Graham explains that the libertarian cognitive style is cerebral rather than emotional. “Libertarians are far and away the most likely to say, ‘Yeah, push the guy off.’ They just see it as a math problem,” he tells me. “They have no squeamishness about having to kill the person.” It’s coldly calculating, but also, arguably, rigorously ethical. As Graham tells me this, I can’t help but think that efforts to unpack what separates red states from blue states haven’t been careful to differentiate between conservatives and libertarians. Venn diagrams of voters generally categorize voters as Republicans and Democrats or liberals and conservatives. But as is becoming increasingly apparent, the cool-headed libertarian in my classroom who’s willing to sacrifice his mother for the greater good doesn’t fit neatly into any of these circles.
But the point of the article is better represented by this:
NYU psychologist Carol Gilligan, who began the Radical Listening Project in 2017, says the essential step is “replacing judgment with curiosity,” or, as put by my student Gaby Romero, who has been trained in the diplomat Hal Saunders’ Sustained Dialogue protocol, “to acknowledge that everyone is there out of a genuine desire to learn and understand.” University of Michigan professor Donna Kaplowitz, who practices an approach known as Intergroup Dialogue, simply calls it “generous listening.”
He concludes,
Imagine if, instead of requiring a swim test for college students or gym for middle-schoolers, we required students to sit in a room with a diverse group of people and listen to the stories of their life. “If I wanted to prepare children to live as citizens in a democratic society,” Gilligan says, “nothing would be more valuable than to teach them to listen.”
Teaching kids to listen well is probably one of the best skills of succeeding in the economy as well.
Without question, listening is an important skill. The puzzle is whether an ethics course improves this skill relative to say the example in the closing: knowing how to swim.
People like hearing life stories, especially when they are edited and presented in an entertaining fashion. I see my kids voluntarily watch anthologies of life stories on YouTube for fun. It seems that the author could design his/her own entertaining life anthology series that people voluntarily watch.
I’ve never heard of a college requiring a swim test. Usually, at college, students might exercise or swim, but not for class credit, that’s something they do for themselves.
The article mentions “civil libertarian democracy”. I haven’t heard this term used before. I’m assuming it is meant to differentiate from “liberal democracy” but I’m not sure how/why.
“But as is becoming increasingly apparent, the cool-headed libertarian in my classroom who’s willing to sacrifice his mother for the greater good doesn’t fit neatly into any of these circles.”
I hate the expression “the greater good.” In most cases, someone appealing to the greater good is trying to make a communitarian argument rather than a libertarian one.
“libertarian cognitive style is cerebral ”
—
Libertarianism represents base math.
It is the economic model not yet encumbered with externals. Hence libertarians get a lot of unnecessary blame as the base model has no inherent morality. It is not our fault, it is the way models work.
This reminds me of an idea I had for a freshman introductory class. Basically you randomly assign someone a “friend” for the semester, and they have to get to know the other person and write a term paper about them at the end of the semester.
It would promote all sorts of cross-cultural mutual understand, among other things – maybe reduce bullying and promote social inclusion.
As a cynical ex-teacher, I imagine in the week before the paper is due, each person writing about themselves, then giving it to the other person to put in their own words.
As some of my ex-students would say, “Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.”
–“Libertarians are far and away the most likely to say, ‘Yeah, push the guy off.’ They just see it as a math problem,” he tells me. “They have no squeamishness about having to kill the person.” It’s coldly calculating, but also, arguably, rigorously ethical.–
I used to be pretty libertarian, and this strikes me as completely wrong.
Generalizing from my experience, libertarians were overly zealous about individual rights, opposing the initiation of force, etc. I get that there are some libertarians who are very utilitarian, but I’m not sure most libertarians would go for a society in which getting killed for the greater good was permissible.
People are deontological when it serves their interest, and utilitarian when it serves their interests.
This isn’t automatically “a bad thing”. Famously, the baker and the butcher are both serving their own interests when their transactions make both better off.
But of course it can be a bad thing. Trolley problems are notoriously idiotic because they don’t exist in real life. So when someone proposes one it’s often as an excuse to violate deontological norms based on shaky and often inaccurate utilitarian calculations that are self serving.
“deontological.” New word for me, even though ontology has been in my lexicon for a few decades. I’m looking it up…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics
I agree. Libertarians do tend to be systematic thinkers but also put a great weight on the value of the individual. Using people as ‘mere means’ toward some grand utilitarian end has been a trait of leftists not libertarians / classical liberals. Libertarians are the ones who *don’t* presume people can be treated as pieces on a chessboard (as Smith had it) or as makeshift trolley brakes.
One can be both, either, or neither utilitarian and libertarian
I don’t buy it that libertarians want “to push the guy off” in the trolley problem. If you think anything can be gleaned from trolley problems, you might make a case that pushing the guy off to save numerous other persons is a utilitarian act. (Maximize total utility …) But in reality, is anyone utilitarian in that way in real life? I don’t see anyone advocating killing someone to harvest several organs for transplantation to save several other people who need organs.
Yes. Most libertarians I know are more deontologial than utilitarian. You can’t sacrifice one individual for the common good. That person has to make the choice themselves, if they want to jump to stop the train. Nobody has the right to push someone off a bridge (violate someone else’s rights) to save others.
I, too, identify as a libertarian and I have always opposed pushing the fat guy in that trolley problem. Further, I don’t even support throwing the switch to save five people at the expense of three.
Re swim tests — they were quite common in the past. When I went to college in 1971, my college had a swim test, but you could self-certify out; older students told me that in previous years you actually had to demonstrate your ability to swim in the college pool. I heard of other colleges which had required swim tests as well.
College credit gets awarded for these classes? Can I get credit for attending Unitarian services? Why are taxpayers forced to subsidize this?
I don’t think the main takeaway from Trolley Problems is really even about which choice you should make.
These problems are designed to reveal the fact that we all make ethical decisions based on intuition based heuristics and only later work out the logic to justify those decisions. Trolley Problems are designed specifically to cause a conflict between fundamental moral intuitions.
When I hear most Trolley Problems posed, my reaction is to think that most people would still be still puzzling over what to do when the collision occurred if they happened in real life which they don’t.
A structural flaw in trolley problems:
The bystander, who becomes the agent, is asked to make “a tragic choice” instantaneously.
Surely, in the real world, psychology (rather than moral philosophy) would shape or determine the bystander’s behavior.
And surely, most issues in individual ethics and in public-policy aren’t instantaneous, unforeseen triage dilemmas. These peculiar situations arise in special theaters (ER, battlefield) and hopefully involve trained, experienced personnel.
Speaking of structural problems (literal in this case), how do you tie someone to a trolley track? Aren’t trolley tracks grade level? When did someone decide that the silent film era moustachioed villain needed to move his hypothetical victims from railroad tracks to trolley tracks?
Exactly.