Only the person pulling the lever is responsible for his/her action though. There is a difference between passively passing on and actively murder someone
If I hand a machete to Jason Voorhees I think I’m at least partly responsible for the people he hits with it. I know what he’s going to do with that thing.
Except you’re not passing a machete to Jason Voorhees. That would be “double it and pass it to the next person who you know is going to pull the lever.”
You’re passing a machete to the next person in line. You don’t know who that is. They may or may not pass the machete down the line. Considering I would not expect a person chosen at random to kill someone when handed a machete, it seems unethical for me to kill someone with a machete just to prevent handing it to someone else.
Only the person pulling the lever is responsible for his/her action though. There is a difference between passively passing on and actively murder someone
Dentological ethics: you have a duty to not murder people, so you don’t pull the lever
Utilitarian ethics: pulling the lever will kill less people
If I hand a machete to Jason Voorhees I think I’m at least partly responsible for the people he hits with it. I know what he’s going to do with that thing.
Except you’re not passing a machete to Jason Voorhees. That would be “double it and pass it to the next person who you know is going to pull the lever.”
You’re passing a machete to the next person in line. You don’t know who that is. They may or may not pass the machete down the line. Considering I would not expect a person chosen at random to kill someone when handed a machete, it seems unethical for me to kill someone with a machete just to prevent handing it to someone else.
I know Jason is somewhere down that line I’m handing the machete off to. And the farther down the line he is the more people he’s going to kill.