Which one of the statements regarding making choices in moral dilemmas is true?

Abstract

Building simulated affects into artifacts poses a moral dilemma. On the one hand, in order for humans to interact fully with machines, the machines need to meet them on human terms, and this requires machines that are capable of assessing human affective states and responding to them in kind. On the other hand, doing so amounts to a fundamental deception that humans will find it hard to keep in mind, namely that these machines do not actually have these affective states and may not, therefore, be worthy of our attachment and our moral regard. Yet, simulated affects, we argue, are necessary for creating machines that can make moral decisions, that affects are essential for disambiguating the utterances of machines and humans, and that not all forms of deception are bad. After an initial provocation, these arguments are taken up in order, after which we argue further that while simulated affects are necessary, they could nonetheless lead to abuse. Therefore, the standard ethical limits and principles involved with any technological innovation must be respected.

Moral Judgments

Studies have found significant neurological differences between subjects making judgments on moral personal dilemmas, and those contemplating impersonal moral dilemmas and non-moral dilemmas. Moral dilemmas involving a personal component—where one is asked to consider whether they would personally perform some moral or immoral act—seem to activate the orbital, ventromedial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), the medial frontal gyrus, and possibly the posterior cingulate cortex, amygdala and inferior parietal lobe. These regions are associated with integration of emotions, mental imagery, and memories into decision-making; representation of rewards and punishments; and control of risky or inappropriate behavior. In addition, the medial frontal gyrus, anterior and posterior cingulate cortex, and temporal areas (such as the superior temporal sulcus and temporal pole) are also associated with moral judgment. These areas are correlated with theory of mind, the ability human beings have to attribute mental states to others as a means to understand and predict their behavior.

Antonio Damasio and colleagues found that patients with damage to the posterior ventromedial cortex have impaired ability to make moral judgments. However, their impairment was primarily emotional; they appeared to have an inability to generate and effectively use what Damasio calls “somatic markers”: neural representations of body states that give potential bodily actions a (sometimes unconscious) emotional feel making them more or less appealing. If you ask a subject without ventromedial damage to imagine running over another person in their car, he or she tends to have a negative emotional response in association with the mental image. Asked to imagine the same scenario, subjects with ventromedial damage have no problem forming a mental representation of performing the act and its consequences, or understanding that society would judge such as act as wrong or criminal. However, they fail to have a normal emotional response to the mental image.

It seems the more personal a moral dilemma, the stronger ones' potential emotional response. Greene and Haidt scanned subjects using an fMRI while the subjects responded to a series of personal and impersonal moral dilemmas, as well as non-moral dilemmas. They determined a moral violation is personal if it is clear that the subject was hurting some particular other person, whereas it is impersonal if it didn't require the subject directly harm someone else. A classic philosophical thought experiment, for example, asks whether the subject would pull a switch to move a trolley car from one track, where five people are likely to be hit by the trolley and killed, to a second track, where only one person is going to be hit and killed. This is an impersonal moral dilemma, because it does not require that the subject's act directly cause harm, but only deflect harm from one party to another. On the other hand, when subjects are asked to push a fat man onto the tracks to derail the trolley to keep the five persons from being killed, the dilemma becomes personal, because it requires direct harm be caused by the subject to a person who would otherwise be safe.

Greene and Haidt found that responding to personal moral dilemmas, as compared with impersonal and non-moral dilemmas, produced increased activity in the medial frontal gyrus, posterior cingulated gyrus, and the angular gyrus. These areas are associated with social and emotional processing. Impersonal and non-moral dilemmas, on the other hand, produced increased activity in areas associated with working memory, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal areas. These findings again indicate the importance of emotional input in moral decision-making: subjects faced with a moral dilemma tended to be quick to moral condemnation but slow to approval of personal violations, apparently due to the salience of negative emotions, whereas approvals and disapprovals took equally long when subjects were faced with impersonal and non-moral dilemmas.

In sum, neuroscience indicates that many different capacities are important to moral reasoning and judgment, including normal decision-making and theory of mind capacities; however, the importance of emotional input may be particularly important to moral judgments (as opposed to many other types of judgments).

1.2 Bilingualism and moral decision making

Another important domain in which researchers have examined the effects of bilingualism is in moral decision making. In another foundational study, researchers presented participants with the classic moral dilemma known as the “footbridge dilemma” (Costa et al., 2014). In this problem, participants are presented with an imaginary scenario in which a runaway trolley is about to hit and kill a group of five people standing on the tracks. Participants are told that the only way to stop it is to push a heavy stranger off the footbridge in front of the trolley. This will kill the stranger, but save the five people. Killing the stranger to save five people is referred to as the “utilitarian solution” as it maximizes the benefits for the greatest amount of affected individuals. Not pushing the stranger and letting the five people die is the “deontological solution” as it places rights or duties above that of other considerations (i.e., deliberately killing under any circumstances is wrong).

