RadioLabs got me thinking again. It tends to do that as it is rather amazing radio show.
You are faced with allowing 5 people to be run over by a train. You can save these 5 people if you pull a lever and redirect the train, however in pulling the lever the train will kill one person standing on the new track.
Most people, according to the RadioLabs sources, say they would pull the lever.
However, if you modify this thought experiment to say that instead of pulling the lever to save 5 people your only option to save these five people would be to push one person in front of the train. When faced with this option, very few people would push the one person.
We are generally okay with pulling a lever and killing one person in order to save five people, but we are generally not okay with pushing a person and killing a person in order to save five people.
Why is this? It is still murder of one person just the means are slightly different. What is going on?
The suggestion that was put forward was that our brains, through evolution, have come to have different voices vying for our attention and action. So part of our brain wins and part of our brain looses each choice we make. So the deep parts of the brain win out over the more advanced logical parts of the brain when we choose to not push the one to save the five.
This deep part of our brain, this emotional and raw part of our brain, is sometimes dubbed the lizard or reptilian or the monkey brain. What if, however, this part of our brain is the collective wisdom of the past. This part of our brain is the collective wisdom of the people who have come before us and with each choice. You have the part of your brain that is informed by the past and does not understand the current society very well, but it has a deep wisdom that we ought to heed. At the same time we have other parts of our brain that are "newer" and do not have the wisdom of the past but can rapidly understand the present culture.
If we dispose of the idea that one part of the brain is "higher order" than others, then we have this idea that our brain may be the house for which the communion of saints (the past humans) dwell. We have a part of the brain that is connected, through the process of evolution, to the past. We have a way to access the deep and rich history of the ages if we only were willing to listen to it more often.
You are faced with allowing 5 people to be run over by a train. You can save these 5 people if you pull a lever and redirect the train, however in pulling the lever the train will kill one person standing on the new track.
Most people, according to the RadioLabs sources, say they would pull the lever.
However, if you modify this thought experiment to say that instead of pulling the lever to save 5 people your only option to save these five people would be to push one person in front of the train. When faced with this option, very few people would push the one person.
We are generally okay with pulling a lever and killing one person in order to save five people, but we are generally not okay with pushing a person and killing a person in order to save five people.
Why is this? It is still murder of one person just the means are slightly different. What is going on?
This deep part of our brain, this emotional and raw part of our brain, is sometimes dubbed the lizard or reptilian or the monkey brain. What if, however, this part of our brain is the collective wisdom of the past. This part of our brain is the collective wisdom of the people who have come before us and with each choice. You have the part of your brain that is informed by the past and does not understand the current society very well, but it has a deep wisdom that we ought to heed. At the same time we have other parts of our brain that are "newer" and do not have the wisdom of the past but can rapidly understand the present culture.
If we dispose of the idea that one part of the brain is "higher order" than others, then we have this idea that our brain may be the house for which the communion of saints (the past humans) dwell. We have a part of the brain that is connected, through the process of evolution, to the past. We have a way to access the deep and rich history of the ages if we only were willing to listen to it more often.