很難成為「許可」與「禁止」之間的道德差別。如果是這樣，我們的反應終究並不是在追蹤「手段」與「附帶結果」的區分。
06The hand and the kitchen 手與庖廚
In 2001 the psychologist Joshua Greene put people in a brain scanner and gave them these cases. The footbridge produced strong activity in regions associated with emotion, and the switch produced more in regions associated with calculation. He proposed that we have two systems of moral judgment: a fast alarm set off by personal, hands-on violence, and a slower reckoning of outcomes. What distinguishes the bridge, on this account, is the push itself, the use of one’s own muscle against another body. Greene drew a debunking conclusion. The alarm was built for a world of face-to-face encounters, and we should trust it less than we do.
2001 年，心理學家格林把受試者放進腦部掃描儀，並且給他們這些案例。天橋引起了與情緒相關的區域的強烈活動；轉轍器引起較多活動的，則是與計算相關的區域。他提議：我們有兩套道德判斷的系統，一套是快速的警報，由親手的、近身的暴力觸發；另一套是較慢的、對結果的計算。照這個說法，使天橋與眾不同的，是那一推本身，是用自己的肌肉去對付另一個身體。格林引出了一個「拆穿」式的結論：這套警報是為一個面對面相遇的世界打造的，我們應該比現在更少信任它。
Mencius noticed the same fact and drew the opposite moral. King Xuan of Qi once saw an ox being led to slaughter, could not bear its frightened look, and ordered a sheep to be used instead. People laughed at him, since the sheep was no less innocent. Mencius told the king that his reaction was the working of humaneness: “you saw the ox and had not seen the sheep.” A good person, he said, having seen an animal alive cannot bear to see it die, and “this is why the gentleman keeps his distance from the kitchen.” For Mencius the feeling that is triggered by nearness is the root from which all moral concern grows, and the task is to extend it to what we do not see. Elsewhere he allows that a rule may be overridden. Asked whether a man may touch his sister-in-law’s hand, which ritual forbade, in order to pull her from the water, he answers that one who would not is a wolf. The rule is ritual, and the rescue is quán, the weighing of circumstances.
孟子注意到了同一個事實，引出的卻是相反的教訓。齊宣王有一次看見一頭牛被牽去宰殺，不忍看牠那副恐懼發抖的樣子，下令用一隻羊代替。人們笑他，因為那隻羊同樣無辜。孟子告訴齊王：他的反應正是仁的運作，「見牛未見羊也」。他說，君子看見禽獸活著，就不忍看見牠死，「是以君子遠庖廚也」。對孟子來說，由「靠近」所觸發的那個感受，是一切道德關懷生長的根；而我們的任務，是把它推廣到我們沒有看見的東西上。在另一處，他承認規則可以被凌駕。有人問：禮規定男女授受不親，那麼嫂嫂掉進水裡，可以伸手去拉她嗎？他回答：不拉的人是豺狼。那條規則是禮；伸手救人則是「權」，對情境的權衡。
07What the cases are for 這些案例是做什麼用的
The trolley problem is often mocked as a game with no application, and for forty years it was at least artificial. It has since become an engineering question. A car that drives itself must be given some policy for the moment when a collision cannot be avoided and the only choice is whom to hit. Between 2016 and 2018 an online experiment called the Moral Machine collected some forty million such decisions from people in more than two hundred countries and territories. Nearly everyone preferred to spare more lives over fewer. Beyond that the agreement broke down, and preferences about sparing the young, the law-abiding, or the passengers varied from one culture to another.
電車難題常常被嘲笑成一場毫無用處的遊戲；而有四十年之久，它至少是人為造作的。此後它變成了一個工程問題。一輛自動駕駛的車，必須被賦予某種方針，用在碰撞無法避免、唯一的選擇是「撞誰」的那一刻。2016 到 2018 年間，一個名為「道德機器」的線上實驗，從兩百多個國家與地區的人那裡，收集了大約四千萬個這類的抉擇。幾乎每個人都寧可保全較多的生命。除此之外，共識就瓦解了；要不要優先保全年輕人、守法的人或乘客，偏好隨文化而異。
The cases were never meant to be solved like riddles. They are instruments. Each isolates one feature of an action, the numbers, the intention, the physical contact, or the role of the person acting, and holds the rest fixed, so that we can find out which features our judgments respond to. What most people discover is that they hold several principles at once and had not noticed that these could collide. The next lesson examines the three great theories that have each tried to make one principle supreme.
