I believe that this is where many deontologists would label you a consequentialist.
With all due respect to all parties involved, if that’s how it works I would label the respective hypothetical individuals who would label me that “a bunch of hypocrites”. They’re no less consequentialist, in my view, since they hide behind words the fact that they have to make the assumption that pulling a trigger will lead to the consequence of a bullet coming out of it which will lead to the complex consequence of someone’s life ending.
I wish I could be more clear and specific, but it is difficult to discuss and argue all the concepts I have in mind as they are not all completely clear to me, and the level of emotional involvement I have in the whole topic of morality (as, I expect, do most people) along with the sheer amount of fun I’m having in here are certainly not helping mental clarity and debiasing. (yes, I find discussions, arguments, debates etc. of this type quite fun, most of the time)
In fact, even if I believe that in your example pushing the fat man would be the “right thing to do”, I do not alieve it (i.e. I would probably not do it if push came to shove, so to speak).
I’m not sure it’s just a question of not alieving it. There are many good reasons not to believe evidence that this will work, and even more good reasons to believe there is probably a better option, and many reasons why it could be extremely detrimental to you in the long term to push down a fat man onto train tracks, and if push come to shove it might end up being the more rational action in a real-life situation similar to the thought experiment.
With all due respect to all parties involved, if that’s how it works I would label the respective hypothetical individuals who would label me that “a bunch of hypocrites”. They’re no less consequentialist, in my view, since they hide behind words the fact that they have to make the assumption that pulling a trigger will lead to the consequence of a bullet coming out of it which will lead to the complex consequence of someone’s life ending.
I wish I could be more clear and specific, but it is difficult to discuss and argue all the concepts I have in mind as they are not all completely clear to me, and the level of emotional involvement I have in the whole topic of morality (as, I expect, do most people) along with the sheer amount of fun I’m having in here are certainly not helping mental clarity and debiasing. (yes, I find discussions, arguments, debates etc. of this type quite fun, most of the time)
I’m not sure it’s just a question of not alieving it. There are many good reasons not to believe evidence that this will work, and even more good reasons to believe there is probably a better option, and many reasons why it could be extremely detrimental to you in the long term to push down a fat man onto train tracks, and if push come to shove it might end up being the more rational action in a real-life situation similar to the thought experiment.