Professor Jonathan D. Cohen’s work on neuroscience and moral reasoning, highlighted in the Fall 2008 brochure of Aspire Princeton, provides a perfect example of why good scientists do not necessarily make good moral philosophers and confirms my decision not to give any money to Princeton until its moral compass is straightened out.
Professor Cohen considers the situation of five people on a railroad track with a train coming, a sixth person on an alternate track, and “Joe” at the switch who must decide which track to send the train down. Most people, Professor Cohen states correctly, would send the train down the alternate track, having one person die rather than five. He then considers a second situation in which Joe can save the five people only by actively killing the sixth person; most people say that Joe should not kill the sixth person. Professor Cohen incorrectly equates the two situations.
Professor Cohen fails to see that the action of throwing the switch does not intrinsically involve the taking of a human life, while actively killing the sixth person does. This is the heart of the difference between the two situations and is why most people’s answers to the two situations differ.
A less hypothetical version of this dilemma is the “admiral’s arithmetic” used at the Battle of Midway. The United States sent several squadrons of obsolete torpedo bombers against the Japanese carrier fleet. The bombers were sent on what was virtually a suicide mission, but the purpose of sending them was to sink the Japanese carriers rather than to kill the bomber crews. Professor Cohen would have us believe that the two purposes are morally indistinguishable, that sending the bombers into action is morally the same as standing their crews up and shooting them. He is wrong.