Who Am I and If So How Many? (15 page)

Picture yourself in the following situation: an out-of-control trolley is racing directly toward five men standing on the track. You, dear reader, are standing at the controls and watching the driverless trolley zoom toward them. If you flip the switch to divert the trolley onto a side track to the left, you can save the lives of the five men at the last possible second. The only catch is that if the trolley veers left, it will run over one man on the track. What would you do?

Before you reply, take a minute to mull over a second question. Once again we’re dealing with a driverless trolley, and once again it is racing toward the five men on the track. But this time you are on a footbridge above the track, looking for something to throw down onto the tracks to stop the trolley. The only thing you see is a large man standing next to you on the bridge. The railing is low. All you would have to do is give the man a good hard push from behind, and his heavy body would stop the racing trolley. The five men on the track would be spared. Would you do it?

More than 300,000 people have now pondered these questions, which were devised by the British philosopher Philippa Foot and augmented over the years by Judith Jarvis Thomson and others.
Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser posted a ‘Moral Sense Test’ on the Internet (http://moral.wjh.harvard.edu) with the ‘trolley
problem
’ and a series of similar ethical quandaries. And MIT’s John Mikhail tested out trolley problems on children and adults, atheists and believers, women and men, blue-collar workers and academics from a variety of backgrounds, including Chinese immigrants and Native Americans. The answers were surprisingly unvarying, regardless of a respondent’s religion, age, gender, education, or country of origin.

For the two original trolley problems, nearly all respondents would flip the switch and accept the death of a single man to save the lives of five, but only one in six would push the man from the footbridge to save the lives of the five.

Isn’t that a strange result? Whether I flip the switch or push the man from the bridge, the outcome is the same: one man dies, and five are saved. There is no difference in the number of victims and survivors; yet there apparently
is
a striking difference of some kind. Clearly it is one thing to accept the death of a person and quite another to cause that death. Psychologically there is a substantial difference between being actively and passively responsible for the death of another human being. In the case of being actively responsible for one man’s death, I feel as though I have murdered someone, even if by doing so I have saved the lives of other people. Being passively responsible for one man’s death, as in the case with the switch, is more like steering the hand of fate. Direct and indirect action are emotional worlds apart.

From a moral standpoint, action differs from, say, giving a command or instructions. The soldiers who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not get past the emotional trauma; their superiors, however, right up through President Truman, who had given the orders, appeared to have fewer problems with it. We draw a distinction between intentional and predicted damage, and between direct and indirect actions. Most people consider damage that arises by physical contact more reprehensible than when there is no contact involved. It is easier to press a button to kill someone
than to thrust a knife into someone’s heart. The more abstract a brutal deed is, the easier it seems to be to commit.

Let us recall the origin of our morality from the social conduct of primates. In the realm of primates, there are no abstract actions, but there is still a difference between action and failure to act. If someone fails to act, we cannot be certain whether this lack of action was intentional, which is why we hesitate to pronounce moral judgment on it. Deliberate action, by contrast, seems unequivocal.

But Marc Hauser thinks there is much more to it. If most people in a given situation assess the moral implications quite similarly and behave the same way, isn’t that proof that we have a common moral foundation that transcends individual cultures? Don’t we all go by the same complex of rules and principles, such as ‘Be fair,’ ‘Do no harm,’ and ‘Don’t be aggressive’? Hauser is convinced that there are moral rules within us. Since people are normally not aware of these rules, the rules do not get passed from one generation to the next in our upbringing, but rather are in our genes and are internalized in the first years of our lives. Hauser imagines that we acquire a sense of morality the way we do language. As Noam Chomsky has shown, there is a universal grammar in the brain from which children develop their mother tongue in response to their linguistic environment. We do not
learn
our native language; it
grows
like any part of the body. Morality, Hauser argues, has a similar kind of deep grammar that allows us to internalize the structure of our particular environment. Every person is born with a sense of good and evil, with a ‘moral instinct.’ Mores are not merely instilled in us by religious and judicial systems and by our parents and teachers; a baby emerges from the birth canal with a sense of morality, which is why all of us – even criminals – can usually tell right from wrong instantaneously.

Is Hauser correct? Does psychological testing prove that there is such a thing as morality? Is it the key that has yet to emerge from any abstract philosophical imperatives and laws or from brain imaging?

