Moral Conundrums: Logic or Emotion

The Oxford dictionary defines the word conundrum as "a confusing problem or question that is very difficult to solve". Combining the word moral with it makes it a question or problem of ethics, that is, whether the solution is good or bad, justified or unjustified. 

Moral conundrums are simple, interesting gateways into the world of the study of ethics and psychology, however they're often criticised for oversimplifying complex problems, especially when it comes to ethics. 

It's wise therefore to understand that there will always be a divide between controlled environments and a realistic environment and adjust one's expectations of the result according to that.

You might have heard of the trolley problem, few haven't heard of it or at least a variation of it. 

The most basic version goes as such:

There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the sidetrack. You have two (and only two) options:

1. Do nothing, in which case the trolley will kill the five people on the main track.
2. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

A difficult choice to be certain. I think it's crucial to understand that no matter how the situation proceeds, no matter what choice you make, you will incur a loss. This is the burden of making a decision. If you go with Option 1 five people die and even if there is no one else to witness this, your conscience will witness it. If you go with Option 2 you will save five lives at the cost of one but you will still be taking an innocent life indirectly.

Now I want you to think for a moment. What would you do? 

Would you take action to save the life of the five? Or would you do nothing?

Most people when presented with this question choose option two and herein lies the limitation of this question. This question is more of arithmetic sort rather than any ethical problem. If we're assuming that all six lives are innocent and equal and that no matter what you do at least one will be lost, you're priority becomes one of the numbers. Five lives saved is better than one life saved logically speaking, so that is the correct answer. Or is it?

This question can be made even more complex by one very simple and yet consequential action: Giving them details.

What if the one person on the first track is the president or leader of a country? His death would certainly cause turmoil which gives the potential for much more deaths than five deaths?

What if the one person notices you and pleads to you while the five don't?

Another variation of this problem is called, "The Fat Man".

This is a more absurd and yet complex variation.

Imagine if an extremely heavy-set man or if I'm being crude, an extremely fat man is standing next to you on a bridge under which some a track passes. Five people lie on the track bound and are unable to move. You can stop the trolley if you push the fat man over onto the tracks, he has enough weight to stop the trolley. So your choices are as such.

1. Do nothing and allow the five people to die
2. Push the fat man over the railing, stopping the trolley but killing him.

This is where the question gets interesting. For the previous question, most people believed that the second option was the right choice due to the net assets being higher because, in that question the human beings were presented as numbers, you didn't know anything about them, other than the fact they're peers of your species.

The answers for this were more divided, several people went with the option to retain net assets, but surprisingly people were more hesitant to go with the second option this time.

Why was this so? After all, it's effectively the same result, one person dies and five people are saved. What makes people choose differently this time around or for that matter be hesitant?

The answer is that this time, they're directly involved with their action and its consequences. 

In the first situation, there is a middleman between your decision and your consequence. The lever. You aren't sentencing the man to death, you're just pulling a lever. Of course, you're aware of the consequence this poses but just this one factor affects your action to such a degree.

Also to note, in the second scenario, you're culpable. It isn't unintentional, you intended to push the man down to save the life of the five. However noble your intentions were you still killed that person of your own volition.

To make it easier to visualise, let's assume you love eating chicken. You'd eat it anytime if it were offered to you, but let's assume that the step of killing the chicken is added in. After all the chicken has to die if you want to eat it. Would you still want to eat it?

Isn't it fascinating how just a tweak here and there can affect our decisions so greatly? Why do we make such decisions and indeed which decisions do we make?

I have no answer for that. Situations or scenarios as described above or incredibly improbable and are unrealistic, but difficult decisions or moral conundrums are sure to come by in your life. The decision you make depends on you. What are your morals? What do you gain? What do you lose? There is no one size fits all, it's highly individualistic.

It brings us to the question, which is more important? Logic? Or Emotion?

Opinions will vary but my opinion is this: Emotion slightly over logic. If I were to represent it in percentages, It would be 60% emotion and 40% logic.

I feel that if life were ideal, we wouldn't be emotional. Emotion is cumbersome, it makes decisions needlessly hard to fulfil some sort of moral obligation and for what? The answer to that question is what makes me arrive at this opinion of "emotion slightly over logic". 

Emotion is what makes us human, our joy, sorrow, anger, envy all makes us human. Sure if we were 100% logical we would be at our most efficient, but we wouldn't be human anymore and at that point, is it worth it all?

Then why not go with 100% emotion? As important emotion is, we can't discard our practical needs, you can't eat goodwill nor drink kindness. In fact, most of our emotion today is rooted in material things. Aren't you happy when you get some money? A new game? Some great food? Logic is important to keep us grounded in reality and emotion is important to ensure that we stay humane. 

However, on the odd chance that you're confronted with such a problem, a moral conundrum. That 40% of logic will ensure that you can think clearly, but the 60% emotion will make that decision. If you're in touch with yourself, that will usually be the answer for you.

So this is my take on an infinitely complex problem for now at least: I don't claim my answer to be the correct answer, indeed I encourage you to think on this deeply, and arrive at the answer, then you will understand yourself much better.