Joshua Greene

He wrote a paper in the late 18th century, so late 1700s,

arguing that, you know, from the principle of utility, from the idea that, like, is this actually causing any harm, that maybe there's nothing wrong with two men, you know, having a sexual relationship.

And that was...

like insane, you know, culturally at his time, right?

But he applied his principle in an impartial way.

And in my view, sort of jumped ahead two centuries in moral thinking.

Let's suppose he was neurodivergent.

I would imagine that that would contribute to his capacity to see that because if you're very tuned into the social world and what other people will think of you,

you might be less willing to reach that conclusion and put pen to paper with that.

Whereas if you're a bit sort of socially detached, but you've got a good thinking reasoning brain, then you might get there.

So it's a nice case where at least it's possible that his neurodivergence, if that's in fact what he had, was a kind of philosophical strength.

Well, so, I mean, there's no agreement about this.

Yeah, yeah, I know, but... I don't like the word utilitarian.

I prefer to call myself a deep pragmatist, which I think better captures sort of my philosophical orientation.

But no, this is highly controversial.

And in fact, part of the reason why I and other people have spent so much time on these trolley dilemmas is because these are objections to utilitarianism.

That I kind of had the thought, yeah, great or good, that makes sense.

But then we had the debater asking me, is it okay to kill one person and give their organs to five other people?

Those are very salient objections.

And I wanted to understand the objections.