Kant had nothing but contempt for feelings. His categorical imperative was the diametrical opposite, a morality that can dispense with feelings. Feelings, he thought, were not partners of reason, but its adversary; he believed they cloud our moral judgment instead of fostering it. Hauser bases his theory of moral feelings on the opposite premise, arguing that emotions are not necessarily lower instincts and can lead to lofty feelings. To be quite sure that there is a moral sense of this kind in every healthy and normal person, Hauser sought help from an old friend, Antonio Damasio. Together they examined patients with injuries to the ventromedial region of the frontal lobe, people with injuries similar to those of Phineas Gage. These people were also asked about the trolley example. The result was clear and unequivocal: like most healthy people, the brain-damaged patients flipped the switch to save the five men on the track. But in contrast to the other respondents, the large man invariably fell victim to their distorted logic. The sociopaths with Phineas Gage syndrome were
unhesitatingly
prepared to push him off the footbridge. Where other people were held back by their intuitive moral instinct, these respondents obviously lacked this moral sense and judged the situation solely on the basis of intellect.

If this test is a reliable indicator, the intuitive moral sense is located in the human frontal lobe, and an innate universal grammar of morality is hidden away in the ventromedial region. But a few important qualifications need to be mentioned. The test question about the trolley and the switch seems clear and unequivocal, but the one about the man on the footbridge does not. Let us again picture ourselves in the situation of actually pushing a man off a footbridge to stop a trolley. If the man has his back to us, we find it easier to push him, but if he looks at us, it gets much more difficult. We don’t like the looks of him? Well, then, okay – we could sacrifice him. Is he likable? Does he have a friendly smile? Then we probably won’t push him.None of this refutes Hauser’s theory of the moral instinct, but it does add layers of complexity. Our personal feelings of sympathy and antipathy help shape our intuitive morality.

The same applies to the example with the side track. Five out of six respondents say they would let a man on a track be run over to save five others. But what happens if I know that man, if he is a good friend of mine? Do I flip the switch even then? What if it is not a worker standing on the tracks, but my own mother, brother, son, or daughter? Who would flip the switch if faced with the choice between five adult men on the one track and a child playing on the other? In the example with the footbridge, many schoolchildren might push their hated math teacher off the bridge to save the life of the men on the track.

In the case of the footbridge, many aspects that have nothing whatsoever to do with instincts come into play. If I push the large man now, it flashes across my mind, who’s to say that he will fall right on to the track? And even if he does, can I be sure that he will stop the trolley? What happens if he doesn’t? Then not only will the five men on the track die, but I will also have committed murder. Who would believe that I had only the best of intentions? All these questions are important for how I act. And they are not the result of long contemplation – they come quick as lightning, and are like social and cultural reflexes humans acquire as they go through life.

Genetic dispositions and cultural knowledge are not easy to tell apart. The two are inextricably linked. That specific decisions, as in Hauser’s test questions, are the same across many different cultures does not prove that moral ideas are innate. Moral ideas may have developed quite similarly in these cultures because they proved to be good, or at least rewarding. In most cases, the correct answer to the question ‘Nature or nurture?’ is probably ‘You can’t really tell them apart.’ Some children and adolescents who were raised in the Hitler years had no qualms about killing people, including defenseless women and small children, when they later became SS officers. As in the case of language acquisition, our moral feelings are not fully innate. We are not born with a set of values, but only with guidelines as to which information we can absorb and a set of conditions for sorting things out.

The great variety of human moral constructs reveals the many ways in which this moral capability can be implemented. Ownership rights, sexual morality, religious precepts, and
strategies
for dealing with aggression are approached so differently in different cultures throughout history that it is difficult to determine what is ‘typically’ human. Our society subdivides morality every which way, into everyday morality; ethical morality; the morality of responsibility; of class; and of contracts; maximal and minimal morality; initial morality; supervisory morality; female and male morality; business morality; morality for managers; for feminists; for theologians. Whenever a society recognizes a new problem, a new morality arises to address it. Still, every new morality draws on traditional values and appeals to our conscience and sense of responsibility, demanding greater equality and democracy and brotherly and sisterly love.

People who see the world in moral terms draw a sharp distinction between what they do and do not respect. For more than two millennia, philosophers have struggled to find definitive and irrefutable indications of how these criteria are implemented. The evidence is disquieting: a modern moral system like the constitutional state was crafted over the centuries under the guidance of philosophers, yet the whole construction was so flimsy that in Germany it could come undone by a National Socialist government without so much as a major moral uprising. In all likelihood, the most effective way to effect moral progress is not by way of reason but by sensitizing large segments of the population to specific issues. Emotions steer social development. As Richard Rorty wrote, ‘Moral progress is a matter of wider and wider sympathy. It is not a matter of rising above the sentimental to the rational. Nor is it a matter of appealing from lower, possibly corrupt, local courts to a higher court which administers an ahistorical, incorruptible, transcultural moral law.’

