Let’s get on board the trolleyology with David Edmonds, author of Would you kill the Fat Man? He details variants of the trolley problem, its philosophical interpretations, and its connections with the neurosciences of morality. Appear choices made personally by the philosophers summoned but no normative theory. Is it a preserve that must continue to be protected? Is morality an endangered species? Or can the T<>D, soliTary vs soliDary conflict, serve as a common thread?
Are cognitive biases stupid? asks the 2nd article. Since some make morally dubious choices, this is a trial made for intent. To save this unfortunate which is very useful to us, either we hide it (death without intention to give it), or we find mitigating circumstances: cognitive biases. It is a morgue of the downward look that exonerates the aristocratic consciousness by accusing the unconscious small staff. Let us rather look for the amoralities in the imbalances of the T<>D, the weakened D’s, in other words the defects of empathy. Let us emphasize this weakness in the courts of justice, rather than believing the reason of the people deficient, and framing it by a sterile multiplication of laws.
How to establish individual moral responsibility? The 3rd article examines the neuroscience of morality and the case of a sex offender cured by removal of a brain tumor. Can we get rid of our responsibility on neural links? Sterile question that opens the door to a fanaticism of the downward look, with a eugenics that would like to eliminate in our chromosomes mental deviances. Morality is at the crossroads of implicit innocence and explicit responsibility. Since society does not have the means to customize the level of responsibility, it is up to everyone to do so. It is up to everyone to claim their rights when they feel ready to assume the obligations attached, instead of receiving the complete package at their majority, a parachute triggered by 18 rounds of the Earth around the Sun.
The 4th article explains why utilitarianism is fundamentally flawed and cannot guide our moral choices. It treats the collective as a living entity whose individual cells would be expendable. No, individuals alone have the opportunity to offer their unique life. Society is a manager of resources, not lives. It is superior to egos but not to individuals in their completeness. The divinization of the collective by utilitarian philosophy has caused the regression of authentic solidarity, which is now expected of the supreme entity, the State, rather than exercising it oneself.
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