Psychological explanations tend to consider the factors that lead different people to their preferred answers and why different people are sensitive different contexts of the question. They answer why people answer the questions the way they do. According to John Mikhail, the answers given in the Trolley Problem were not dependent on factors such as age, gender, educational background or cultural background. He argued that people were guided by a certain “moral grammar” which was unconscious, and this gave the answers consistency in spite of other factors. Moral explanations focus on the rightness or wrongness of the issue at hand. With moral explanations, evidence is not given. While psychological explanations can be proved, moral explanations are not based on any evidence and cannot be proved. They are simply based on societal approvals and disapprovals. These moral approvals and disapprovals may also prove quite hypocritical as they constantly change depending on the situation at hand.
One main problem with psychological explanations is that they do not consider the morality of issues. They also fail to give an answer to the trolley problem. People who offer psychological solutions only look into the reasons for giving the particular answers. They do not offer any answers to the questions or offer any suggestions. Instead they focus on the reasons for answers given. Moral explanations on the other hand do not give empirical evidence for the answers given as they are based on societal norms and personal beliefs. Moral explanations also tend to be biased and non -standardized. An example of this is in the trolley question. In the case of the lever, it is okay to kill on man to save five, but it is wrong to kill the big man by throwing him in the path of the trolley to eave five. In both cases, one dies so that five can live. This shows that moral explanations do not use standardized measures in their answers.
The main reason why people choose to pull the lever and kill one man instead of five, while they are opposed to killing the big man and saving the five is because in the case of the lever, the man appears to already be in danger. The man in this situation appears to have contributed to endangering himself by being on an active track. In the case of the big man, pushing him onto the track would put him in danger when he did not choose the situation himself. Pushing him onto the track means being actively involved in endangering him when he was in no danger at all, and when he did not in any way choose to be in that situation. In this case, the person is directly to blame for the demise of the big man while in the case of the lever the fault is not so direct. Their involvement in the death of the other man is not direct as in the death of the big man. People either consciously or unconsciously choose the answer that appears to be logical and fairer to all parties involved. This is because this answer has less guilt attached as they are not entirely to blame for the man’s misfortune.
Works Cited
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Mikhail, John. "Moral Grammar and Human Rights: Some Reflections on Cognitive Science and Enlightenment Rationalism." Georgetown Public Law Research Paper (2012): 11-124. Print.
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