Our Moral Tongue

Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking

The New York Times - JUNE 20, 2014

By BOAZ KEYSAR and ALBERT COSTA 

ON June 20, 2003, employees of the Union Pacific Railroad faced a difficult decision as a runaway train headed toward downtown Los Angeles: Should they divert the train to a side track, knowing it would derail and hit homes in the less populated city of Commerce, Calif.? Did the moral imperative to minimize overall harm outweigh the moral imperative not to intentionally harm an innocent suburb?

They chose to divert the train, which injured 13 people, including three children who were sent to the hospital.

This extreme real-life situation resembles a philosophical thought experiment known as the trolley problem, which was designed to probe our moral commitments. It goes like this: Imagine you are standing on a footbridge over rail tracks. An approaching trolley is about to kill five people farther down the tracks. The only way to stop it is to push a large man off the footbridge and onto the tracks below. This will save the five people but kill the man. (It will not help if you jump; you are not large enough.) Do you push him?

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