Finger gryphon@world.std.com.  Among (a great many) other things,
there's this gem.  I can't speak for its origins.


               STS 110 Ethics and Public Policy Exam II
                          March 16, 1993-94
                           Prof. R. McGinn

                      ESSAY QUESTION (30 points)
	
 INSTRUCTIONS: making abundant use of course materials, compose a
closely reasoned essay answering the following question bearing on one
of the course's central themes (ethics and technology).  Limit: 6 Blue
Book sides.

 Consider the following case:

On Twin Earth, a brain in a vat is at the wheel of a runaway trolley.
There are only two options that the brain can take: the right side of
the fork in the track or the left side of the fork.  There is no way
in sight of derailing or stopping the trolley and the brain is aware
of this, for the brain -- unlike Bo -- knows trolleys.  The brain is
causally hooked up to the trolley such that the brain can determine
the course which the trolley will take. On the right side of the track
there is a single railroad worker, Jones, who will definitely be
killed if the brain steers the trolley to the right.  If the railman
on the right lives, he will go on to kill five men for the sake of
killing them, but in doing so will inadvertently save the lives of
thirty orphans (one of the five men he will kill is planning to
destroy a bridge that the orphan's bus will be crossing later that
night).  One of the orphans that will be killed would grow up to
become a tyrant who would make good, utilitarian men do bad things,
another would grow up to become John Sununu, while a third would
invent the pop-top can.  If the brain in the vat chooses the left side
of the track, the trolley will definitely hit and kill a railman on
the left side of the track, "Leftie," and will hit and destroy ten
beating hearts on the track that could (and would) have been
transplanted into ten patients in the local hospital that will die
without donor hearts.  These are the only hearts available, and the
brain is aware of this, for the brain knows hearts.  If the railman on
the left side of the track lives, he too will kill five men, in fact
the same five that the railman on the right would kill.
 However, "Leftie" will kill the five as an unintended consequence of
saving ten men: he will inadvertently kill the five men rushing the
ten hearts to the local hospital for transplantation.  A further
result of "Leftie's" act would be that the busload of orphans will be
spared.  Among the five men killed by "Leftie" are both the man
responsible for putting the brain at the controls of the trolley, and
the author of this example.  If the ten hearts and "Leftie" are killed
by the trolley, the ten prospective heart-transplant patients will die
and their kidneys will be used to save the lives of twenty
kidney-transplant patients, one of whom will grow up to cure cancer
and one of whom will grow up to be Hitler.  There are other kidneys
and dialysis machines available, however the brain does not know
kidneys, and this is not a factor.
   Assume that the brain's choice, whatever it turns out to be, will
serve as an example to other brains-in-vats and so the effects of its
decision will be amplified.  Also assume that if the brain chooses the
right side of the fork, an unjust war free of war crimes will ensue,
while if the brain chooses the left fork, a just war fraught with war
crimes will result.  Furthermore, there is an intermittently active
Cartesian demon deceiving the brain such that the brain is never sure
if it is being deceived

 QUESTION: Ethically speaking, what should the brain do?  Justify your
answer.