I would regard flipping the switch as murder. The scenario would be more instructive to imagine the people tied to the tracks against their will. In the situation that Jane discovers, five people are in mortal peril and one person is in complete safety. I don’t know about your conscience, but mine tells me not to kill. Since it wasn’t programmed by Jeremy Bentham, it doesn’t tell me the “greatest good for the greatest number”
Imagine there is a sniper on the roof of small apartment building shooting at a crowd. There are more people in the crowd than in the building. You have access to a wrecking ball. Would you really feel justified in bringing down the building, killing all inside, in order to save the greater number? Also, if I were a parent of a victim on the ground who died because of your inaction, although I might vent my grief, in my heart of hearts, I wouldn’t really blame you for not killing others in order to save my child. I wouldn’t be honestly outraged that you didn’t abide by the “greatest good for the greatest number” dictum. But, if my child was in the building in complete safety, and you deliberately crushed her for whatever reason, I would definitely loathe you as a murderer.
Let’s say there is a group of 5 hostages in a far-off country who will be killed unless a ransom of $1 million is paid. Jane doesn’t have that kind of money, but she sees an innocent man who she knows has $1 million cash in his briefcase. He’s armed, so the only way of getting the money is to kill him. Does your conscience really tell you it would be right for Jane to kill that man in order to save the hostages? I highly doubt it!
Derive ought from ought: if Jane ought not to kill the millionaire, then she ought not to throw the railway switch.
I agree with you in the case where the people are on the tracks by accident, but to suppose that they were tied there by another agent changes the matter entirely. Now, it is more akin to a situation where someone points a gun at you and orders you to commit crimes. To the extent that your life is being threatened, you are acting under coercion and so it is the gun-pointer who is ultimately responsible for what they force you (and by extension, your agents) to do.
These situations are a lot less specific than the train example, so it’s harder to answer definitively. It seems here that the response to the threat went out of its way to cause as much destruction as possible, even when it would have been possible to resolve the threat with fewer casualties (e.g., sniping the sniper, or finding an unarmed millionaire). This would be like if you were ordered at gunpoint to demolish a building, and you chose one with people in it rather than an empty one - you would still be liable for the deaths despite the duress.
The whole discussion seems to miss the basic point I think. the question basically was is not acting to try to safe someones life a crime. From a libertarian standpoint it is clearly not. Not acting can never be aggression, though it might be imoral or unethical. Initiating an aggression is the watershed between acceptable behaviour and non acceptable behaviour. To initiate something I need to act. It is impossible to initiate an action without acting,no?
Hence, not acting is never a crime. So the whole thing arguing about circumstances is useless to prove the libertarian point of view. If not acting was a crime, than of course we should all be killed as murderers because we let it happen that every day people die of starvation, get killed in car accidents (if you did not build a car, noone ever would die in a car accident).
The question is not is it a good thing not to act, that is a an ethical question, the question is, is it a crime to not act. The libertarian answer is no.
Jane can do as she pleases given the choices. She has not committed a crime either way. The question is ethical not political.
This question sounds like something out of Germanic Law. If the answers to three specific questions are yes, then a crime has been committed so long as a law is written by the legislative body retaining jurisdiction. If the answer to one of these questions is no, then an indictment cannot be issued. The questions and answers are as follows.
Is the law broken? (in this case yes, if she flips the switch either way, or does nothing, she has caused the death of someone.)
Is the action of breaking the law intentional? (Also yes, if she flips the switch, or does nothing)
Is another choice available that would not violate the law? (No, all actions including doing nothing result in the death of someone.)
We will apply these questions assuming a law is written that people are not allowed to deliberately take an action which kills another human being. (This appears to be the assumption of the OP.) According to the answers provided above, Jane cannot be indicted.
The same method applies to the life boat problem. (if you are magistrate in Deutschland)
I suspect in most circumstances any of the three choices that are available to Jane would not result in an indictment being issued. (Under German Law). Rather, the executive branch of the government would be looking for the reason why these people were in this situation in the first place. The executive branch would look for the cause of the initially observed event.
That being said I stand as an Anarchist. Not the kind that run wild in the fields. I am attempting to answer the question within the framework of an existing system of law. I don’t advocate the German System, but this part of it does provide an answer consistent with Liberty.
The short answer to your question is this.
It is impossible for Jane to have committed a crime in the given situation.
Depending on the distance from the switch of the victims, flipping it could be a good-faith effort on Jane’s part to alert the engineer to something amiss(logically, an engineer would stop and back up the train if the two rails went to different places, potentially saving all six lives).
A hypothetical doesn’t have unmentioned variables. That is why it is proposed within a confined context. i.e. flip the switch left, right, or not at all. If a variable is unmentioned it is not a hypothetical. Take the lifeboat problem for example. Why didn’t the two individuals just wait for the rescue chopper that was only five minutes away.