這些案例本來就不是要像謎語那樣被解開的。它們是儀器。每一個案例都把一個行為的某一項特徵單獨分離出來（數字、意圖、身體的接觸，或行動者的角色），而讓其餘的保持不變，好讓我們找出我們的判斷是對哪些特徵起反應。多數人發現的是：自己同時持有好幾條原則，而先前沒有注意到它們可能相撞。下一課會檢視三大理論；它們各自都試圖讓某一條原則成為至高的。
Thought experiment · 思想實驗
Try it: five cases, one hand 親手做一次：五個案例，一隻手
Answer each case before reading on. There are no right answers on file. At the end you will be shown the pattern of your five answers and which principles can and cannot explain it.
每一個案例都先回答，再往下讀。這裡並沒有存著正確答案。最後會讓你看到你五個答案的樣式，以及哪些原則解釋得了它、哪些解釋不了。
Standard form · 標準形式
The argument, laid out 論證攤開來
The doctrine of double effect, applied to the first two cases. Click a step to see what can be said against it.
雙重效果原則，用在前兩個案例上。點任何一步，看看別人可以怎麼反對它。
Primary text · 原典
In their own words 原典怎麼說
Two passages from the fourth century BCE on the two questions the trolley raises: why nearness changes what we can bear to do, and when a rule gives way. The Chinese is given under each.
兩段西元前四世紀的文字，談的正是電車提出的兩個問題：為什麼「靠近」會改變我們忍心做的事？規則什麼時候讓步？每一段下面附上原文。
Mencius, 1A7 and 4A17 《孟子・梁惠王上》第七章、《離婁上》第十七章 · translated for this series from the Chinese text
“There is no harm in it. This is the working of humaneness. You saw the ox and had not seen the sheep. The gentleman’s attitude to animals is this: having seen them alive, he cannot bear to see them die, and having heard their cries, he cannot bear to eat their flesh. This is why the gentleman keeps his distance from the kitchen.”
曰：「無傷也，是乃仁術也，見牛未見羊也。君子之於禽獸也，見其生，不忍見其死；聞其聲，不忍食其肉。是以君子遠庖廚也。」
The king had been mocked for an inconsistency. He spared the ox he saw and condemned a sheep he did not see, though the sheep was just as innocent. This is the inconsistency of the person who will pull the lever and will not push. Mencius does not tell the king to become consistent by hardening himself. He treats the reaction to what is in front of us as the one sound thing in the story, the shoot from which humane government could grow, and the rest of the chapter argues that the king should extend to his people what he felt for the ox. The line about the kitchen is often read as hypocrisy. It can also be read as a frank admission that our moral perception works at close range and that we arrange our lives so that it is not triggered.
齊王因為一個前後不一而被人取笑。他饒了他看見的那頭牛，卻判了一隻他沒看見的羊死刑，儘管那隻羊同樣無辜。這就是那個「願意拉桿、卻不願意推人」的人的前後不一。孟子並沒有叫齊王靠著讓自己變得冷硬來達到一致。他把「對眼前事物的反應」當作這個故事裡唯一健全的東西，當作仁政可以從中長出來的嫩芽；這一章其餘的部分都在論證：齊王應該把他對那頭牛的感受，推及他的百姓。關於庖廚的那一句，常被讀成偽善。它也可以被讀成一個坦率的承認：我們的道德知覺是在近距離運作的；而我們把生活安排成不去觸發它。
Chunyu Kun said, “Is it the rule of ritual that men and women do not touch when giving and receiving?” Mencius said, “It is.” “If your sister-in-law is drowning, do you pull her out with your hand?” “One who would not pull his drowning sister-in-law out is a wolf. That men and women do not touch in giving and receiving is ritual. To pull a drowning sister-in-law out with one’s hand is weighing.”
