be worrisome. It implies that people with whom we have moral
23
disagreements— whether it’s Hitler, the Taliban, or schoolyard bullies who
24
beat up smaller children— aren’t wrong in the same sense that it’s wrong to 25
deny Darwinian evolution or the expansion of the universe. We can’t do an
26
experiment, or point to data, or construct a syllogism, or write a stinging
27
blog post, that would persuade them of why their actions are bad. And if
28
that’s true, why should they ever stop?
29
But that’s how the world is. We should recognize that our desire for an
30
objective grounding for morality creates a cognitive bias, and should com-
31
pensate by being especially skeptical of any claims in that direction.
32
33
34
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Rules and Consequences
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12
A
13
braham heard God commanding him to take Isaac, his only son,
14
to the region of Moriah and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering.
15
The next morning Abraham and Isaac, along with two servants
16
and a donkey, began the arduous three- day journey. Arriving at the site,
17
Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood atop it. He bound his son
18
and drew a heavy knife. At the last moment he faltered; he could not bring
19
himself to sacrifice his boy. Isaac, however, had seen the despair in his fa-
20
ther’s eyes. By the time they returned to his mother, Sarah, Isaac had com-
21
pletely lost his faith.
22
This isn’t the usual telling of the Abraham and Isaac story, familiar from
23
Genesis. It’s one of four alternative imaginings offered by Søren Kierke-
24
gaard in his book Fear and Trembling. In the original, God intercedes at the
25
last minute and offers Abraham a ram to sacrifice in place of his son. Kier-
26
kegaard suggests a number of different twists, each harrowing in its own
27
way: Abraham tricks Isaac into thinking Abraham is a monster, so Isaac
28
wouldn’t lose faith in God; Abraham sees a ram and decides to sacrifice it
29
rather than his son, in contravention of his orders; Abraham begs God to
30
forgive him that he would have even contemplated sacrificing his son; and
31
Abraham falters at the last moment, causing Isaac to lose faith.
32
There are many readings of the tale of Abraham and Isaac. A traditional
33
explanation casts it as a lesson about the strength of faith: God wanted to
34
test Abraham’s loyalty by making the strongest possible demand. Martin
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Luther held that Abraham’s willingness to kill Isaac was correct, given one’s
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fundamental need to defer to God’s will. Immanuel Kant held that Abra-
02
ham should have realized that there are no conditions under which it would
03
have been justified to sacrifice his son— and therefore the command could
04
not actually have come from God. Kierkegaard, concerned that a prolifera-
05
tion of interpretations was diluting the impact of this clash of apparent
06
absolutes, wanted to emphasize the impossibility of finding a simple answer
07
to Abraham’s dilemma, and highlight the demands placed by true faith.
08
From a broader perspective, the story highlights the issue of competing
09
moral commitments: what do we do when something that seems utterly
10
wrong at a visceral level (killing your own son) runs into a foundational
11
rule to which you are devoted (obeying God’s word)? When it is not clear
12
what is right and wrong, what are the most basic principles that should
13
ultimately decide?
14
•
15
16
In modern manifestations of moral argument, hearing commands
17
from God doesn’t have the same force it once did. But the fundamental
18
dichotomy lives on. The descendant of Abraham’s dilemma in our secular-
19
ized, technological world is something called the trol ey problem.
20
Introduced by philosopher Philippa Foot in the 1960s, the trolley-
21
problem thought experiment aims to sharpen the conflict between compet-
22
ing moral sentiments. A group of five people is tied to some trolley tracks.
23
Unfortunately, a speeding trolley has lost its brakes, and is barreling toward
24
them. If no action is taken, they will surely die. But you have the option of
25
taking an action: you are standing by a switch that will divert the trolley
26
onto another track. This alternate track, by unfortunate coincidence, has a
27
single person tied down on it, who will surely be killed if you pull the
28
switch. ( Trolley- track security is remarkably lax in this hypothetical world.)
29
What do you do?
30
It’s not quite sacrificing- your- only- son- because-of-God’s-command level
31
stuff, but the dilemma is real. On the one hand, there is a choice between
32
five people dying and one person dying. All else being equal, it would seem
33
to be better, or at least less bad, if only one person died. On the other hand,
34
you have to actively do something in order to divert the train. Instinctively,
35S
if the trolley barrels forward and kills the five people, it’s not really our
36N
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fault, whereas if we choose of our own volition to pull the switch, we bear
01
the responsibility for the death of the one person on the other track.
02
This is where we see Bill and Ted’s “Be excellent to each other” falling
03
short when it comes to providing the basis for a fully articulated ethical
04
system. Moral quandaries are real, even if they are usually not as stark as the
05
trolley prob
lem. How much of our income should we spend on our own
06
pleasure, versus putting it toward helping the less fortunate? What are the
07
best rules governing marriage, abortion, and gender identity? How do we
08
balance the goal of freedom against that of security?
09
As Abraham learned, having an absolute moral standard such as God
10
can be extraordinarily challenging. But without God, there is no such stan-
11
dard, and that is challenging in its own way. The dilemmas are still there,
12
and we have to figure out a way to face them. Nature alone is no help, as we
13
can’t extract ought from is; the universe doesn’t pass moral judgments.
14
And yet we must live and act. We are collections of vibrating quantum
15
fields, held together in persistent patterns by feeding off of ambient free
16
energy according to impersonal and uncaring laws of nature, and we are
17
also human beings who make choices and care about what happens to
18
ourselves and to others. What’s the best way to think about how we
19
should live?
20
21
•
22
Philosophers find it useful to distinguish between ethics and meta- ethics.
