Joshua Greene

They get hit by the trolley, but it stops the trolley from running over the fire.

Is that okay?

I felt, and most people think that that's wrong.

And I thought, ah, this is like the perfect fruit fly.

Because here you've got the biggest divide in Western moral philosophies between the utilitarians like John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, who are saying morality is ultimately about producing good consequences.

And the kind of Kantians who say, no, morality is fundamentally about people's rights and our duties to respect those rights and certain lines that must not be crossed or must be crossed.

And in the original switch case, where you can turn the trolley away from the five and onto the one, to the extent you agree with most people that it's okay to hit the switch, that fits very well with the utilitarian perspective, or consequentialist is how philosophers often say it.

But the footbridge case, it seems like a real vindication for Kant and the Kantians that no, even sometimes when it's you can promote the greater good, even if we grant that all of this will work, etc.,

it still seems wrong, right?

And I felt that and I was like, what is going on there?

And then I got more into the psychology and ultimately into the neuroscience behind that switch footbridge distinction in our heads.

And that kind of is what turned me from being just a regular philosopher into being a philosopher slash experimental psychologist slash cognitive neuroscientist.

So there are some philosophers whose ideas really matter a lot.

And the living philosopher who's been most important to me is the philosopher Peter Singer, who kind of blew my mind back in those early days when I was thinking about these types of moral dilemmas.

Just a quick background.

So Peter Singer...

And his ideas have literally saved millions of people's lives.

So philosophy is kind of a

it's a high stakes hit or miss.

The people who make a difference make an enormous difference.