Moral Quandaries

[Robert Tulip]

Wow, this is an amazing essay, and the first thing of Pinker's I have read. I can see why you are discussing The Stuff of Thought.

In his essay, he calls for a periodic table of morality, grounded in neuroscience. The exciting thing about the trolley example for this elemental project of moral chemistry is that the decision to pull the lever is made physically in the rational part of the brain while the decision not to heave-ho the fatso comes from the emotional part, shown by study of neuroscience. This says a lot about what consciousness is as a function of the brain. However, I thought his comments about repugnance seemed a bit of a spanner in his scheme.

I loved his final comment that changing the atmosphere and ocean is taboo. In my view this will be the main solution for climate change, so maybe I am living in the lost land of taboo. The really interesting theme here, with Pinker bringing in Dawkins, is how good morality is adaptive in evolutionary terms, and the need to find a new planetary evolutionary morality.

[Theomanic]

I'm slowly going through the essay when I have time at work, so hopefully I'll have more to say later.

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.

I don't really think cannibalism is wrong. I once mentioned this to my old roommate, and I think he thought I was about to grab a knife and have a lunch of him. Personally, I never ever want to eat another person. But I also won't eat rabbit either because they're cute. I refuse to watch "Babe" because I love pork so much. Just because I don't want to eat another person is no reason for it to be illegal however. I mean, rabbits are murdered for the eating, but people would have to die naturally. Considered in that way, I'd probably eat a human before I'd eat a rabbit.

My roommate's argument was that if cannibalism wasn't illegal, we'd all go around murdering people and eating them. I.... don't really find much rational basis in that argument. Murder would remain illegal, but once someone is already dead, does it really matter what we do? Perhaps cremating is just another way to say "I'd like my human very well done, please!" In all seriousness though (I'm not very good at serious), is burning someone to ash and throwing them to the wind really all that respectful? Or putting them in a box and letting maggots eat them?

I do think that people should get to decide if they'll allow themselves to be eaten. As long as we respect peoples wishes regarding their organs, despite the fact that we need more organs than we can get, we ought to respect all wishes pertaining to their body. Maybe someday, in reference to Robert's comment of the evolution of morals, we won't give people the right to decide if their organs stay in their body or not. Or if they're given to medical science or not. Etc etc. Maybe someday we'll have such a desperate need for food that Soylent Green really will be needed. Who can say about such things.

The main concerns I have about cannibalism are purely practical. People seem pretty dirty, are they safe to eat? They also seem pretty diseased. Also, I don't want anyone slipping people into my Mr. Noodles. And of course, the black, worst-case sort of possibility of people being murdered for food rather than allowing people to die naturally.

[Theomanic]

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 American, as Pinker applies, 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?

My reaction to those scenarios were varied also. The flag thing I didn't care about at all, but I'm not American. They seem more attached to their flag than most countries. The brother/sister incest did make me uncomfortable, and if I heard someone I knew did something like that, I think I'd be pretty weirded out. But ultimately, I don't think it's that horrible. Eating the family dog, well, see my reference to being unable to eat cute animals. I can't even think about it it's so upsetting. However, I also feel ill when people eat lamb. It's all relative to each person.

The main example I find interesting is the trolley. The big difference there is allowing an accident to occur or murdering someone to stop it. I would not consider someone wrong for changing the track, but I'm sure that person would be charged with a crime. They actively killed a person, regardless of cause. As to throwing the fat man, that does seem more wrong, even though it's really the same thing.

I'm answering you as best and instinctively as I can. If I consider any of those questions more deeply, other factors do arise. But honestly, I think those would be my reactions if put in a similar real life situation.

[Dissident Heart]

What if the obese man on the bridge was a dangerous pedophile?

What if there was a cadre of terrorists on the runaway trolley on their way to unleash, well, terror on the city?

What if the single trolleyman laboring on the spur of the track was a terrorist sabotaging the trolley for, well, terror?

What if the car that killed the dog, belonged to the dog's owner, and the killing was purposeful, with intent to provide dinner?

What if the flag was actually the funeral flag given to the widow of a fallen soldier?

[MadArchitect]

What if the man on the bridge had hooves for feet?

What if there was a cadre of Republicans on the trolley, on their way to the National Convention?

What if the single trolleyman laboring on the spur was trying to put his only child through college?

What if the car that killed the dog were Kitt from Knightrider?

What if the flag was made of non-biodegradable material?

What if what if what if what if... Why complicate these scenarios even more?

[Robert Tulip]

DH's 'What if's don't help, because the point Pinker makes about the trolley is that in fact we use different parts of the brain for moral judgment depending on instinctive emotional reactions, and these hypotheticals would just illustrate variance in neurological reaction. We shudder with repugnance at taboos such as cannibalism. How we try to think rationally about such an issue can be secondary to the wired sentiment, and gets back to a point dissident heart made recently about reverence as a founding principle. And on evolution, we should look at this in positive terms, on the expectation that cooperation will prove more adaptive than competition. Soylent Green was a very silly movie, as the economics of killing people (was it at age thirty?) to eat them just would not ever stack up. (Says he, age 44).

