Fewer deaths is better, and the numbers are the morally relevant fact

The argument

Proponents of this answer hold that the dilemma, stripped of its drama, asks a simple question: with two outcomes available and nothing else to distinguish them, should more people die or fewer? Each person on the track has the same claim to life as the single person on the other. Those claims do not cancel out; they add up. Weighed against one life of equal value, the lives of the larger group are more to lose, and the choice that loses less is the better choice. Proponents argue that the alternative cannot justify itself to those it sacrifices. Asked why they were left to die, the only available answer is that the bystander preferred not to be implicated — a consideration about the bystander's own standing rather than about anyone's welfare. On this view the refusal to act purchases moral cleanliness for the agent with other people's lives, which inverts the point of morality. If one has to look at the outcome that remains, several deaths that could have been prevented is the worse state of the world by the only measure that affects anybody. Proponents also press the symmetry of responsibility. The bystander has their hand on a lever and a choice of where the trolley goes; whichever way it goes, that choice determined it. Declining to touch the lever is not a withdrawal from the situation but a decision to let it run, and it is answerable in the same way as any other decision. Because the outcomes differ only in how many equally valuable lives are lost, and inaction is itself a choice with the worse outcome attached, this argument concludes, one should divert the trolley and save the larger group.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who would spare the single man reply that the two outcomes differ in more than numbers: one involves killing an uninvolved person and routing lethal force through his body as the means of saving others, the other involves failing to prevent deaths. They argue that a prohibition on killing which lapses whenever the totals favour it would equally licence taking an unwilling patient's organs to save several others, a conclusion almost everyone rejects, which shows the count is not what settles the matter.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] This is the point in dispute, entered as a premise. The opposing case holds that the options differ in a further morally relevant respect: in one the agent kills a person who was not at risk, and in the other he fails to save people who were. [Rejecting P3] That inaction is answerable does not make it answerable in the same way. Granting that the bystander must answer for not pulling the lever is consistent with holding that what he answers for is the lesser charge. [Rejecting C] The conclusion rests on aggregating claims to life, which the premises assert rather than defend. Applied consistently it also licenses taking one uninvolved person's life to save several in other settings, a result most moral judgement treats as a reason to doubt the principle.