The trolley problem and moral judgment

The so-called “trolley problem” is more relevant than ever before in these days that the coronavirus rules the world. Lately yet, in my blog dated 23 March 2020, I discussed its relation to the corona crisis. Since then, again and again I have seen discussions on TV that prove the topicality of the problem.

To recapitulate, there are two versions of the trolley problem. In version 1, a runaway trolley is headed for five people who will be killed if it proceeds on its present course. However, when you turn a switch, the trolley will be directed to another track where it will kill a man who is walking there. Will you turn the switch and save five lives against one person killed? Most people say yes. In version 2 you are standing on a footbridge and a fat man is standing next to you. Now you can stop the trolley by pushing the fat man off the bridge. His body will stop the trolley but the man will be killed. Will you push the man in order to save five lives? Most people say no. Generally, your options here are seen as a dilemma: Either you let utilitarian arguments prevail or you let deontological arguments prevail. Utilitarians reason that promoting the “greater good” is best. Since five lives saved is better than one life saved, you must push the fat man. Deontologists argue that certain moral lines ought not be crossed. They argue from principles. If your principle is “You shall not kill”, you are not allowed to kill the fat man.

These basic approaches are seen as alternatives, but recently, a Russian philosopher friend draw my attention to an article that throws a new light on the question. The philosophers and neuroscientists Joshua D. Greene et al. didn’t just want to argue about what the best approach is in trolley-like cases, but they wanted to see what happens in the brain, when people take decisions in such cases. (see Source below) I’ll skip the details, but the essence of what they did and found is this. First, they distinguished between personal and impersonal moral judgments. Personal moral judgments “are driven largely by social-emotional responses while other moral judgments, which we call ‘impersonal,’ are driven less by social-emotional responses and more by ‘cognitive’ processes.” Personal moral judgments concern the appropriateness of personal moral violations, like personally hurting another person. They require agency, doing something yourself. Impersonal moral judgments are then those that are not personal. They require not so much doing something actively but they are more a matter of interfering, directing or following (my words). Greene et. al say it this way: “it is ‘editing’ rather than ‘authoring’”, not agency. An example of a personal moral dilemma is the “footbridge version” of the trolley problem and an impersonal moral dilemma is the “turning the switch version”, so the authors. “Footbridge” arouses much emotion when deciding what to do, while “turning the switch” is a matter of calculation. According to the authors there is reason to believe that the distinction personal-impersonal is evolutionary. Impersonal approaches of moral dilemmas came later in human development than personal approaches.

Next, the authors developed a test in order to see what happens in the brain when moral decisions are taken. What did they find? When impersonal moral judgments are taken cognitive parts of the brain are involved, while in case of  personal moral judgments those parts of the brain are involved where social-emotional responses take place. Moreover, the authors found that in relevant cases impersonal judgments tend to prevail over personal judgments.

What does this mean for moral philosophy? I think that I can best extensively quote from the “Broader Implications” section of the article: “For two centuries, Western moral philosophy has been defined largely by a tension between two opposing viewpoints[: Utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill) and deontology (Kant)]. Moral dilemmas of the sort employed here boil this philosophical tension down to its essentials and may help us understand its persistence. We [=the authors] propose that the tension between the utilitarian and deontological perspectives in moral philosophy reflects a more fundamental tension arising from the structure of the human brain. The social-emotional responses that we've inherited from our primate ancestors …, shaped and refined by culture bound experience, undergird the absolute prohibitions that are central to deontology. In contrast, the ‘moral calculus’ that defines utilitarianism is made possible by more recently evolved structures in the frontal lobes that support abstract thinking and high-level cognitive control. … We emphasize that this cognitive account of the Kant versus Mill problem in ethics is speculative. Should this account prove correct, however, it will have the ironic implication that the Kantian, ‘rationalist’ approach to moral philosophy is, psychologically speaking, grounded not in principles of pure practical reason, but in a set of emotional responses that are subsequently rationalized .... Whether this psychological thesis has any normative implications is a complicated matter that we leave for treatment elsewhere ....”

If all this is true, I think that as important is that making moral judgments is not simply a matter of either-or, in the sense that one follows either utilitarian rules or deontological principles. Even if one turns the switch, one can rightly have the feeling that one breaks the rule “you shall not kill”. And even if one doesn’t push the fat man from the bridge, one can still wonder whether it hadn’t been better to save the five lives of the people on the track. Taking decisions and making moral judgments is not simply a matter of choosing a guiding approach and that’s it. Apparently, utilitarianism and deontology are not alternatives but options.

Source

Green, Joshua D.; Leigh E. Nystrom; Andrew D. Engell; John M. Darley; Jonathan D. Cohen, “The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment”, in Neuron, 44/2 (October 14, 2004); and on https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(04)00634-8