This study found that presenting the scenario in a non-native language increased people's willingness to push the stranger off the footbridge (Costa et al., 2014). Specifically, approximately 20% of participants would the push the stranger off the footbridge when encountering the dilemma in their native language, but this proportion jumps to 50% if the dilemma is presented in a non-native language. The explanation for this result is still debated. In particular, this type of moral dilemma is thought to invoke two competing psychological responses (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001). The initial and more automatic response is thought to be one that engages more emotional processes—leading to the deontological option (e.g., aversion to pushing someone to their death). The later controlled response engages more deliberative cognitive processing (i.e., calculating that sacrificing one life to save the many can be reasonable)—leading to the utilitarian solution.

Researchers theorize that because individuals are typically less fluent in their non-native language, they are much more likely to exert effort in attempting to comprehend the scenario and therefore engage in a greater level of deliberative processing. This increase in deliberative processing causes an increase in people's tendency to pick the utilitarian solution. However, an alternative explanation is that individuals possess less emotional associations with their non-native than native language. In this instance, use of a non-native language stunts emotional processing which, in turn, attenuates considerations of deontological rules, such as the prohibition against killing.

Scenario three

“My computer crashed and I had car trouble this week. I was not able to submit my work but will submit soon.”

As an online student (and some adult learners are aware of this and comply), it is your responsibility to submit work, as explained in Chapter 5 regarding moral dilemmas and online excuses. Think about these scenarios for another second. If you were in a traditional classroom, that is a face-to-face college, would you inform your instructor that you cannot submit work because you were married last week, but you are going to submit it now? There are certain liberties that online students take that are not necessarily displayed in face-to-face academic settings. Some students in a traditional college usually accept the responsibility for their work if it is missed, without the excuses or rationale that some online students present. Sometimes students in a traditional college will explain extenuating events that have led to missed work, such as the loss of a loved one. Usually, the school has a policy in place for missed work. The daily occurrences that some online students wish to disclose for courses that are usually five to ten weeks at the most are unnecessary. It is important as the adult learner to submit your work and adhere to the school’s late policy in the event that you cannot submit work. The instructor does not need to be informed about your daily hassles.

There should not be constant excuses provided in emails about class work. It is wise to consider having a backup plan for technical issues. Simply because you are enrolled in an online class and have computer issues, this does not pardon work being missed. There will be technology issues and that is inevitable. Commitment to class work is your ethical responsibility if you want to meet your degree goals; it is the acceptable choice.

1:00 PM

‘I’m very pleased with the progress you’ve been making on your senior project, Miles,’ said Dr Li with a smile. ‘Explain to me again why you believe that your sims are showing signs of free will.’

‘It’s their preferences, Dr Li!’ Miles reports, ‘Kurzweil, one of my oldest sims, is choosing blue clothing at a rate outside statistical probabilities. In fact, even though he has a choice of several dozen coloured garments from which to choose each day, he almost always chooses blue. He also seems to like anchovies on his pizza.’

‘And you are sure this is not a programming bug?’ asked Dr Li.

‘I’ve gone over the selection routines about twenty times and asked three others in my PLN to do independent audits of the code. Everyone agrees that Kurzweil should be making random choices.’

Dr Li and Miles confer for nearly an hour, once bringing in Ms King, a Hong Kong librarian who specialises in science fiction in popular culture and its treatment of religious and moral dilemmas. She quickly produces a qualitative list of works in which self-aware technologies are featured.19

‘Here’s one last dimension you might want to consider,’ suggests Dr Li. ‘What might be the meaning of this discovery on how we as humans view ourselves? That we humans may merely be ‘sims’ in a great cosmic programming plan?’20

Miles checks to make sure his audio note-taker 21 caught this question, before agreeing that this was a good idea.

‘Oh, before you go, I also want to check how the composition of your PLN is working for you. I understand that you did not accept my suggestion of dropping your grandfather’s membership in favour of adding a second programming expert.’

Miles considered his PLN. The school requires that all students have a ‘formal’ personal learning network of twelve members. (Like other students, Miles’s informal PLN has more than 100 members at any one time accessed by a variety of networking tools.) For their formal PLN, some students create expert groups from specialised fields of high interest; others form a group with as diverse a representation as possible. Librarians are a part of nearly every student’s PLN and they take this responsibility seriously.22

‘With all respect, Dr Li, I did keep Grandpa Doug on my PLN rather than choose another expert. I recognise he knows little about my major areas of study and is hopelessly out of date on anything technology related, but because of his advanced age, he sometimes adds a sense of perspective that I don’t get from other students or experts,’ Miles maintains. ‘He’s also good for a joke now and then.’

