The Trolley Problem in Philosophy, In- vs. Out-groups, and Experiential Education
Anna Wilga QC ‘15 and Jim Stellar
This story begins with the trolley dilemma from modern philosophy. The trolley dilemma today is a two-part thought experiment, the first part of which was first introduced by British philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967. Here is the story: You’re next to some tracks and witness a runaway trolley seconds away from running over five people who are on the track and will certainly be killed. But, you happen to be standing next to a lever that you could pull to divert the trolley onto a side-track. The problem is that there is one person on this track also and they will certainly be killed. Do you do nothing at all, allowing the five people to die or do you divert the trolley killing one person? In many experiments replicated across the world, including a demonstration last year in the large general education neuroscience class JS co-teaches with another professor at Queens College, the answer is clear. Most people (not all) pull the lever.
Now to a second scenario introduced by an American philosopher, Judith Thompson, in which again, five people are about to be hit by the trolley. In this scenario, you are on a footbridge over the trolley track. Underneath the bridge there is a runaway trolley about to kill five people on the tracks after the trolley passes under the bridge. But there is a large man next to you leaning over the railing and you realize with complete certainty that you could stop the train from killing those five people if you push this one large man onto the tracks. It is the only way. Of course, that man would die. You could do nothing or push the large man onto the tracks. Do you push the large man? In the same experiments and in the same class-demonstration at Queens College, most people decline to push the large man in this thought experiment and allow the five people to die.
According to utilitarian theory, founded by Jeremy Bentham, it is our obligation to maximize the happiness and minimize the pain for as many people as possible. Thus killing the one person would be justified if we subscribe to this moral point of view because the happiness of five people has a greater weight than that of the one whose life is being sacrificed. This is true for both scenarios, yet we generally choose different outcomes for these scenarios.
The reality is, these scenarios tap into two different types of moral decision-making and involve different brain areas. In his book Moral Tribes, professor Joshua Greene states that the difference between these two dilemmas can be explained by what Greene calls “The dual-process theory” of moral decision making. The theory essentially states that the moral judgments we make are shaped by our gut reactions, which are instinctual, automatic and unconscious, as well as by explicit conscious reasoning of the type described above as utilitarian. Like a digital camera, there are certain presets that we choose such as “landscape” or “portrait” that are automatic and efficient – We just point and shoot. On the other hand, we can adjust the setting ourselves, allowing for more creative input such as focusing the lens on something in front of us and blurring out the background – The manual mode requires some reasoning. Within context, the first trolley scenario deals with decisions that are made intellectually, but the second deals with decisions that are made instinctually and automatically.
These automatic and unconscious emotional judgments are most likely remnants of our recent evolutionary history as group-living tribes who depended on each other for the basic necessities of survival such as food and protection from predators. In time, these groups had evolved to unconsciously practice prosocial behaviors such as reciprocal altruism, which enabled individuals to care about the interests of their group vs. their interests alone. It also enabled us to spot and punish cheaters (sometimes called free-riders) that did not follow social norms. Fast forward to present day and we no longer belong to such distinct tribes for survival, but are now in communities of different practice or belief systems that must interact with each other on a daily basis. Yet we still have the same primal brain machinery. This causes us to rationalize and justify our at times misguided gut feelings about different groups. The solution Greene offers is one in which we try to use our mental “manual mode” to make our automatic beliefs less reflexive.
In terms of experiential education, there are two conclusions to be drawn. First, the whole dual processes approach by Greene shows that the mind operates on two levels. In this blog, we have tended to call the unconscious decision-making processes, the “other lobe of the brain” to emphasize its existence along with the rational, cognitive, facts-and-theories, part of our mind that colleges directly address with classic classroom education supporting the classic curriculum. Obviously, we are calling here for more involvement of direct experiences with the field of study or chosen major as occurs with internships, undergraduate research, service-learning, and even study abroad.
The second conclusion is that colleges and universities have an opportunity to teach us about what Greene advocates above – how to suspend the natural reactions that our students might have to an out-group by providing the experiences to learn about and therefore identify with (or at least adapt to) the other group. Consider the effects of study-abroad for a term or a serious program of year-long service-learning with an ethnic population that is not one’s own. These experiences could have a big impact on the student’s implicit knowledge of the out-group. This activity provides powerful on-campus opportunities around which to stage reflections on how to substitute “point-and-shoot” for “manual mode” thinking in the camera analogy above. That could lead to a world where we dissipate less energy on unnecessary fighting with “the other.”
To return to the more practical, much of today’s business industry is global and so there is a huge business advantage to the college graduate job-seeker if they are comfortable with groups outside their own and can show that this characteristic is true in their behavior and on their resume. This outcome would not only benefit the student, but it would also benefit a higher education industry that is today under ever more pressure to show student success outcomes after graduation.
