Ethics Bites Podcast - Trolleys, Killing And Double Effect

BBC/OU Open2.net - Ethics Bites Podcast - Trolleys, Killing And Double Effect

You're standing by a railway line. An out-of-control trolley is heading towards you. Tragically, there are five people tied to the track ahead. It looks like they'll all be killed. Fortunately you have a chance to save them. By turning a switch you can send the trolley hurtling down a spur, a side track, where, most unfortunately, one man is tied to the rails. But killing him would save the five. There's another option. A second switch would operate a trap door on an overhead footbridge, dropping an overweight unsuspecting train-spotter onto the track below, stopping the train (he's large enough to do this), but, of course, killing the train-spotter. What should you do?...

In fact, you might be surprised to learn that psychologists have actually hooked individuals up to what are called functional magnetic resonance imaging machines. People are able to see what bits of the brain light up when people are confronted with these problems and decide what they should do. And as it happens, when people are presented with the footbridge case and the prospect of pushing someone off the footbridge and when they recoil at that prospect, parts of the brain that are associated with emotional responses light up, whereas when people contemplate turning the switch so that the trolley goes off onto the side spur and decide that they ought to do that, other bits of the brain light up, where these bits of the brain are associated with cognition and means, and reasoning and the like.