Dr Li nods. ‘Perspective is valuable, I will admit. But I’ve seen his jokes – pathetic!’

Miles thanks Dr Li, and asks his librarian avatar Marian to send his advisor’s last question out to his PLN for input, thankful his senior year and this project are nearly complete. Miles is looking forward to his first year as a North Dakota State University Bison. His older brother Paul, however, has warned him that his first year of college will be tough since many professors still lecture. He advises making sure his PDA has a full battery charge for multi-tasking during the core courses.

Imaging Moral Emotions

Another category of social emotions, namely, moral emotions, dictate what is ethically ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in a given situation. As might be expected by the foregoing discussion, when participants are asked to resolve various moral dilemmas during imaging, MPFC activation is observed. Specifically, comparisons between making moral-personal (e.g., the footbridge dilemma), moral-impersonal (e.g., the trolley dilemma), and neutral (or nonmoral) decisions revealed that MPFC and posterior cingulate gyrus are significantly more active in the moral-personal condition than in the moral-impersonal and the nonmoral conditions. MPFC activation also emerges when morality is measured by eliciting disgust or indignation from the observer. For instance, participants who read a series of disgust-inducing (e.g., “A friend told you about a newspaper headline. A man had died after he ate a living rat”) or indignation-causing (e.g., “As you arrived home, you saw that the nurse has put a spider on the baby’s face”) statements showed heightened MPFC and orbitofrontal activation to both the disgust- and indignation-inducing statements. Disgust also elicited greater amygdala and anterior cingulate response as compared to indignation, whereas the latter elicited greater insula and right inferior frontal gyrus.

Substantial evidence has also been found in the patient literature that lends support to these findings. Patients who have experienced damage to regions of the prefrontal cortex, including MPFC and orbitofrontal cortex, early in life (i.e., before 2 years) show extensive deficits in their ability to engage in moral reasoning tasks. Together, the findings from emerging neuroscience and patient research suggest that the prefrontal cortex, particularly the MPFC, has a critical role in moral reasoning.

2.1 Intrapersonal Conflict and Development

Intrapersonal conflict is instrumental to the attainment of several important milestones in socioemotional development. First, conflict may prompt changes in internal schema and mental structures. Accommodation (Piaget 1985) exemplifies this process: A child confronted with a difficult moral dilemma may be forced to disregard views previously held dear in order to objectively consider different perspectives and reach a fair solution. Alternatively, conflict may give rise to changes in perceptions and priorities. Cognitive dissonance (Festinger 1957) typifies this mechanism: A child forced to select a single partner for an outing may find that, in so choosing, the esteem of one friend has been enhanced at the expense of others. Finally, conflict may alter affect and impulse control. A child who opts to delay gratification in the hopes of improved rewards will learn to succeed by cultivating strategies that minimize emotional arousal and divert attention from proximate stimuli.

Theory concerning the ontogenetic significance of intrapersonal conflict has outpaced research on the topic. There is less research on emotional development than on cognitive and social–cognitive development, but the available evidence supports the assertion that the influence of intrapersonal conflict is defined by the topic of disagreement and the cognitive or affective domain invoked. Furthermore, effects are qualified by individual timetables: Development mediates the influence of conflict. The likelihood that some developmental periods are more susceptible to alterations than others leads to the provocative suggestion that intrapersonal conflict is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for development but rather a factor that may, at certain times, facilitate advances in the specific emotional or cognitive arena in which it arises (Shantz and Hartup 1992).

The Moral Judgment Interview

Kohlberg's definition of morality as justice, his emphasis on studying the development of moral reasoning, and his aim of charting moral development throughout the life span led him to construct a semiclinical moral judgment interview. His original interview posed ten hypothetical moral dilemmas drawn, not from familiar episodes in the world of children (as were Piaget's) but from challenging problems in the world of adults. Kohlberg regarded the Heinz dilemma (slightly abbreviated here) as his best:

In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was a drug that could save her but the druggist was charging twice as much as the sick woman's husband, Heinz, could raise. Heinz pleaded with the druggist, but the druggist said, “No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it.” Heinz has exhausted all other alternatives, should he steal the drug?

The Heinz dilemma puts subjects in the uncomfortable position of having to decide between his wife's claim to life and the druggist's legally sanctioned claim to property. The point of the interview is not to identify subjects’ action choices but to examine the ways in which they justify their choices; therefore, interviewers are instructed to ask subjects to present, elaborate, and clarify their arguments.

What is a true moral dilemma?

What is a moral dilemma when a person must make a choice?

What are the 3 moral dilemmas?

What is an example of a moral dilemma?