Anyone see
this story from the NYT yesterday?
It's entitled "Brain Injury Said to Affect Moral Choices," and based on a study appearing in "Nature" magazine. The brain injuries supposedly showed a different approach when people were faced with a "moral decision" whether to cause harm to a small number of individuals in order to save a greater number. Here's an excerpt of the article:
"A large difference in the participants’ decisions emerged when there was no switch to flip — when they had to choose between taking direct action to kill or harm someone (pushing him in front of the runaway boxcar, for example) and serving a greater good.
Those with ventromedial injuries were about twice as likely as other participants to say they would push someone in front of the train (if that was the only option), or suffocate a baby whose crying would reveal to enemy soldiers where the subject and family and friends were hiding."
The online version does not include one graph I found interesting. One of the moral hypotheticals posed involved people on a small, sinking boat. The question was whether you would push off an invalid, who was going to die anyway, if you knew that doing so would save everyone else on the boat. If I read the graph correctly (which I think I did), only 20% of the "normal" group said they would push the guy off. But 80% of those with brain injuries said they would push him off.
I found this somewhat disconcerting, since I was inclined to push the guy off the boat as well.