Until the President is at risk, though, can we truly call this a “moral” dilemma? If the President isn’t at risk, the actor (the person, in this case, who chooses to actively direct the trolly), should he or she fully grasp the situation, reveals him- or herself to be profoundly psychotic or in possession of a valid decision-making process so radically different that we don’t understand it and probably can’t accept it.

Switching the trolly from the five to the one, on the other hand, is not necessarily considered “moral”. To actively participate in any death (especially the death of someone recognizably a member of some group with which the actor identifies) is so deeply forbidden that no socialized person can be blamed for forgoing it even at the cost of passively participating in the death of five members of the same group.

This works wonderfully well. Why? Because one often finds oneself in a position to kill a fellow group member and but trolly dilemmas virtually never present themselves in real life. If trolly dilemmas were common, empathy would be trained, during the maturation process, to generalize the situation and to respond in the fashion that the society deemed most constructive — even if it was to switch the trolly toward the five.

If empathy enters into the decision, does it establish a “moral” basis. While moral constructs may begin with empathy, don’t they have to go well beyond empathy — well beyond a single basic constituent — before they are properly called “moral”? A moral position might be: “Do not take an active part in such situations because each agent — God/nature, man, man’s constructs — has, or is the result of, a free will and must be allowed to suffer the consequences as well as reap the benefits of their actions.”

There have been quite a number of popular articles virtually identical to this over the past several decades (perhaps longer). But do they really ponder “morality”. Doesn’t morality come into the picture — isn’t it so difficult and frustrating — because it is precisely about going beyond empathy, consciously over-riding empathy because empathy uncorrected by morality is too often destructive? Consciously over-riding the deepest social bonds of groups because they are so too often destructive to the most recent version of an advanced society that corresponds historically to the given morality?