โ Scribed by Pigliucci, Massimo
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Consider the following scenario: you're walking on a bridge and notice a trolley on the tracks below. To your horror, the trolley is hurtling directly toward five innocent bystanders. You also see a lever nearby: if you pull it, you can divert the trolley to a different track. The catch is that diverting it will guarantee the death of a sixth person nearby. Would you pull the lever?
Most people unhesitatingly answer yes--happy to sacrifice one life to save five--but balk if, instead of simply pulling a lever they were required to push a person off the bridge to stop the trolley--even if the result stays the same. A philosopher would claim that the two problems are identical from a moral perspective, but a neuroscientist would argue otherwise: in the first instance, the major decision-making role is played by a brain area usually involved in rational cognition, while in the second, an area related to the experience of emotions takes over. Science reveals...
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
When Alexander the Great decided to give an elephant to his old teacher Aristotle a problem of logistics arose. Alexander was in India and Aristotle was in Athens. Thousands of miles of blazing deserts, towering mountains, turbulent rivers, and savage, scarcely conquered peoples lay between; and Aia