RE: What would you do? Moral choice question.
I have my own position on this that I haven't seen elaborated elsewhere. I think that you are not morally required to pull the lever, but you are also not morally required not to pull the lever. So, there is no further answer to the question "What is the most moral/ethical decision here?" other than that neither choice is morally obligatory, both options are fine.
"Would it matter who the people on the tracks were?"
Yes. My explanation is in terms of self-defence and assisted self-defence. If the five people on track one included my personal loved ones, I would definitely divert the train. And I think that by doing so I would be assisting my loved ones' self-defence, something I believe that I am surely permitted to do.
I believe that just like morality can never demand of a person that he or she abstain from saving her own life, even when as an unfortunate consequence of this an innocent person gets harmed or killed, so morality cannot require that the we abstain from assisting others in saving their lives.
Thought provoking points!
Moral requirements, I feel, change from culture to culture. Although I believe that there is a universal moral law, I don't believe that we've been able to agree on it yet (and I don't know what it is myself). I think the only way we can find it is through continual discussion and reflection like this.
I haven't thought of it in this light before. Although I feel like there are situation that would require one "demand" that someone else self-sacrifice, I would also agree that self-sacrifice is a decision that you can't make for another person (you can sacrifice them, but self-sacrifice is ultimately their decision).
I would be interested to see how a judge would preside over a case with a similar situation. Good thoughts!
I will write a post someday about moral requirement.