Likewise, imagine a third scenario, where you are required to strangle or eviscerate a fat man to stop the trolley. More people would probably say this is wrong than simply pushing the fat man, but under the doctrine of double effect they should be the same. I agree with the explanation you originally proposed; it's about the aversion to direct killing.

Whether double-effect reasoning came about through evolution or not is entirely a different question from whether it's a good idea, and the answer you give to one of those questions has no necessary bearing on the answer of the other.

Correct, Ebon. Sloppy construction on my part there.

First off though, I don't believe the death of the individual could be called "unintended", since they are known about in each case. Unintended I would take to more apply to an increase risk of killing an innocent bystander or accidental death. The individual is clearly part of the moral question here, so if they are unintended in one case, they should be in both.

My thought would be (and this is heavily taking into account some of the comments above), that morally we accept the idea that sacrificing the individual is the more "right" course of action. However when required to take direct action against someone, some of our evolved morality kicks in, basically the "do unto others" that I am going to propose manifests itself as horror or shock at such a thought.

This would serve the same function as the double effect that Ebon proposes, in that it aims to prevent moral outcomes that inevitably produce more overall suffering (which it has in the past, but may not in the future). This is the same reaction that convinces us stealing/murder, etc is wrong at an intuitive level because the same could be done back to us.

The scenario where we throw a switch to condemn one person to death does not trigger this part of the brain since it doesn't recognise the concept of switches or interpret secondary effects of actions even if there is intent.

In regards to my second point, what if the train is coming towards your mother and by flipping the switch you would kill the other 5, rather then the other way around where not actting would save your mother's life.

What if 5 of your closest friends or family members were on that track, and the single person has the cure for AIDS.

What if pushing that stranger infront of the train could save 10 lives instead of 5, or 20 lives, or 100. At what point is it still wrong?

1) Most people would agree pushing the large man in front of the train is wrong. A possible explaination for this is that it involves placing someone in the situation who wasn't there to begin with. In the first case, by pulling the lever, someone who was already on the tracks dies; In the second case, you place someone in front of the tracks. This is one of the reasons for the emotional response.

2) Modify the question now, to get a different response: 5 strangers on one track and your mother on the other track. How many would now throw the switch and kill their mother in order to save 5 strangers (providing of course you like your mother. If not, replace her with someone you care for the most)?

3) On the second point, we can see how people's morals can be manipulated. In that case it was by personalizing the question, but really, what it comes down to is how the dilemma is worded. Studies tend to show people are more apt to take risks depending on the wording. Paraphrased roughly from the book "The Paradox of Choice", the study put people into two groups. In both scenerios, they are doctors in a village in which the people are dying, for the sake of argument, the population is 100. In one the problem roughly reads "if you do X, you will save 60 people, if you do Y you have a 33% chance to save everyone, and a 67% chance to save no one". In this situation, most people will pick the first choice. In the second case, the question reads "if you do X, 40 people will die. If you do Y you have a 33% no one will die, and 67% chance to not save anyone". In this case, most people now choose the second option. Again, same question, same results, but a change of wording will make people make a different choice. And this choice doesn't even involve dragging anyone else into the situation who wasn't already involved.

In short, by chancing the wording from "save" to "die", it will shift the line of thinking inbetween a gain and a loss.

The whole underlying point of universal utilitarianism is precisely that a given course of action (i.e., not killing someone as a means to an end), produces better results in the long run if it is consistently followed, even though we might think an immediate gain could be realized by breaking it on certain specific occasions.

Here is where we disagree. You're making an unwarranted jump from "This rule will work very well in most situations" to "We should always follow this rule." However, if the purpose of the rule is to arrange for the best consequences (most happiness/least suffering), then it makes perfect sense to abandon it when it doesn't live up to that purpose. In fact, the ultimate rule that we should consistently seek to follow--and the rule that should underlie all other rules--is to do that which will have the best consequences.

Now as I said, secondary rules are necessary, because without them moral reasoning would be very messy and inefficient. But this does not mean that we can't adjust the rules when specific situations warrant it. For instance, "Don't kill people as means to ends" is a good rule on the intuitive, everyday level of moral reasoning, but in the case of the trolley it leads inexorably to worse consequences. On a higher level, therefore, it is entirely possible to qualify the original rule, allowing for some exceptions. And the delineations can continue all the way up the ladder of moral specificity until we reach a moral code that allows for the best consequences in all circumstances.

Due to our limitations, we can't climb all the way up that ladder, but that's no reason to cling with all our might to the bottom rungs. When we find that a moral rule--even such an important one as "Don't kill"--will not lead to the best consequences in a given situation, we have all the warrant we need to say "That rule works most of the time, but not this time, and therefore we will allow a different rule for this set of circumstances." It's very much like how classical physics, which works so well in the macroscopic everyday world, becomes obsolete as we peer into the atomic and subatomic world. As physics requires new rules as we "zoom in," so does morality need more sophisticated precepts to fit circumstances that can and do differ.

It seems to me that when you think of moral actions in terms of "intent," you abandon consequentialism, and therefore utilitarianism.

Perhaps that's true of other forms of utilitarianism, but not of mine. Intent matters greatly because intent, in the long run, is what is ultimately responsible for almost all human happiness and suffering.

Hypothetical consequences carry no real moral weight, because they hurt no one...

That's incorrect, OhioAtheist, and that is precisely the point. Hypothetical consequences do carry moral weight, precisely because we have to consider the possibility that other people can and most likely will find themselves in similar situations in the future. The whole underlying point of universal utilitarianism is precisely that a given course of action (i.e., not killing someone as a means to an end), produces better results in the long run if it is consistently followed, even though we might think an immediate gain could be realized by breaking it on certain specific occasions.

What we're dealing with here is Prisoner's Dilemma logic. On any one occasion, I can realize an immediate gain by backstabbing my buddy; but in the long run, that strategy is a loser, because it'll end up in spirals of mutual defection and betrayal. To truly do well, I have to participate in a strategy of cooperation. If we value the overall result and not just temporary short-term gain (as any rational person would), then we have to learn to cooperate and ignore the temptation of selfishness.

Also, for Siamang:

If it were something we reasoned through, we SHOULD see vastly differing results from culture to culture, shouldn't we?

No - because reason is universal. If a course of action is the rational one, then we would expect all rational people to hit on it and be able to justify it. Whether double-effect reasoning came about through evolution or not is entirely a different question from whether it's a good idea, and the answer you give to one of those questions has no necessary bearing on the answer of the other.