Podcast: What Can Moral Dilemmas Tell Us About Ourselves?
You are driving a car. The brakes stop working. To your horror, you are approaching a busy street market. Many people might be killed if you run into them. The only way to prevent a catastrophe is by turning fast to the right. Unfortunately, a lonely pedestrian might be killed if you do so.
Should you turn? Many people say you should. After all, killing one is better than killing many. But following the same logic, would you kill an individual to collect their organs for people in dire need of one? In this case, too, you would kill one to save many. Yet very few are willing to do so.
Why?
These are variations of the infamous “trolley problems”. Originally formulated half a century ago, these trolley problems continue to elicit heated conversations. They have a whole meme culture built around them. Yet for years, I was not convinced of their value. They seemed to squeeze ethics into narrow funnels of “yeses" and "noes", neglecting much of real life's texture.
I have changed my mind. And I’ve done so largely thanks to Peter Railton.
A professor of philosophy at UC Michigan, Railton used to share my scepticism about the trolley problems. But he, too, changed his mind. Having in-depth conversations about them with his students, Railton came to see these problems as revealing some important about morality. Combined with recent evidence from psychology and neuroscience, Railton believes that these insights can reveal a lot about the human mind more generally.
I will let him tell you why.
You can listen to this episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your shows. Just search for On Humans and episode 41. Below are some useful links and other details.
Interested in more episodes like this? Subscribe to On Humans newsletter. It is free. And I don’t spam.
Links
Academic papers
A lot of this conversation is referencing material in Railton’s paper “Moral learning: conceptual foundations and normative relevance“ (open access)
The early neuroscience evidence and its interpretations, by Joshua Greene and colleagues (PDF)
Emotions and decision-making in statistical gambling tasks were conducted by Antonio Damasio and colleagues
Infant sharing contrasted to chimpanzees, by Michael Tomasello and colleagues (open access)
Ultimatum game across cultures: one classic study by Robert Heinrich and colleagues (open access)
Books
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-prize winner
Episodes
#2 Philip Kitcher: Humanistic Ethics in a Darwinian World
Mentions
Names mentioned: Philippa Foot; Judith Tarvis Johnson; Joshua Greene; Daniel Kahnemann; Amos Trevsky; Antonio Damasio; John Stuart Mill; Michael Tomasello; Philip Kitcher (see episode 2); Oliver Scott Curry; David Hume
Dilemmas & games: Trolley problems (Switch, Footbridge, Loop, Beckon, Wave), Gummy Bear task (from Tomasello et al.); Gambling Tasks (from Damasio et al.); Ultimatum Game
Terms: Utilitarianism; consequentialism; deontology; rule utilitarianism; trait utilitarianism; virtue & character ethics
Keywords: ethics, moral philosophy, morality, moral progress, trolley problem, morality, moral psychology, fMRI, neuroscience, cross-cultural psychology, behavioural economics, comparative psychology, gay rights, moral anthropology, cultural anthropology, philosophical anthropology, sharing, sociality, cooperation, altruism, prosociality, utilitarianism, deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, Chinese philosophy, Daoism, Taoism, Confucianism