CAN BAD MEN MAKE GOOD BRAINS DO BAD THINGS?
Immortalist
On Twin Earth, a brain in a vat is at the wheel of a runaway trolley.
There are only two options that the brain can take: the right side of
the fork in the track or the left side of the fork. There is no way in
sight of derailing or stopping the trolley and the brain is aware of
this, for the brain knows trolleys. The brain is causally hooked up to
the trolley such that the brain can determine the course which the
trolley will take.
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 the railman on the right lives, he will go on to kill
five men for the sake of killing them, but in doing so will
inadvertently save the lives 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 that will be killed
would have grown up to become a tyrant who would make good utilitarian
men do bad things. Another of the orphans would grow up to become
G.E.M. Anscombe, while a third would invent the pop-top can.
If the brain in the vat chooses the left side of the track, the
trolley will definitely hit and kill a railman on the left side of the
track, "Leftie" and will hit and destroy ten beating hearts on the
track that could (and would) have been transplanted into ten patients
in the local hospital that will die without donor hearts. These are
the only hearts available, and the brain is aware of this, for the
brain knows hearts. 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 rushing the ten hearts to the local hospital for
transplantation. A further result of "Leftie's" act would be that the
busload of orphans will be spared. Among the five men killed by
"Leftie" are both the man responsible for putting the brain at the
controls of the trolley, and the author of this example. 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, however the
brain does not know kidneys, and this is not a factor.
Assume that the brain's choice, whatever it turns out to be, will
serve as an example to other brains-in-vats and so the effects of his
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,
while if the brain chooses the left fork, a just war fraught with war
crimes will result. Furthermore, there is an intermittently active
Cartesian demon deceiving the brain in such a manner that the brain is
never sure if it is being deceived.
QUESTION: What should the brain do?
[ALTERNATIVE EXAMPLE: Same as above, except the brain has had a
commisurotomy, and the left half of the brain is a consequentialist
and the right side is an absolutist.]
john keats
But what if a brain (or mind) is split in half and becomes two brains
(or minds). If John has his mind split in two then two Johns exist.
But the two Johns then will bear the same memory as each other but
will start completely different paths to each another. The first John
will be the true John and the second John will be the true John. But
the two Johns will both bear memories such as the first day at school
etc.
If Jane the mother of John meets either John 1 or 2 then either John
is her son and has the memory of her son. But the difference here is
that the two John's start to live seperate lives.
John Keats
Errol
Questions
1) Is the bus a diesel?
2) Is the railway worker welsh?
ZerkonXXXX
> for the brain knows trolleys.
Let's STOP HERE!!
A brain can not "know" trolleys. A brain can not see, hear, smell or
touch, and in fact can not think of a trolley without some past or
present sensory experience as an addition to itself.
Everything else follows. 'Killing' 'people' 'five' 'lives' 'kidneys' all
are unknown and unknowable to a brain.
Zinnic
This is a trick question! There is no valid answer unless you provide
the key fact that you have deliberately ommitted! :-)
Errol
Just imagine you have fallen through a rabbit hole.
See? everything is now possible. The brain knows trolleys.
mrdilligent
From: Immortalist
<<Consider the following case:
<<On Twin Earth, a brain in a vat is at the wheel of a runaway
trolley.
There are only two options that the brain can take: the right side of
the fork in the track or the left side of the fork. There is no way in
sight of derailing or stopping the trolley and the brain is aware of
this, for the brain knows trolleys. The brain is causally hooked up to
the trolley such that the brain can determine the course which the
trolley will take.>>
Etcetera.
This is ludicrous. It is an example of exactly nothing. It is not
about brains---not those in vats nor those inside human skulls---it is
about future events. Future events are built from miniscule
variables, in complex sequence, all of which are covered under the
broad headings of "nature" and "nurture." Hitler would not have
become the notorious kill-the-world dictator he did because of what
some brain once did; read his bio. Every miniscule event that
happened to him and how he reacted, from zygotehood on, is what led
him to be what he became.
Not even a chess game could predict the future events you list, and
modern computer chess is not about qualitative events, but about the
statistical "skeleton" that is the numeralogical outcome (though chess
was originally invented to illustrate how qualitative events are the
product of miniscule variables in complex sequence).
And btw, if a brain (rather, brain CELL) can know about hearts, it
also knows about kidneys .. . and livers, and pancreases, and blood
cells. . . . . Everything in the body.
Then there is Keats' response :
Date: Wed, May 20 2009 10:46 pm
From: john keats
<<But what if a brain (or mind) is split in half and becomes two
brains
(or minds). If John has his mind split in two then two Johns exist.
But the two Johns then will bear the same memory as each other but
will start completely different paths to each another. The first John
will be the true John and the second John will be the true John. But
the two Johns will both bear memories such as the first day at school
etc.>>
Brains do NOT mitosize. Cells do.
Bone up on your biology, guys.
Errol
I think it is supposed to be a rather elaborate and clever joke, not
to be taken too seriously (unless you are also joking too)
Zinnic
Like it is biologically and metaphorically possible to put one's
tongue in one's cheek?
mrdilligent
Date: Thurs, May 21 2009 5:47 am
From: ZerkonXXXX
<<Let's STOP HERE!!
You are right---and wrong.
You are right that a brain cannot know trolleys, nor can it see,
hear,, smell, etc. It receives information FROM the senses, and
without them, it could not know---if the brain's neurons could grasp
the vision or concept of a trolley, which they can't.
But a brain qua brain cannot know, or think, anything. It is a
machine. A machine made up of living cells, which ARE alive, and CAN
know and think. Think of the brain as a "bucket brigade"; the brigade
cannot think or know, only the individual humans who comprise it can
think and know.
Thing is, the cells which make up the brain (and the rest of the body)
occupy the microcosm, not the mesocosm that we and the larger animals
do. These cells each do have their sensors, but no access to the
external world that our molar empirical senses provide us. And even
if they did have access to the empirical world, their world is made up
of atoms, molecules, and diverse microbes; that is what they
experience, and what they think about and know. We molar humans have
access to this microcosm only through our modern technological sensory
extensions (and we do not know it as well as they do). For example,
they can experience heat, and can burn up, but they would not know a
fire the way we do. They can drown, but would not know water bodies
as we do. There are no "smart neurons."
What civ man has totally lost sight of, despite our enorous and
detailed biological knowledge, is that molar bodies are no more or
less than cellular colonies. The difference between, say, a bacterial
colony and a molar organism is that in the latter, the cellular
population has differentiated, with a "division of labor" among the
cells. The bacterial colony has to rely on those on the periphery for
knowledge of the empirical world that can kill or enhance the colony's
life, and this info must be passed on to those in the interior---not
the most efficient process. But by arranging themselves (as they did
throughout evolution) into a population of differentiated cells, some
can allocate themselves to picking up bits of molar info and sending
them to the brain cells as microcosm info, while others, say the
neurons, can allocate themselves to interior tasks. It is the molar
mind which tells the cells that fire is what it is and that a swimming
pool is what it is, with the potential of burning up the cells or
drowning them, respectively.
On the other hand, brain cells DO know kidneys---not as we molar
beings do, but as kindred folk (kidney cells) that live "far away,"
but need the attention and help from the brain cells.