[orionblamblam]

> "Can you name a scientific discovery that has ever added to our understanding of morality?"

Well, a whole bunch of 'em led to the industrial revolution... which led to the discovery that slavery was immoral.

[highlander_UW]

So which were liberals, the one or the five?

[fanfan]

Would it make a difference if it was a thin person standing next to you?

[spinestein]

[In the second version of the problem, you are standing on a bridge over a trolley track beside a fat person. Again you notice that the runaway trolley is headed toward five unaware people. Do you push the fat person onto the track to stop the trolley?]



Not enough information to make a decision.

Is the fat person your boyfriend or girlfriend? Santa Claus? Bryant Gimbel? Michael Moore?

What if I, myself, weigh 400 pounds? Should I jump?

And why isn't just shouting out "HEY, LOOK OUT FOR THAT TRAIN YOU IDIOTS!" an option? Am I unable to speak for some reason?

And what happens if you push the fat person onto the tracks, derailing the train, and it causes the train to smash onto the platform killing 100 people who were actually smart enough to look out for their own survival in place of the 5 fools who aren't that smart? Doesn't that make you personally responsible for significantly weakening the human gene pool?

I think these are all important questions which have to be answered before a moral decision can be made.

<?:^)

[tpaine]

You are standing next to a switch in a trolley track and you notice that a runaway trolley is about to hit a group of five people who are unaware of their danger.
However, if you switch the track, the trolley will hit only one person.
What do you do?

No question about it; -- switch the track; after all, one person has a better chance to dodge than five.

In the second version of the problem, you are standing on a bridge over a trolley track beside a fat person. Again you notice that the runaway trolley is headed toward five unaware people. Do you push the fat person onto the track to stop the trolley?

No. There is no guarantee that the fat person would stop the runaway trolley.

(We will simply ignore the issue of whether or not you should jump onto the track to save the five people—that's for a graduate level moral philosophy seminar.)

'Graduate level?'. -- Hardly.. - Again -- how could your sacrifice guarantee to stop the trolley?

[Alex Murphy]

In the second version of the problem, you are standing on a bridge over a trolley track beside a fat person. Again you notice that the runaway trolley is headed toward five unaware people. Do you push the fat person onto the track to stop the trolley?

If we're talking about Ted Kennedy or Michael Moore, I'd say this is a trick question.

[qam1]

"Can you name a scientific discovery that has ever added to our understanding of morality?"

Ultrasound

Thanks to ultrsound we can now see the living baby growing in the womb, thus we have a higher % of the population now that is pro-life.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Morality and all of those associated ideals are rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior. Plato’s Euthyphro is a great illustration. Socrates advances the argument to Euthyphro that, piety to the gods, who all want conflicting devotions and/or actions from humans, is impossible. (Socrates exposed the pagan esoteric sophistry.)

Likewise, morals are such a construction of idols used by the Left as a rationale for them to demand compliance to their wishes in politics, which most often are a skewed mess of fallacies in logic. Morals are a deceptive replacement for the avoidance of sin.

And, since I am such an amoral atheist, some would attempt to falsely label me as “sociopath” - - just as the constipated psychologists want to label anyone they see as “homophobic” with a mental illness for opposing the radical homosexual activists.

Today, “morals” are defined by a religious pagan philosophy based on esoteric hobgoblins. Transfiguration is a pantheon of fantasies as the medium of infinitization. Others get derision for having an unwavering Judaic belief in Yahweh or Yeshua, although their critics and enemies will evangelize insertion of phantasmagoric fetishisms into secular law.

A greater number of “atheists” and “pagans” adopt the same hackneyed tenets of a false Judaic-Christian ideal (golden calf). They also subscribe to the Judaic fetishism of “sin,” but will fight to their death in denial of it. Most of them are so wrapped up in their own polemics that they have become nothing more than pathetic anti-Christians with the same false hypocritical philosophy.

They just slap a new label on it hoping nobody will notice - - they replace the idea of “avoiding sin” with “morals.”

Anyone who says I am immoral is no different than any preacher or rabbi saying I am a sinner. I am not an orthodox atheist, nor am I an ecumenical atheist - - there is no such thing!

Objectivists have failed to see that gaping hole in the philosophy of Ayn Rand, whose egotism is taken directly from Thomas Hobbes, minus the Biblical arguments, and with a smattering of nihilism from Neitzche thrown in to sell books.

The Geneology of Morals, borrowing from Neitzche's title, is much like the geneology of drama from the ancient Greeks - - it is nothing more than an extension of religion, a psychodramatic game.

[LiteKeeper]

INTREP - the brain activity is more likely a response to the decisions, not the instigator of the responses

[steve-b]

Greene and his colleagues found "that brain areas associated with emotion and social cognition (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate/precuneus, and superior temporal sulcus/temperoparietal junction) exhibited increased activity while participants considered personal moral dilemmas, while 'cognitive' brain areas associated with abstract reasoning and problem solving exhibited increased activity while participants considered impersonal moral dilemmas."

The shriveling of the regions of the brain used to arrive at moral decisions is known as "Clinton Syndrome".

[Little Ray]

The trolley question is flawed - you don't switch the trolley or throw the fat stranger on the tracks - you warn the folks about to be hit and / or flag the trolley to brake.