lecture 12

Question 1

Greene’s explanation

Answer 1

• the difference is due to the degree of emotional response
produced by the different dilemmas
• footbridge dilemma: engages emotional processing to a
greater extent, due to the required action to physically harm
another person
• the answer in the trolley dilemma is consequentialist,
whereas the answer to the footbridge dilemma is
deontological

Question 2

Both kinds of judgments involve different brain

mechanisms

Answer 2

• judging it appropriate to kill in the trolley dilemma involves brain
activity associated with cognitive control and conflict monitoring
• anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
(DLPFC)

• judging it inappropriate to kill one in the footbridge dilemma
involves brain activity associated with emotion and social
cognition
• ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC)

Question 3

Moving from ‘is’ to ‘ought

Answer 3

• Hume argues against rationalist philosophers who think
that they can derive ought from is by using reason alone
• reason alone cannot tell you what you morally ought to do,
you need the passions!
• if you want to punish plagiarism, and if John cheated, then
you ought to punish John

Question 4

The problem of justification

Answer 4

• science may be able to explain our moral values, they cannot justify
them (why are they good?)

Question 5

Three questions about personal identity

numerical identity

authenticity:

autonomy:

Answer 5

• numerical identity: what makes it the case that the person
considered at time t is the same person as the person
considered at time t*?
• authenticity: how can you be ‘yourself’?
• autonomy: what does it mean to make your own decisions
and take responsibility for them?

Question 6

John Locke (1632-1704) about personal identity

Answer 6

personal identity is about moral responsibility

• we remain the same person through time as long as
we have conscious memories about our previous self
• our identity reaches as far as our memory

Question 7

Responsibility

Answer 7

• if I consciously remember an act done in the past, then it does not
matter if my material body has changed in the meantime; it is still the
act of the same person
• if I do not consciously remember an act done in the past, then it does
not matter whether my material body has not changed in the meantime

Question 8

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Answer 8

• against Hobbes and his view of the ‘state of nature’

* ‘Amour de soi’ and ‘amour propre’

Question 9

what are ‘Amour de soi’ and ‘amour propre’?

Answer 9

• amour de soi: good kind of self-love that humans share with animals
and that predates the appearance of society (self-preservation)
• amour propre: bad kind of self-love that depends on how others see us;
subject to corruption, thereby causing vice and misery

Question 10

The emergence of society has changed the natural amour de soi
into the artifical amour de proper

Answer 10

• ‘Ie sentiment de l’existence’: the intimate, natural contact with oneself
that is the source of joy and contentment
• I have to decide for myself what concerns me (‘listen to my inner
voice’), rather than being shaped by unnatural external influences (i.e.
society and its laws of conformity)

Question 11

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)

Answer 11

• each of us has an original way of being human. Each person has his or
her own ‘measure’