You are faced with allowing 5 people to be run over by a train. You can save these 5 people if you pull a lever and redirect the train, however in pulling the lever the train will kill one person standing on the new track.
Most people, according to the RadioLabs sources, say they would pull the lever.
However, if you modify this thought experiment to say that instead of pulling the lever to save 5 people your only option to save these five people would be to push one person in front of the train. When faced with this option, very few people would push the one person.
We are generally okay with pulling a lever and killing one person in order to save five people, but we are generally not okay with pushing a person and killing a person in order to save five people.
Why is this? It is still murder of one person just the means are slightly different. What is going on?
The suggestion that was put forward was that our brains, through evolution, have come to have different voices vying for our attention and action. So part of our brain wins and part of our brain looses each choice we make. So the deep parts of the brain win out over the more advanced logical parts of the brain when we choose to not push the one to save the five. This deep part of our brain, this emotional and raw part of our brain, is sometimes dubbed the lizard or reptilian or the monkey brain. What if, however, this part of our brain is the collective wisdom of the past. This part of our brain is the collective wisdom of the people who have come before us and with each choice. You have the part of your brain that is informed by the past and does not understand the current society very well, but it has a deep wisdom that we ought to heed. At the same time we have other parts of our brain that are "newer" and do not have the wisdom of the past but can rapidly understand the present culture.
If we dispose of the idea that one part of the brain is "higher order" than others, then we have this idea that our brain may be the house for which the communion of saints (the past humans) dwell. We have a part of the brain that is connected, through the process of evolution, to the past. We have a way to access the deep and rich history of the ages if we only were willing to listen to it more often.
4 comments:
Jason,
The issue with pushing one person v. pulling a level in which one would die to save the five is a bit of a red herring to me. How could pushing one person save five? It makes rational sense that a train diverted to a different track would change the trajectory of the train, and the scenario seems plausible. The reason why I can't push one person to save 5 is because I just can't understand, rationally, how that would save 5 people. Perhaps that is part of the issue?
Ryan,
Thank you for your comment. This is a rather well know thought experiment and like all thought experiments there are some things that do not seem to make sense in "real life". For instance the thought experiment of Schroders Cat does not make sense in "real life" in many ways.
So for this bit, we can imagine that when you push the one person off the ledge you push them on to a lever that diverts the train, or perhaps it would be that the train hits the one person and slams on the brakes long so that it would stop in time to not hit the other 5.
The point is not so much the rationality of the thought experiment, but the moral situation it points toward.
Here is another example, you might have seen it on M.A.S.H. in which the village was surrounded by the enemy. If the enemy heard them they all would be killed so everyone is very quite. The only issue is there is one baby who is sick and could cry or cough at any moment and expose the entire group. Would you kill the one to save the many? In M.A.S.H (spoiler alert!!!) the mom kills her infant to save the group.
The act/omission distinction is a problematic, divisive component of modern philosophy. Where you choose sides on that issue ultimately affects whether you side with deontology or consequentialism as your philosophical camp. Brain science might have something to say about this, but usually risks the naturalistic fallacy (what is is also what ought be). If you are looking for more on this, Judith Butler has written extensively on it.
Paul, thank you for your comment that just elevated the reading level of this post up to master's level. This is why you are paid the big bucks!
I think I understand what you are saying, albeit I had to look up a couple of words, but the act/omit situation is not really main thrust of the original post. I was hopeful to raise up that religion can introduce language into the realm of science conversations that can help us discuss the "more" that is in the world, and not just that which is seen and tested.
So neuroscience points out that our brain is informed by the collective wisdom of the past through evolution that is well and good. Christianity calls that collective wisdom of the past the communion of saints. To the religious people of the Church, sometimes the communion of saints is "somewhere else", but what if (as the title suggests) the brain is the home of the communion of saints and it resides within and outside the individual human being.
This becomes a cross point in which religion and science inform and reinforce each other.
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