A runaway trolley will kill five people unless diverted onto a side track where it will kill one person. According to a strict consequentialist promotion framework, what should a bystander with access to the lever do?
ANot pull the lever — using a person as a means to save others is prohibited regardless of the numbers
BPull the lever — the outcome (one death instead of five) is better, and promotion requires bringing about the best available outcome
CNot pull the lever — actively causing harm is always worse than allowing it to happen
DPull the lever only if the person on the side track would consent to being sacrificed
Pure consequentialist promotion views require the action that produces the best outcome. Five deaths are worse than one death, so pulling the lever produces the better outcome and is therefore not just permitted but obligatory. There are no absolute prohibitions on a strict promotion view — only better and worse outcomes. Option A reflects a constraint view, not a promotion view. Option C also reflects a constraint or agent-causation view. The trolley problem was designed to isolate exactly this structural difference.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
According to a strict constraint-based framework, why might it be impermissible to torture one innocent person to prevent the torture of ten others?
ABecause the suffering of ten people is actually less severe in aggregate than one intense case of torture
BBecause the constraint against torturing an innocent person is agent-relative — it prohibits you from committing that act regardless of what others will do or what the net outcome is
CBecause consequentialist arithmetic is too unreliable to justify rights violations
DBecause you cannot know with sufficient certainty that torturing one will prevent the torture of ten
Agent-relative constraints focus on what *you* do, not on aggregate outcomes. The prohibition is against *you* being the agent of torture — it does not depend on what others might do or on the net number of tortures in the world. This is Nozick's 'side constraint' concept: the moral barrier is not a factor in a calculation but a limit on what kinds of actions you may take. A pure promoter would run the numbers and act; a constraint theorist says 'there are things I may not do, regardless of what good it would produce.'
Question 3 True / False
A promotion-based ethical framework permits some actions that a constraint-based framework prohibits, but seldom requires them — those actions remain merely optional on a promotion view.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
Pure promotion frameworks not only permit harm-causing actions when they maximize good outcomes — they *require* them. If redirecting the trolley produces the best outcome, a strict consequentialist is obligated to do it, not merely permitted to. On a pure promotion view, there are no supererogatory acts (doing more than morality demands) — only optimal actions and suboptimal ones. This is one of the most challenging features of strict consequentialism: it eliminates the category of 'going beyond what duty requires.'
Question 4 True / False
Moral constraints are agent-relative: the prohibition is against you taking a certain action, not simply against that action happening in the world.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
This is the defining structural feature of agent-relative constraints. It is prohibited for *me* to push the trolley victim, even if my doing so would prevent five identical pushings by others. The prohibition attaches to my agency, not to the outcome-state. This is why constraint views resist the 'numbers game': five unjust killings are worse than one in aggregate, but the constraint against me committing the one still holds. Promotion views, by contrast, care about outcomes in the world regardless of who causes them.
Question 5 Short Answer
Explain the difference between a moral constraint and a moral consideration that can be outweighed by consequences. Why does this distinction matter for cases like trolley problems?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: A moral consideration that can be outweighed by consequences is just a factor in the overall calculation — it counts against an action but can be overridden when consequences are good enough. A moral constraint, by contrast, is a side constraint that limits which actions are available regardless of consequences. The constraint doesn't figure in the calculation at all; it removes certain actions from the menu. This distinction matters for trolley problems because promotion views treat 'killing one' as a serious consideration that five deaths can outweigh, while constraint views treat 'killing one' as prohibited regardless of the count — making the two views reach opposite verdicts using the same factual description.
The practical difference: if killing one person to save five is just a very weighty consideration, then there will always be some number of people saved that makes it permissible. If it is a true constraint, no number of lives saved can make it permissible (or only a catastrophic threshold can override it, and only as a tragic exception). Trolley problems are useful precisely because they strip away uncertainty and enforce a clean choice, isolating whether the ethical structure is calculative (promotion) or limiting (constraint).