To sum up our findings thus far: humankind is endowed with an innate capacity for morality, but it is hard to determine the extent of this capacity. The primate brain makes it possible for us
to empathize with others, and there are (neurochemical) rewards for ‘good’ deeds. Ethical behavior is a complex altruism,
comprising
both feelings and logic. There is no ‘moral law’ in man in the Kantian sense that obliges man to be good. But moral actions often reward the individual and the group to which the individual belongs. Morality is largely an outgrowth of how we regard ourselves, which, in turn, reflects our upbringing.

Now that we have the tools of the trade in hand, we should be ready to move ahead to the concrete moral issues facing our society. There is, as we have seen, the perceived moral right to be allowed to kill under very specific circumstances, such as the case of the man on the footbridge. But is there also a moral
obligation
to kill?

Oh, my aunt Bertha! Throughout her life, she has tyrannized my family with her horrid ways. She has no children, thank God, so she drove her brother (my father) crazy instead. She has also aggravated her neighbors with a decades-long fuss about the property line, and her dog does his business in the neighbors’ yards. On top of that, she always sics that vicious little yapper on the mailman. In short, Bertha is dreadful.

Did I mention that she is rich? Filthy rich. Albert, her husband, who died young, left her quite a fortune. And she invested it well, in real estate, securities, and stocks. Aunt Bertha has millions. And the best part is: I’m her heir. Unfortunately, old Bertha is made of iron. She is only seventy and fit as a fiddle. She doesn’t drink or smoke; she doesn’t even eat cake. Aunt Bertha does not like anything at all, aside from money. She’ll easily live to ninety or a hundred. But if she really does make it to a hundred, I’ll be over seventy. Who knows what I’ll be doing then and whether I’ll still be able to do anything with her money. Sometimes I wish ol’ Bertha would kick the bucket tomorrow. Or make that today.

Couldn’t we cook up some reasons to kill off a horrendous individual in order to do good? Maybe there’s a plausible theory
to justify Aunt Bertha’s premature departure from this world. As a matter of fact, I’ve just thought of one: philosophical utilitarianism.

Jeremy Bentham was born in 1748 in Spitalfields, in the East End of London. He came from a rich, politically conservative family, and attended the renowned Westminster School for the offspring of the city’s finest families. The philosopher John Locke, the architect Christopher Wren, and the composer Henry Purcell all went to school here. In 1760, when Jeremy was twelve, his parents enrolled their highly gifted son in Queen’s College at Oxford, and when he turned fifteen he was awarded his bachelor’s degree in law. At the age of twenty-four, he set up a law practice in London, but his career went in a direction altogether different from what his parents had hoped. Bentham complained bitterly about the state of British law and the British courts. Instead of practicing law, he focused on reforming the legal system to make it more sensible and democratic, a path he could pursue without financial worries after 1792, when his father died and left him a substantial inheritance. For the next forty years, he worked exclusively on writing, turning out some ten to twenty pages per day. When he found the legal trivia tiresome, he had a student write up his suggestions for reforming civil law and formalize them as a legal code. Bentham was both a remarkable and a likable man. Just as the French Revolution had done away with the old class privileges of the Church and the nobility, Bentham dedicated himself to making British society more liberal and tolerant. He came up with social reforms, fought for freedom of expression, sketched out a model for a more humane system of incarceration, and supported the incipient women’s movement.

His basic principle was as simple as it was persuasive: pleasure is good, pain is bad. If that was correct, he thought, then philosophy and the state should act accordingly. The aim of society should be to reduce the amount of pain to whatever extent possible and to augment the pleasure of as many people as possible. The more pleasure something brings about, the more useful and better it is. Bentham called this principle utilitarianism. When he died in 1832
at a ripe old age, he was a famous man. Although he thought of himself as merely liberal, the French revolutionaries – and later also the French communists – were delighted by his philosophy. And three American states – New York, South Carolina, and Louisiana – adopted the civil code that Bentham had proposed.

The principle that pleasure is good and pain is bad seems convincing enough. Why not use it on Aunt Bertha? One thing is for sure: my aunt does not bring any pleasure into the world. She causes nothing but pain for her neighbors, the mailman, and others. The money she has in the bank does no good either. But something could be done about that, of course. If I had that much money, I could do so much good – and not only for myself! For example, a friend of mine is a doctor, the chief of staff at a pediatric hospital for leukemia patients. Another friend works with needy children. If I had Aunt Bertha’s money, I could give them each more than a million euros, which would create so much pleasure right there! Here I am, picturing children receiving the best of medical care and the smiling faces of Brazilian schoolchildren – all from the money I have donated from Bertha’s estate.

