[Moral Dilemma]

BRAIN TEASER

From "Brain in a Vat," in issue number 13 of bOING bOING, a quarterly

published in Los Angeles. The scenario was originally posted anonymously

on the Internet.

Consider the following case: A brain in a vat is at the wheel of a runaway trolley

approaching a fork in the track. The brain is hooked up to the trolley in such

a way that the brain can determine which course the trolley will take. There

are only two options: the right side of the fork or the left side. There is no way

to derail or stop the trolley and the brain is aware of this. On the right side of

the track there is a single railroad worker, Jones, who will definitely be killed

if the brain steers the trolley to the right. If Jones lives he will go on to kill five

men for the sake of thirty orphans (one of the five men he will kill is planning

to destroy a bridge that the orphans' bus will be crossing later that night). One

of the orphans who will be killed would have grown up to become a tyrant

who made good, utilitarian men do bad things, another would have become

John Sununu, and a third would have invented the pop-top can.

If the brain in the vat chooses the left side of the track, the trolley will definitely

hit and kill another railman, Leftie, and will hit and destroy ten beating hearts

on the track that would have been transplanted into ten patients at the local

hospital who will die without donor hearts. These are the only hearts available,

and the brain is aware of this. If the railman on the left side of the track lives,

he, too, will kill five men--in fact, the same five that the railman on the right

would kill. However, Leftie will kill the five as an unintended consequence of

saving ten men: he will inadvertently kill the five men as he rushes the ten hearts

to the local hospital for transplantation. A further result of Leftie's act is that the

busload of orphans will be spared. Among the five men killed by Leftie is the

man responsible for putting the brain at the controls of the trolley. If the ten

hearts and Leftie are killed by the trolley, the ten prospective heart-transplant

patients will die and their kidneys will be used to save the lives of twenty

kidney-transplant patients, one of whom will grow up to cure cancer and one

of whom will grow up to be Hitler. There are other kidneys and dialysis

machines available, but the brain does not know this.

Assume that the brain's choice, whatever it turns out to be, will serve as an example

to other brains in vats, and thus the effects of its decision will be amplified. Also

assume that if the brain chooses the right side of the fork, an unjust war free of war

crimes will ensue, whereas if the brain chooses the left fork, a just war fraught with

war comes will result. Furthermore, there is an intermittently active Cartesian demon

deceiving the brain in such a way that the brain is never sure if it is being deceived.

Question: Ethically speaking, what should the brain do? Justify your answer

Harper's Magazine, May 1996, pp 26-30.