wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

These are largely medieval and/or childish quandaries; the principal place such artificial dichotomies actually happen is in war zones controlled by sadists and psychopaths (Bosnia, Sierra Leone ...). Anecdotal but credible: murder or rape mother or daughter: choose, or die yourself; choose, and you may be set free; murder him and her or be yourself mutilated; prove your complicity.

Notoriously, perverse torturers' mazes are part of current culture ("Saw", "Hostel" ...), and the "ticking bomb" torture scenario plays over and over again on "24".

Do you know someone who has stolen from their employer? Would you be willing to snitch on that someone? Have YOU ever stolen from your employer?

Get out of here, you snitch, thief, or liar!
Such tests are unethical, IMO

so you are saying that a "fat man" wouldn't have the morals to sacrafice himself...I would have to push him?...and, not speaking from experience, u would need several people to push a fat man onto train tracks.

He just gave a beautiful definition of what I consider the true meaning of "luxury": being able to structure your life (e.g. having access to fresh bread when you want it) such that you will be in a position to act in the best way when you meet a moral challenge.

One's policy can include putting yourself into a good mood before making decisions.

Just finished reading Lord Jim and realized that his cowardice in response to the boat's sinking haunts him all his life. When he saved "the one" and lost "the many", he spent the rest of his life hiding from the opprobrium of his fellows, until he found his way again in the isolated world of the river settlement.

I think the uninvolvement choice could be considered a Zen response.

OK, so you take the fat man firmly by the arm and step onto the tracks with him.

How ironic is it that now our soldiers are being forced into new roles which is potentially putting them in jeopardy. An army is not an army when they are not strictly a fighting force, I thought that infrastructure building was Halliburton & KBR's domain.

Wouldn't the third possibility have to do with all the people you are saving? WHy do YOU have to be the one to save the day all by your lonesome? I think ethical people do their best, even if it isn't what onlookers would call their best. Depraved indifference is obvious. As for The Homeless, and what We do about Them - realize there but for the grace of something bigger than myself go I, and I give what I can afford to.

This is the problem with trying to reduce philosophy to science, to the scientific method in general. A false duality is set up. Either irrational emotion or rational choice but there are many more registers of action, for example creativity, that cannot be reduced to either of the two analytic choices.
This has already been done through Kantian moral philosophy and rendered moot by a more complex understanding beginning with Hegelian Speculative philosophy and then Nietzsche and on and on. This is kind of outdated......

I believe this does relate to our lives; to choose another as a sacrifice is a moral choice not unlike the one we have made in Iraq. We've thrown them onto the tracks, havent we?

What about the role of experience/education in these decisions? If somebody has had to make a train-crash-scenario decision before, does that help? In other words morality/ethics, to the degree that they are contingent upon instantaneous emotional response, must also be contingent upon experience and certain kinds of *education*.

Where do we get that education these days? Some would argue that sports provide it, but I think this is only true in limited cases (certainly professional and to some degree college sports have lost most sense of honor).

Anyway I would be curious to hear more about what Prof. Appiah thinks about moral education.

Why We Will Divert But Won't Push:

The switch assumes you're at some remove from the situation and have no other option to save the five.

If you're on the scene, you're obliged to try stepping in front of the train yourself before "volunteering" another for the good deed.

I took the test and then in the middle of it I realized where it was going. Which is do you save the many or the one.

Like with the lighthouse. Wouldn't you radio the authorities and see if they could be put in isolation?

Also, what if you know the person? If you know the individual then you would sacrifice the many for the one.

However, when we do not know or can identify the masses of people you are talking about i.e. the deaths and displaced people in Iraq vs. the displaced people in your own neighborhood we can take a nonchalant attitude.

Can the person choose to kill themselves instead so they don't have to live with having a life full of such choices?

I think there should be a third choice.

I went online to take the test. All of the problems deal with the same problem. They are utilitarian questions that ask us to reduce humans to quantities.

The issue I have with these questions is that the presuppose knowledge of the future (e.g. they will all die definitely if you don't do X). These are extremely exceptional laboratory situations and they are here being used to assume a categorical rule of action.

This is similar to the issue of torture in the US. Is torture okay if we are in imminent danger? If it is then we create a rule by which we say that torture is okay.

I have a real problem with these questions because they limit the imigantion, there is never a scenario like this. This precisely does NOT relate to our ordinary lives.