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A famous bit of pseudo-science

There is a famous pair of questions that have been posed to subjects whose brain are being scanned while they ponder how to answer... Those questions are 1. would you divert a train heading toward five so that it runs over one instead?; 2. would you push someone in front of the train to save the lives of five people?

The nearly universal answer is 1.yes and 2.no. The consequentialist, however, will think that the two answers are morally equivalent; hence this variation is based upon irrational factors... the physical act of pushing involves a personal involvement. Further confirmation of this contrast comes from the fact that the limbic system becomes very active when deciding about the answer to the second question.

But the reason why persons answer as they do may be due to the fact that they understand the difference between what one is trying to do and unintended consequences in the first case, and the difference between unintended consequence and an evil means toward a good end in the second case. In other words, the man on the street may be wiser about morality than the consequentialistic sociologist or neurologist.

To distinguish between the two possible reasons for the tendency to say no to option #2, we need to construct a new #2: would you press a button that would start a mechanism that would accomplish the same thing (i.e., drag the same person in front of the tracks so that he would die while stopping the train from hitting the other five). If the same % of folks answer question #2 as before, then the reason is probably because of the evil means toward the good end--not the personal involvement. If the % changes the same level of approval as for question #1, then yes, it probably was the bodily involvement that made the difference in the first results.

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