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Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking

nytimes.com

11–20 of 50 posts

Re: Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking

#11
post #5

Pushing the large man is risky, you can't be 100% sure that it will work, and you can't be absolutely sure that five people will die if you don't do it. So it could be the willingness to take chances rather than the moral judgments.

Normally uncooperative subjects like you are simply removed from the study :-)

Re: Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking

#12
post #8
post #5

Pushing the large man is risky, you can't be 100% sure that it will work, and you can't be absolutely sure that five people will die if you don't do it. So it could be the willingness to take chances rather than the moral judgments.

In the context of the thought problem it works 100% of the time.

This is not an abstract logical problem. If you imagine yourself in the situation, it still feels like taking a risk, and this will influence your answer.

Re: Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking

#13
post #8
post #5

Pushing the large man is risky, you can't be 100% sure that it will work, and you can't be absolutely sure that five people will die if you don't do it. So it could be the willingness to take chances rather than the moral judgments.

In the context of the thought problem it works 100% of the time.

Even if I am confident that pushing a fat man onto some tracks will stop a trolley and save lives, it is much more likely that I have gone insane than that actually being the case. If this dilemma happened in real life, hopefully I would recognize my insanity and not push the fat man.

Re: Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking

#14
post #10

When I first heard this problem, it was told in a heart-wrenching first-person 'this actually happened' way. Roughly as follows: "A man who worked the gears for a train line took his son to work. His son ran off to play and when it came time for him to divert a train (not doing so would cause a head on collision) he couldn't see his son, but he heard him cry out - he was stuck in the gears. Diverting the train would…

Hmm, I think that is a different problem (too many different variables).

It involves the rights and obligations of a parent, for one.

I also agree I might have chosen differently if it were my son.

Re: Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking

#15
> Extreme moral dilemmas are supposed to touch the very core of our moral being. So why the inconsistency?

This question doesn't seem scientific.

I would say, "We didn't predict this outcome, what's wrong with our theory?"

If you're observing something in nature, in this case people, calling nature inconsistent doesn't make sense. Nature is consistent. Your theory has problems if it calls nature inconsistent.

Re: Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking

#16
post #4

I wonder if this might not be something else. When you study a language in a classroom, you frequently engage in conversations on various topics, whose sole purpose is to make you practice much more than to actually have a well-thought conversation. As such (and here I speak from my own experience only), it is much more common to defend positions in which you don't actually believe, for the sake of argument or maybe…

Neither of the two languages a bilingual person speaks is considered foreign. Otherwise the person would not be bilingual. What would be the result of such a study? Keep in mind that in linguistics the difference between being a native speaker and having learned a language after the critical period is considered huge.

Re: Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking

#19
I have a theory about why that is.

In the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" there are a number of experiments described that show that human thought can roughly be separated into two systems, one of which is intuitive, fast, heuristic, and low-energy, and the other which is rational, analytical, uses more calories, and is only engaged when necessary.

We use the first system most of the time, and only use the second system when we really need to. They found that when people were given something to read in a smaller font, their responses to it were more rational.

This might be the same effect - if the second system is already engaged due to the difficulty of understanding the other language, the result is a more rational response.

It's a very interesting book, and well done. It's a bit long, but thorough. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

Re: Moral Judgments Depend on What Language We’re Speaking

#20
post #17

Despite English not being my native language, I would object to pushing the man in front of the train. Does that mean my mastery of English is sufficient that it can touch me on the same level as my native language?

If you read the numbers this isn't exactly exceptional. You share the opinion of the majority of the participants of the study.
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