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Steven Pinker ( the author of our current non-fiction selection The Stuff of Thought ) has an essay in the recent New York Times magazine titled The Moral Instinct. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magaz ... ref=slogin

In the essay he explores what he calls a science of morality. Here are a few moral quandaries he offers to get readers to examine their own moral proclivities.


[quote]Julie is traveling in France on summer vacation from college with her brother Mark. One night they decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. Julie was already taking birth-control pills, but Mark uses a condom, too, just to be safe. They both enjoy the sex but decide not to do it again. They keep the night as a special secret, which makes them feel closer to each other. What do you think about that

Dissident Heart wrote:

[quote]Julie is traveling in France on summer vacation from college with her brother Mark. One night they decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. Julie was already taking birth-control pills, but Mark uses a condom, too, just to be safe. They both enjoy the sex but decide not to do it again. They keep the night as a special secret, which makes them feel closer to each other. What do you think about that

A woman is cleaning out her closet and she finds her old American flag. She doesn't want the flag anymore, so she cuts it up into pieces and uses the rags to clean her bathroom.

No problem, if an American woman can be found who would do it!

Outside the home I think it's best if symbols be treated with respect but everybody remain reasonable about it. I think it's never a good sign when the citizens of a particular country become too touchy about something like a flag. The only two places where I've seen this is the US and northern Ireland (quite a few years ago). If you need to show your attachment to your country by taking the flag everywhere as well as having a flag in front of your home and every classroom, then in my opinion this is excessive patriotic feeling.
Then some people will react by burning the flag in the street, causing outrage (while housewives routinely use the flag for their cleaning duties...?).

A family's dog is killed by a car in front of their house. They heard that dog meat was delicious, so they cut up the dog's body and cook it and eat it for dinner.

This is OK too if everybody in the family is from a culture where a dog is like a sheep or a cow.
If they are western people whose dogs watch TV with them on the sofa (like me and my dogs) and the pet is part of the inner circle of the family, the question will never arise.


In the trolley car situations, I find it really difficult to see this in moral terms... and Mad told me it's old hat anyway.

Ophelia, the train example is old hat in undergraduate ethics seminars. It's pretty absurd stuff, and I'm not sure that the answers ever amount to much in practical terms. Now, if any of us ever find ourselves trapped in an episode of the old Batman television series, that kind of thinking might come in handy. For my part, I've forgotten what such examples were ever intended to demonstrate.

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I've already commented on the article in a thread started by JulianTheApostate in the Stuff of Thought discussion section, so i won't comment further on that.

I just wanted to make further mention of the ubiquitous "trolley car" cases. I wish I had the book in front of me so I could quote it directly, but Hilary Kornblith, in Knowledge and Its Place in Nature, is writing about the place of intuition in philosophy (he doesn't think it has one) and argues that we should not be examining our concepts (of knowledge for instance) but the natural phenomenon associated with the concept. In regard to moral philosophy he talks of "people loitering suspiciously on trolley car tracks." Or something to that effect.

I think all those questions are fascinating. Each of them, when answered on a distant, logical level are simple to answer. Yes, they're all appropriate things to do. Assuming the people involved were logical, and you are logical, really, it's almost silly to even ask.

But of course, people are not really that logical. They're emotional and woven with many different rules imposed on them by society, their upbringing, etc. The very idea of someone (assuming they're not from some place where eating dog is acceptable) eating their family dog, even if it's already dead... what monsters! That leads to follow up questions: What if they're poor and starving? What if they believe by eating the dog, they'll have it with them always? At what point would I no longer feel they are monstrous? Why is it not okay to eat dog, but we still eat cows, which other cultures consider holy?

I find ethical questions delicious (excuse the use of the word)! It's so interesting how a person can understand something on an intellectual level, and yet still be unable to accept it for emotional reasons, or due to the tight fabric of their upbringing. It's a constant struggle, in my opinion, to force ourselves to not think of things in an emotional way, and consider something based solely on the facts.

Okay, let me play devil's advocate for a second. I'm going to argue that the family dog example is at least potentially immoral, and that very few cultural differences can excuse it.

The basis for that argument is that eating the dog is potentially immoral not because the animal is of this species rather than that, but rather that the people eating is had a particular relationship to the animal before it died. Their willingness to eat it -- particularly their willingness to do so in the spirit of culinary experiment ("they heard that dog meat was delicious") -- casts doubt on the sanctity of their other family relationships, at least to the degree that a pet is considered "part of the family". While eating a family pet may not be equivalent to eating, say, a step-brother, the two are like enough to cast doubt on the moral neutrality of eating the pet.

The cultural exception would be those cultures (like Papau New Guinea, several generations ago) that make a practice of eating their deceased family members. There, presumably, the problem outlined above dissolves.

Mad:
Using similar reasoning to that used in the example you'd have to say that eating a deceased brother would not be wrong either, so long as he died of natural causes. After all, who is harmed? Therein lies the fault of the reasoning used in these dilemmas: harm (or greater harm) is the only criteria used to decide if an action is wrong.

Though I started a thread about Pinker's essay before DH did, I just got around to reading it. DH's link didn't work for me; use http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magaz ... ogy-t.html instead.

I though it was a good essay that's well worth reading. That might be because, unlike bradams and MadArchitect, I haven't studied much moral philosophy, while on broader issues I generally agree with Pinker and evolutionary biologists.

Pinker's first three scenarios, which were quoted by DH -- brother/sister incest, using a flag as rags, or eating the family dog -- didn't offend me. I suspect that those scenarios would morally offend most Americans, as Pinker implies, but my moral sense is out of sync with the mainstream. As an informal survey, which, if any, of those actions would you consider immoral?

While I have other thoughts on the essay, I'll see if I can get back to sleep now.