Moral dilemmas
People are presented with two moral problems and their different answers indicate something about how
the mind works.
A trolley train comes hurtling down the line, out of control. It is heading toward five people who are stuck
on the track. If you do nothing, they face certain death. But you have a choice: with the flick of a switch,
you can divert the trolley down another line—a line on which only one person is stuck. Most people will
pull the switch.
The second problem is altered so that you are standing on a footbridge overlooking the track. The
trolley is coming, the five people are stuck, but there is no switch. All you have is a hefty guy standing in
front of you. If you push him onto the line, his bulk will be enough to stop the runaway trolley. You could
sacrifice his life to save the others—one for five, the same as before. Most people now wont push the
hapless person onto his death.
The contemplation of physically pushing another human being may well trigger an evolved Minsky ‘critic’
which tells us “don’t do it.” But moving a switch may not trigger the same evolved critic simply because
we didn’t evolve at a time when mechanism and remote switching would have been incorporated into our
evolved automatic moral circle of ‘critics’. This pressing of switches needs to call on a general purpose
critic which is slower to respond and uses conscious decision and reasoning processes. When the
rational general purpose critic is used, the one person is sacrificed to save the five. When the
automatic evolved critic is used, the decision is quick, emotional, subconscious and favors not acting to
harm the single individual.
Index
Next
Marc Hauser, Moral Minds
People are presented with two moral problems and their different answers indicate something about how
the mind works.
A trolley train comes hurtling down the line, out of control. It is heading toward five people who are stuck
on the track. If you do nothing, they face certain death. But you have a choice: with the flick of a switch,
you can divert the trolley down another line—a line on which only one person is stuck. Most people will
pull the switch.
The second problem is altered so that you are standing on a footbridge overlooking the track. The
trolley is coming, the five people are stuck, but there is no switch. All you have is a hefty guy standing in
front of you. If you push him onto the line, his bulk will be enough to stop the runaway trolley. You could
sacrifice his life to save the others—one for five, the same as before. Most people now wont push the
hapless person onto his death.
The contemplation of physically pushing another human being may well trigger an evolved Minsky ‘critic’
which tells us “don’t do it.” But moving a switch may not trigger the same evolved critic simply because
we didn’t evolve at a time when mechanism and remote switching would have been incorporated into our
evolved automatic moral circle of ‘critics’. This pressing of switches needs to call on a general purpose
critic which is slower to respond and uses conscious decision and reasoning processes. When the
rational general purpose critic is used, the one person is sacrificed to save the five. When the
automatic evolved critic is used, the decision is quick, emotional, subconscious and favors not acting to
harm the single individual.
Index
Next
Marc Hauser, Moral Minds
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