淳于髡曰：「男女授受不親，禮與？」孟子曰：「禮也。」曰：「嫂溺則援之以手乎？」曰：「嫂溺不援，是豺狼也。男女授受不親，禮也；嫂溺援之以手者，權也。」
Quán originally means the sliding weight on a steelyard, and so the act of weighing. Mencius does not say that the rule was wrong or that it has an exception written into it. He says that a person of sound judgment sees when the purpose a rule serves is better served by setting it aside. This is neither of the two Western positions in the lesson. The utilitarian has no rules to set aside, and the strict deontologist does not set them aside. Confucian ethics puts its trust in the trained perception of the person on the spot, and Aristotle, as the next lesson will show, does the same.
「權」的本義是秤錘，引申為「權衡」這個動作。孟子並沒有說那條規則是錯的，也沒有說它本身寫著一個例外。他說的是：一個判斷力健全的人，看得出什麼時候把一條規則放到一邊，更能成全這條規則所要成全的目的。這不屬於這一課裡西方的那兩種立場。效益主義者沒有規則可以放到一邊；嚴格的義務論者不把規則放到一邊。儒家倫理把信任交給在場者那份經過訓練的知覺；而下一課會顯示，亞里斯多德也是如此。
Both sides · 正反兩面
Objections and replies 反駁與回應
These cases are too artificial to teach anything. Real choices never come with certainty about outcomes, and nobody knows that a body will stop a trolley.
這些案例太人為造作，教不了任何東西。真實的抉擇從來不會附帶對結果的確定；沒有人知道一個身體擋得住電車。
The artificiality is the method. A physicist who wants to know how bodies fall removes the air, and what he learns in the vacuum holds outside it. The cases strip away uncertainty so that one feature can be varied at a time. It is fair to add that some of our reluctance to push may be a sensible disbelief in the story, and good experiments try to control for that.
人為造作正是方法所在。一位想知道物體怎麼落下的物理學家，會把空氣抽掉；而他在真空裡學到的，在真空之外也成立。這些案例剝掉了不確定性，好讓每次只變動一項特徵。公平地說，還應該補充：我們不願意推，有一部分也許是對這個故事合情合理的不相信；好的實驗會設法控制這一點。
If I do nothing, I have not killed anyone. The deaths of the five are the fault of whoever let the trolley run loose.
如果我什麼也不做，我就沒有殺任何人。那五個人的死，是讓電車失控的那個人的錯。
This appeals to the difference between doing and allowing, which most moral codes recognize: we blame the poisoner more than the person who fails to send food abroad. But the difference cannot be absolute. Someone who watches a child drown in a shallow pond when he could wade in has done something terrible by doing nothing. Once you are standing at the lever, the choice is yours, and to stand still is one of the two ways of making it.
這是訴諸「作為」與「容許」的差別；多數的道德規範都承認這個差別：我們責備下毒的人，多過責備沒有把食物送到國外去的人。但這個差別不可能是絕對的。一個人明明可以涉水過去，卻眼睜睜看著一個孩子在淺池裡淹死，他什麼也沒做，卻做了一件可怕的事。一旦你站在拉桿旁邊，抉擇就是你的了；站著不動，是作出這個抉擇的兩種方式之一。
Our reactions to these cases are products of evolution and upbringing. They are evidence about our psychology and tell us nothing about what is right.
我們對這些案例的反應，是演化與教養的產物。它們是關於我們心理的證據，並沒有告訴我們什麼是對的。
This is Greene’s position, and he applies it selectively: he distrusts the alarm at the bridge and trusts the calculation at the switch. But the judgment that five deaths are worse than one is also a reaction with a history. If having a causal origin discredits a moral response, it discredits all of them, and we are left with nothing to reason from. The better use of the psychology is narrower. It can tell us when a reaction is responding to something we would, on reflection, consider irrelevant, such as the mere distance between two people.