23
Ethics is about what is right and what is wrong, what moral guidelines we
24
should adopt for our own behavior and that of others. A statement like
25
“killing puppies is wrong” belongs to ethics. Meta- ethics takes a step back,
26
and asks what it means to say that something is right or wrong, and why we
27
should adopt one set of guidelines rather than some other set. “Our system
28
of ethics should be based on improving the well- being of conscious crea-
29
tures” is a meta- ethical claim, from which “killing puppies is wrong” might
30
be derived.
31
Poetic naturalism has little to say about ethics, other than perhaps for a
32
few inspirational remarks. But it does have something to say about meta-
33
ethics, namely: our ethical systems are things that are constructed by us
34
human beings, not discovered out there in the world, and should be
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01
evaluated accordingly. To help with that kind of evaluation, we can con-
02
template some of the choices we have when it comes to ethics.
03
Two ideas serve as a useful starting point: consequentialism and deontol-
04
ogy. At the risk of vastly oversimplifying thousands of years of argument
05
and contemplation, consequentialists believe that the moral implications of
06
an action are determined by what consequences that action causes, while
07
deontologists feel that actions are morally right or wrong in and of them-
08
selves, not because of what effects they may lead to. “The greatest good for
09
the greatest number,” the famous maxim of utilitarianism, is a classic con-
10
sequentialist way of thinking. “Do unto others as you would have them do
11
unto you,” the Golden Rule, is an example of deontology in action. Deon-
12
tology is all about rules. (The word “deontology” comes from the Greek
13
deon, for “duty,” while “ontology” comes from the Greek on, for “being.”
14
Despite the similarity of the words, the two ideas are unrelated.)
15
Bill and Ted were deontologists. Had they been consequentialists, their
16
motto would have been something like “Make the world a more excellent
17
place.”
18
The problem is that both consequentialism and deontology seem per-
19
fectly reasonable at first glance. “The greatest good for the greatest number”
20
sounds like a splendid idea, as does “Do unto others as you would have
21
them do unto you.” The point of the trolley problem is that these approaches
22
can come into conflict. The idea that it would be reasonable to sacrifice one
23
person in order to save five people is consequentialist at its core, while our
24
reluctance to actually pull the switch stems from deep deontological
25
impulses— diverting the trolley and killing an innocent person just seems
26
wrong, even if it does save lives. The standard moral sentiments of most
27
people include both consequentialist and deontological impulses.
28
The operation of these competing ethical inclinations can be traced to
29
different parts of our babbling brains. Our minds have a System 1 that is
30
built on heuristics, instincts, and visceral reactions, as well as a System 2
31
that is responsible for cognition and higher- level thoughts. Roughly speak-
32
ing, System 1 tends to be responsible for our deontological impulses, and
33
System 2 kicks in when we start thinking as consequentialists. In the words
34
of psychologist Joshua Greene, we not only have “thinking fast and slow”;
35S
we also have “morality fast and slow.” System 2 thinks we should pull the
36N
switch, while System 1 is appalled by the idea.
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•
01
02
Philosophers have thought up many modifications of the original trolley
03
problem. A famous one is the “footbridge problem,” proposed by Judith
04
Jarvis Thomson. Let’s say you are a committed consequentialist, and are
05
sure you would pull the switch in the original problem. But this time there
06
is no switch: rather, the only way to stop the trolley from killing the five un-
07
fortunate people on the track is to push a large man off of a footbridge and
08
into the path of the trolley. (All such thought experiments imagine we are
09
able to predict the future with uncanny accuracy; this one also assumes that
10
you yourself are too tiny to stop the trolley on its course, so self- sacrifice is
11
not an option.)
12
As before, either one person will die or five will die. To a consequential-
13
ist, there is no difference between the footbridge scenario and the original
14
trolley problem. But to a deon
tologist there might be. In the first problem
15
we are not actively trying to kill the one person on the side track; that’s just
16
an unfortunate repercussion of our attempts to save the five people. But up
17
on that footbridge, we are purposely forcing someone to their death. Our
18
emotions recoil at the prospect; it’s one thing to pull a switch, quite another
19
to push someone off of a bridge.
20
Greene has studied volunteers hooked up to an MRI machine while
21
being asked to contemplate various moral dilemmas. As expected, contem-
22
plation of “personal” situations (like pushing someone off of a bridge) led
23
to increased activity in areas of the brain that are associated with emotions
24
and social reasoning. “Impersonal” situations (like pulling a switch) en-
25
gaged the parts of the brain associated with cognition and higher reason-
26
ing. Different modules within ourselves spring to life when we’re forced to
27
deal with slightly different circumstances. When it comes to morality, the
28
unruly parliament that constitutes our brain includes both deontological
29
and consequentialist factions.
30
Sticking someone inside an imposing medical scanner and asking them
31
to consider philosophical thought experiments might not tell us much
32
about how that person would actually react in the situation described. The
33
real world is messy— are you sure you could stop the trolley by pushing that
34
guy off the footbridge?— and people’s predictions about how they would
S35
act in stressful situations aren’t always reliable. That’s okay; our goal here
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isn’t to understand how people behave, it’s to get a better idea for how they
02
think about how they should behave.
03
Consequentialism and deontology aren’t the only kinds of ethical sys-
04
tems we can consider. Another popular approach is virtue ethics, which
05
traces its roots back to Plato and Aristotle. If deontology is about what you
06
do, and consequentialism is about what happens, virtue ethics is about who
07
you are. To a virtue ethicist, what matters isn’t so much how many people
08
you save by diverting a trolley, or the intrinsic good of your actions; what
09
matters is whether you made your decision on the basis of virtues such as
The Big Picture Page 68