A train on a track is going to hit and kill five innocent people.
You can stop the train by pushing a person onto the track.
If you do nothing, five people will die.
If you act you are choosing for one to die instead of five.
Absolute morality says you must not weigh life - one life matters as much as millions.
Consequentialist morality says save the five.
Nobody can prove which is right.
Also, it is easy to be driven by fear of one to go for the other. The issue is that we should spontaneously and without pressure accept one and we cannot. True goodness should arise from the heart. You are good but not good enough.
Some think the train shows that whatever you intend to do, it is morally neutral or outside morality. Neutrality means your intention does not aim at good or bad outcomes. The answer is that it does - you are trying to do the right thing under the circumstances.
You can intend, "This is not about anything like that. I will just do something - even standing by is doing something." The intention then would be neutral but then the action might still be moral or immoral.
BUT WHAT IF MORALITY IS OBJECTIVE AND BINARY?
Binary objective morality would give you a bare yes or no when it comes to actions. Nothing else. It eliminates gradations like “less wrong,” “more justified,” etc. It is psychology, not evidence and not reason, that leads to thoughts such as one murder being worse than another.
Objective morality would mean that one never goes further than the minimum anyway. All believers in objective morality agree that that is objectively immoral to condemn someone or someone more than necessary.
How does binary objective morality affect the train problem? The following applies with versions where a lever diverts and one person is on the track or if that person is pushed to stop the train - to save five lives.
The train problem gives you two main actions:
One is sacrificed for five.
One is not sacrificed for five and the five die.
1. It collapses all moral reasoning to asking which of the two is objectively permitted.
2. It creates four logical outcomes. Those are:
First - both permitted
Second - both impermissible
Third - one permitted and the other not
Fourth - the other alone permitted
3. It makes “moral neutrality” possible only if both are permitted. That implies moral rules so weak that they don’t apply.
Notice too that the First and either the Third or the Fourth potentially let you push. No difference is made between pushing or pulling the lever. The morality is very simplified so the two are treated the same.
The reality is that if pushing one is wrong or if letting five die is what is wrong - nobody can prove which one, if any, is right anyway. So it is unwise to worry to much about the lack of difference.
Under binary objective morality, the train problem can be morally neutral. But only if the moral system places no objective constraints on either action. Otherwise, one action is objectively forbidden, or both are. Neutrality is possible — but only with a very minimalistic moral law.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
Now we are talking only about the lever angle.
Moralists say, "When you divert the train, you do not intend the one person’s death. You intend to save five people. The death of the one person is foreseen but not chosen as an end or as a means. That is morally significant."
In a simple binary moral system—where every action is either right or wrong—the train problem gets flattened. If the rule is “an action is wrong only when you intend to harm someone,” then pulling the lever is judged right because you intend to save five people, not to kill the one. But doing nothing is also judged right, because you still don’t intend to harm anyone.
Binary morality has no way to show the difference between an action that is just allowed and an action that is the better thing to do. It can only say “right” or “wrong,” nothing in between. So both choices—pulling the lever and doing nothing—end up with the same label, even though most people feel that saving the five is morally better. This shows that we find binary morality too simple. We want express the real moral difference between these options. But if it cannot be done, it cannot be done. And it cannot.
Pulling the lever = right (because you don’t intend harm)
Doing nothing = also right (because you also don’t intend harm)
Since both actions are labeled “right,” and the system cannot say one is “better,” “obligatory,” or “more responsible,” it treats them both as equally acceptable. That means neither choice carries moral praise or moral blame. Either action is fine. This is moral neutrality.
MULTIVERSE
Some physicists and mystics say each person in this world is a tip of an countless great iceberg of personal existence. There are layers and dimensions - each person has different selves - these are not detected for they are in some kind of mysterious subconscious - beyond the subconscious we have. They are in alternative realities.
Nobody suggests that this this means person x has the same number of other selves as person y. If so, objective morality could mean that sacrificing one is worse than sacrificing five. The one could be present in other dimensions more than the others all put together. It could mean objectively speaking it does not matter who is spared.
APPENDIX:
If the train problem, no matter what you do, were making you intend both good and bad equally, a God who would put you in that situation is making you half good and half evil. He can't be much better himself.