The lecture begins like a harmless class discussion—until the professor drops a scenario that sounds like pure arithmetic.
A trolley is speeding toward five workers. You can pull a lever and divert it onto another track where one worker will die instead.
Most students answer fast: pull the lever.
It feels like the moral version of common sense. Five lives saved. One life lost. Terrible, but “better.”
This is where the lecture quietly introduces the first moral engine: consequentialist thinking—judging right and wrong by outcomes.
Then the professor changes one detail.
Now you’re not the driver. You’re standing on a bridge. The trolley is still heading for five. Next to you stands a very large man. If you push him off the bridge, his body will stop the trolley. Five live, he dies.
Same math. Same number of deaths. Same number of lives saved.
But the room changes instantly.
People hesitate. Some shake their heads. Some whisper, “That’s different.”
And the professor asks the question that exposes the contradiction:
“If you were willing to sacrifice one to save five a minute ago… why won’t you do it now?”
Because pulling a lever feels like redirecting danger from a distance.
Pushing a person feels like using a human being as a tool—turning your hands into the weapon.
This is the lecture’s first punch:
Our moral instincts react not only to outcomes, but to the nature of the act—intent, directness, and whether someone is being treated as a mere means.
PART 2
Next, the professor moves the dilemma into medicine, where it starts feeling less like philosophy and more like life-or-death responsibility.
First, an ER triage case:
You can save either one severely injured patient or five moderately injured patients.
Many students still choose: save five.
The consequence-based logic holds.
Then comes the transplant scenario—the one that almost always detonates the room:
Five patients need organs or they die. A healthy patient comes in for a routine checkup. If you kill him and harvest his organs, the five live.
Almost everyone says no immediately.
Not “maybe.” Not “it depends.” Just no.
The class suddenly understands that they weren’t just “saving five” in the earlier cases—they were tolerating a death as a side effect.
Here, the death is the method.
And that triggers the second moral engine: categorical moral reasoning—the belief that some actions (like murdering an innocent) are inherently wrong, even if they produce a better outcome.
The professor lets the tension settle:
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If morality is just maximizing good results, the transplant killing should be allowed.
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If people have inviolable rights, it can’t be allowed—no matter how many you save.
This is why the course matters: it shows how a society can argue endlessly about justice because people are often running different moral software without realizing it.
PART 3
Then the professor stops using hypotheticals.
He tells a true story: Queen v. Dudley and Stephens.
After a shipwreck, four sailors drift for days with no food or water. They believe death is near. Two of them kill the cabin boy, Richard Parker, and eat him to survive.
Now the trolley problem isn’t a thought experiment.
It’s a corpse.
It’s desperation.
It’s law.
They claim necessity: “We had to, or we would all die.”
And the debate becomes brutal:
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Consequence-based defenders say: “One died so others could live.”
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Duty/rights defenders say: “Murder is murder. Desperation doesn’t erase moral boundaries.”
Then the class reaches for what humans always reach for when morality gets ugly: procedural fairness and consent.
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“What if they had drawn lots?”
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“What if the boy consented?”
But even these “solutions” feel contaminated, because starvation can make consent coercive and lotteries feel like paperwork over violence.
That’s the course’s real opening move:
It forces you to face the fact that justice is not simply about outcomes or rules—
it’s about how we weigh human life, dignity, and responsibility when every option is terrible.
And the lecture ends with a warning that stings:
You can’t hide behind “skepticism” forever. You’ll still make moral choices in real life—about law, healthcare, punishment, war, equality—whether you want to or not.
So the intro lecture doesn’t give a clean answer.
It gives a mirror.
Most people will pull the lever to save five.
Most people won’t push the man.
And that gap—between outcomes and moral limits—is exactly where the course on justice begins.