這是格林的立場，而他是有選擇地運用它的：他不信任天橋上的那個警報，卻信任轉轍器旁的那個計算。然而，「五個人死比一個人死更糟」這個判斷，同樣是一個有來歷的反應。如果「有一個因果上的起源」就足以使一個道德反應失去信用，那它使所有的道德反應都失去了信用；我們就沒有任何東西可以作為推理的起點了。對這門心理學比較好的用法，是比較窄的。它可以告訴我們：什麼時候一個反應所回應的，是我們經過反思會認為不相干的東西，例如僅僅是兩個人之間的距離。
Terms of art · 哲學術語
The vocabulary of the subject 這門學問的用語
L. utilis ‘useful’
The theory that the right act is the one that produces the greatest total well-being.
主張對的行為就是產生最大總體福祉的那一個。
The wider family of views on which the rightness of an act depends only on its outcomes.
一個更大的家族：凡主張行為的對錯只取決於結果的看法都屬之。
Gk. deon ‘what is binding, duty’
The family of views on which some acts are required or forbidden whatever their outcomes.
一個家族：凡主張有些行為不論結果如何都是應為或禁止的看法都屬之。
The principle that one may cause a foreseen harm as a side effect of doing good, but not intend it as a means.
這條原則主張：可以在行善時造成一個被預見的、附帶的傷害，卻不可以意圖以它為手段。
The distinction between bringing a harm about and failing to prevent it.
「造成一個傷害」與「沒有阻止它」之間的區分。
What one does in order to achieve something, and the thing one aims to achieve.
為了達成某事而做的事，以及所要達成的那件事。
L. intueri ‘to look at’
An immediate judgment that something is right or wrong, made before any argument.
在任何論證之前，對某事是對是錯所下的直接判斷。
L. supererogare ‘to pay out beyond what is due’
Good to do and beyond what duty requires, as in giving one’s life for strangers.
做了很好、卻超出義務所要求的；例如為陌生人獻出生命。
Advanced English · 高級英文
Words and phrases worth keeping 值得帶走的字與片語
Five people who cannot get clear in time.
五個來不及躲開的人。
Some are indignant at being asked.
有些人對於被問到這種問題感到憤慨。
Five patients are dying for want of organs.
五位病人因為缺少器官而瀕臨死亡。
He happens to be a match for all five.
他碰巧跟五位全都配對得上。
Some things may not be done to a person whatever the gain.
有些事，不管能得到多少好處，都不可以對一個人做。
Provided that he does not intend the death.
只要他並不意圖那個死亡。
Foot introduced the trolley in the course of examining this doctrine.
芙特是在檢視這條原則的過程中引進電車的。
A fast alarm set off by personal, hands-on violence.
一套由親手的、近身的暴力觸發的快速警報。
When does a rule give way?
規則什麼時候讓步？
Beyond that the agreement broke down.
除此之外，共識就瓦解了。
Reading check · 理解測驗
Did it land? 讀懂了嗎
1. What is the trolley problem, strictly speaking?
2. Why does the surgeon case trouble utilitarians?
3. According to the doctrine of double effect, what is the difference between the switch and the footbridge?
4. Why is the loop case a problem for that doctrine?
5. What does Mencius say about King Xuan’s sparing of the ox?
Write · 你怎麼想？
State, in one sentence each, the principle you used in the switch case and the principle you used on the footbridge. Do they conflict?
各用一句話，說出你在轉轍器案例裡用的原則，以及你在天橋上用的原則。它們衝突嗎？
A self-driving car must choose between hitting two pedestrians who are crossing against the light and swerving into a wall, which would kill its one passenger. What should it be programmed to do, and who should decide? Answer in about 150 words.
一輛自動駕駛的車，必須在「撞上兩個闖紅燈的行人」與「轉向撞牆、撞死車上唯一的乘客」之間選擇。它應該被設定成怎麼做？又該由誰來決定？用大約 150 個英文字回答。
Describe a real situation in which you set a rule aside because following it would have defeated its purpose. Was that quán?
