Human Morality - Marc Hauser - 2

This is the second part of an edited version of Marc Hauser's lecture on human moral psychology.

This segment will make much more sense if part 1 is viewed first: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiUqBK...

In this segment, Hauser completes his description of the Trolley problem and conclusions based on his research into how humans make moral decisions. A modification of the Trolley problem has been designed to reduce the variables in order to dissect out whether people are able to coherently account for the Principle of Double Effect.

NEXT ... does religious belief affect moral decision making. Place your bets ...


Marc D. Hauser is an evolutionary biologist who teaches at the Psychology Department at Harvard University.
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/H...
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/

Moral Sense Test website:
http://moral.wjh.harvard.edu/

The term morality can be used either
1.descriptively to refer to a code of conduct put forward by a society or,
a.some other group, such as a religion, or
b.accepted by an individual for her own behavior or
2.normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mor...

The Trolley problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_...

Doctrine of Double Effect
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dou...
Principle of double effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principl...

My thanks to AncientAtheist for sending this link to a long, but interesting article by Steven Pinker:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/mag...

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  Education

[dewinthemorning]

What a good and interesting video! (Even if I've watched it already :D)

[musekiteer]

On pangeaprogress or on the other channel? ;D

[dewinthemorning]

Pangeaprogress, I think.

[musekiteer]

That's where I found it. I simply downloaded it as an mp3 and "illustrated" it -- which was a great deal more work!

[memills2]

Excellent -- plan to use it in my evolutionary psychology class (even if I have to push a fat man off a bridge to do it).

[dewinthemorning]

Looking forward to the "impact of religion" video.

[dewinthemorning]

"I 'should' push the man from the bridge".

Does anybody consider the following: the bystander on the bridge, instead of pushing a heavy man (which is very distasteful to me), throwing him- or herself (if s/he is also 'heavy'), thereby saving lives. Honestly, I did consider this. :)

[dewinthemorning]

@musekiteer,

"Yhey are not controlling for unfamiliarity with verbalizing automatic judgements for which there is no "written" law."

You are, apparently, very much acquainted with psychology, you should be one of the organizers of such an experiment. :D

[musekiteer]

After I have finished the "impact of religion" video, I think that I'll make another about the sequencing.