The only thing needed to make this dream come true is … Wait a minute – if Bentham is right, I have no choice
but
to bump off the old bag! The only thing I have to figure out is how to send Auntie to meet her maker in the kindest way possible: painlessly and without her catching on. My friend the doctor could surely think of some way to make her pass away peacefully. Who knows – maybe this will even spare her a far more painful death. No one would shed a tear for her, to put it mildly. In fact, most people would be absolutely delighted if the nasty old witch were out of the picture. The neighbors would finally have their peace and a clean yard, and the mailman could look forward to nicer people moving into her house. My friend the doctor would just have to happen onto her body and issue the death certificate and no one would investigate the case. Isn’t the matter clear and simple? Don’t I have a moral obligation to carry out this murder?

Let us run through the argument one more time: if I kill Aunt
Bertha to save the lives of needy children, I would certainly achieve an optimal balance between pleasure and pain for all concerned and demonstrate that evil inflicted on an individual is excusable if there is a better outcome for society as a whole. But what would Bentham say if I were to use his philosophy to justify a murder? Oddly, he did not mention this very obvious implication of utilitarianism. He does not appear to have poisoned any rich aunts, but then again, he had no need to. And he did not issue any appeals to murder tyrants, ruthless slumlords, or any other exploiters. He was a liberal spirit, and as such he drew the line at heinous acts.

But that’s not enough for me to go on. I still wonder what might have made Bentham hold back from drawing the simple
conclusion
that in weighing pain against pleasure, murder might be justified. The idea is in perfect accord with his philosophy.

I must have been about twelve when my parents first told me about the Nazi concentration camps and about the millions of people who had been brutally murdered in the Holocaust. Right then and there, I began to wonder why so few people considered it their duty to kill Hitler to put a stop to this terrible suffering. Bentham would have argued that the case is clear as day: a tyrant who runs death camps and destroys world peace can be killed because the sum of the unhappiness an aggressor of this sort generates outweighs the personal pain of his death.

Doesn’t the same consideration apply to the case of Aunt Bertha? The pleasure her death would cause would far exceed the pain inflicted on her. But Jeremy Bentham might have laughed off any such notion. He would ask whether I’d given any thought to what would happen to society if my example with Aunt Bertha were to set a precedent. Millions of people – rich aunts, creeps, politicians, big businessmen, and many convicts or people with learning disabilities without family – would have to count on being killed painlessly in their sleep. Just imagine the panic, the alarm, and the havoc that would ensue!

Maybe I’d be lucky and my murder of Aunt Bertha would not come to light. But if I consider my action just, it would have to be
in accordance with sound principles, and if so, it would apply to anyone, maybe even to me, if my nephews one day thought as little of me as I do of Aunt Bertha, in which case I would have to have eyes in the back of my head. To be able to apply Bentham’s principle of good pleasure and bad pain meaningfully, we must bear in mind that performing mathematical calculations to weigh pain against pleasure to make life-and-death decisions about people cannot be tolerated. Acceptance of murder on utilitarian grounds would spell the demise of civil society.

But do the two basic principles of Bentham’s philosophy really mesh? On the one hand, the intended sum of pleasure determines whether an action is good. On the other, Bentham doesn’t go so far as to allow for killing people, even though his philosophy fails to provide a convincing moral foundation for this exception. The argument against killing thousands of disagreeable people – and against torture, for that matter – might be to maintain law and order, but it does not address individual morality. By contrast, Immanuel Kant had ascribed human dignity to every individual as a fundamental unparalleled value. He would have found my calculations about Aunt Bertha appalling. He would have insisted that one human life cannot be weighed against another.

Bentham’s calculus of pleasure and pain is irreconcilably opposed to Kant’s notion that human life is the highest good. But which of the two is more convincing? Shouldn’t Hitler have been killed for moral reasons to prevent a great deal of suffering and tragedy? Can Kant’s dogma of human dignity stand as an inviolable principle? In more innocuous cases, such as that of Aunt Bertha, we might argue that at least she doesn’t cause much harm. And this difference between active perpetration and passive nastiness is not trivial, as the previous chapter has shown, in assessing both the victim and the perpetrator. But Bentham did not draw this distinction – at least not when it came to the perpetrator. He would surely have both flipped the switch
and
pushed the large man from the bridge, because his utilitarianism restricts its inquiry to the moral usefulness of an action. But as logical as Bentham’s equation
is, man does not live by logic alone. There are more important moral principles than justice – particularly as utilitarianism has to grapple with the fact that everyone interprets justice according to his own beliefs. At any rate, people often make judgments based on their intuition, which cannot be dismissed out of hand or fail to factor into a system of morality. Although morality and law shouldn’t be founded on intuition, it would be inhuman to dispense with intuition altogether.

So Aunt Bertha shall live. And we must make sure not to gauge the value of a human life by its usefulness. But we have yet to clarify the tricky question of how else to explain the value of life. Where does this value really come from? And where does it begin?