[JulianTheApostate]

As long as we respect peoples wishes regarding their organs, despite the fact that we need more organs than we can get, we ought to respect all wishes pertaining to their body.

As a tangent, I disagree with that. Consider this scenario:

In one hospital room, there's a patient who will die soon, no matter what you do, and that person want to be buried in a cemetery. In the next room, there's a patient who will die unless he receives an organ transplant from the first patient, and the transplant process can start after the first patient dies. If it was up to you, would you order the organ transplant?

I'm probably in the minority in this, but I would approve the transplant. Saving a life seems more important to me than respecting someone's wishes about what happens to their body after their death.

Getting back to the essay, some of you have objected to hypothetical scenarios like this one. However, they strike me as a valuable way to gain insight into people's moral beliefs and how they reach their conclusions about moral concerns.

[Theomanic]

Julian: Are you disagreeing the law says you can't take organs from people without their consent? I think, at least where I live (Ontario), you can give consent while you are alive, and your family can give consent when you are dead. Without that consent, it's illegal to take organs from the deceased. I could be mistaken. I personally don't agree with that, but my point was while that remains to be true, cannibalism would logically follow as needing consent.

Robert: I think you are confusing two movies, and missing my point besides. The other movie you're remembering is Logan's Run. It hasn't anything to do with Soylent Green. As to the economics of this dubious old sci-fi movie, I don't believe they were killing people, they were simply collecting the dead (especially from things like suicide booths). I'm not an economics major, but I don't see why that wouldn't be cost effective, since you don't even need a farm or to feed your livestock or anything. Especially in the distopian future we are given to accept where there is a massive food shortage. Again, I could be mistaken. My point was that we may some day be in a food crisis also, and any waste at all would be unforgivable. So maybe then we would practice cannibalism.

I finished the essay yesterday and it was very excellent. It makes me wonder if everyone with wildly variant morals from the norm has brain damage.

[MadArchitect]

Julian, there are a couple of problems with hypothetical scenarios like the ones given by Pinker, but a particularly pertinent one in this case is how little they take into account.

With your transplant scenario, for example, the good you might do for the one patient would probably be offset by the cost to the hospital, who would no doubt be embroiled in at least one law suit, with the result being that it would have to divert money away from health care.

Even beyond that, there's the question of precedent. If you can disregard a person's wishes concerning their body, why not also their wishes regarding inheritance? After all, it could be argued that there is enough poverty in the world to warrant redirecting the estates of just about all middle to upper income deceased and funneling it into charitable organizations.

For that matter, why stop with a single organ. A corpse could easily be harvested for any number of organs, and the parts that aren't useful for a medical transplant can be used in any number of other ways. Native Americans apparently had a use for every part of the bison (except for the squiggly thing in the Far Side cartoon). That doesn't take into account the psychological effect on the bereaved and their need for some sort of meaningful closure, of course, but they'll come around, and what's their psychological discomfort next to the good of society?

I realize that this is lapsing into the realm of the absurd, but that's kind of the point. Just considering a hypothetical without any literal context clarifies what, precisely? I do think there's a use for hypotheticals like these, but they're mostly useful as an analogy when you're already talking about a real-world circumstance, the ethics of which are in dispute. Philosophy students like posing life-boat exercises and similar hypotheticals as a kind of game, but it rarely amounts to much. We've taken up these hypotheticals in reference to practically nothing, and, as such, they strike me as a little fatuous.

[JulianTheApostate]

Mad, we seem to have different ideas about what kinds of arguments provide the most insight. For example, you read more philosophy that I do. When I attempt to read a philosophy book, I tend to get lost in the abstractions, becoming unsure about what's being said or how the ideas relate to the real world. In my mind, Pinker's hypotheticals are more germane than most philosophical discourse.

Pinker brought up various interesting ideas.

The Moralization Switch

The starting point for appreciating that there is a distinctive part of our psychology for morality is seeing how moral judgments differ from other kinds of opinions we have on how people ought to behave. Moralization is a psychological state that can be turned on and off like a switch, and when it is on, a distinctive mind-set commandeers our thinking.
...
Much of our recent social history, including the culture wars between liberals and conservatives, consists of the moralization or amoralization of particular kinds of behavior.

He gives various examples, such as views towards smoking, eating meat, divorce, and homosexuality.

Reasoning and Rationalizing

It's not just the content of our moral judgments that is often questionable, but the way we arrive at them. We like to think that when we have a conviction, there are good reasons that drove us to adopt it.
...
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