描述一個真實的情境：你把一條規則放到一邊，因為照著做反而會違背它的目的。那算是「權」嗎？
Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學
A view from the Dharma 佛法怎麼看
The Buddha defined action by what the agent intends. “It is intention that I call deeds,” he says: having intended, one acts by body, speech, and mind. This places Buddhist ethics nearer to the doctrine of double effect than to the counting of outcomes. The weight of an act of killing depends on whether there was a living being, whether one knew it, whether one meant to kill, and whether one made the effort, and a death that one caused without meaning to is not a breach of the first precept. The early tradition adds a psychological claim that the Western debate lacks. An intention to kill, it holds, cannot arise without some trace of aversion in the mind at that moment, however good the further motive. On that view the person on the bridge who pushes is doing something unwholesome whatever follows from it.
佛陀是用行動者的「意圖」來界定行為的。他說：「我說思（cetanā，意圖）就是業」；起了意圖之後，人才以身、語、意去行動。這使佛教倫理比較靠近雙重效果原則，而不是靠近對結果的計算。一個殺生行為的輕重，取決於：是否有一個活的眾生、是否知道那是眾生、是否有殺意、是否付諸行動；一個並非出於本意而造成的死亡，並不違犯第一條戒。早期的傳統還多了一個西方的辯論所缺少的心理學主張。它認為：一個「要殺」的意圖生起的時候，心裡在那一刻不可能沒有一絲瞋，不管更遠的動機有多麼好。照這個看法，橋上那個動手推的人，不論後果如何，做的都是一件不善的事。
The Mahāyāna tells a story that looks like the opposite verdict. In a former life the Buddha was the captain of a ship carrying five hundred merchants, and he learned that one man aboard planned to murder them all. He killed the man. The telling is careful about the reasons. The captain acts to save the five hundred, and also to save the would-be murderer from the consequences of so great a crime, and he does it accepting that he himself may fall into hell for it. The story does not say that killing became good because the sum came out right. It says that a being of great compassion took a grave act and its cost upon himself. That is a third position, beside the utilitarian’s and the deontologist’s, and later teachers warned that it is no license for ordinary people, whose motives are seldom so clean (Dharma and the West, D17 and D18).
大乘講了一個看起來像是相反判決的故事。在過去的某一生裡，佛陀是一艘載著五百位商人的船的船長；他得知船上有一個人打算把他們全部殺掉。他殺了那個人。這個故事對理由說得很仔細。船長這樣做，是為了救那五百人，也是為了救那個準備殺人的人，使他免於這麼重大的罪業的果報；而且他是在「接受自己可能因此墮入地獄」的情況下做的。這個故事並沒有說：因為總帳算得過去，殺生就變成了好事。它說的是：一位具有大悲心的眾生，把一個重大的行為連同它的代價，一起承擔在自己身上。這是效益主義者與義務論者之外的第三種立場；而後來的祖師們告誡，這不是給一般人的許可，一般人的動機很少這麼乾淨（佛法與西方哲學 D17、D18）。
Go further · 延伸
People and reading 人物與延伸閱讀
- Philippa Foot, “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect” (1967)The original, fifteen pages. The tram appears halfway through. 原始出處，十五頁。電車在中途出現。
- Judith Jarvis Thomson, “The Trolley Problem,” Yale Law Journal 94 (1985); “Turning the Trolley” (2008)The footbridge, the loop, and, in the later paper, her change of mind. 天橋、環狀軌道；以及在後一篇論文裡，她的改變心意。
- John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1863), chapter 2 ↗
- Mencius 1A7 and 4A17 ↗The ox and the sheep; the drowning sister-in-law. 以羊易牛；嫂溺援之以手。
- The Moral Machine experiment (Awad et al., Nature, 2018) ↗The site still lets you judge the cases yourself. 這個網站仍然可以讓你自己判斷那些案例。
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Doctrine of Double Effect” ↗