Word: utilitarian
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...called trolley problem. Suppose a trolley is rolling down the track toward five people who will die unless you pull a lever that diverts it onto another track--where, unfortunately, lies one person who will die instead. An easy call, most people say: minimizing the loss of life--a "utilitarian" goal, as philosophers put it--is the right thing...
Further studies suggest that in both cases the emotional aversion competes for control with more rational parts of the brain that take a utilitarian view, emphasizing the net savings of four lives. In the up-close-and-personal scenario the emotions are usually strong enough...
These cranial wrestling matches could be televised. As people ponder a moral dilemma, brain scans show changing activity levels in a part of the brain linked to abstract reasoning and cognitive control. In brains that take the utilitarian path, this part strengthens until dominant; in brains that refuse to kill one innocent to save many, it weakens until emotion...
...This is highly unfortunate. Religious illiteracy is the norm at our largely secular campus, making it almost impossible for Harvard to converse with a religious world. Furthermore, forgoing the reason and faith requirement will perhaps irretrievably confirm the pragmatic, utilitarian ethos of the task force’s vision for Harvard education, banishing rigorous thought about meaning, purpose, and life’s ultimate questions to an academic never-never land...
...Shakespeare?” In response, some of us choose to storm off in a pique of rage; others offer lofty bromides, fully aware of their inanity. All of us, however, are confounded, and perhaps vaguely offended. How dare this bourgeois challenge me to justify the humanities by vulgar utilitarian criteria? We pursue beauty, and to quote the French poet Theophile Gautier, “The most useful place in the house is the latrine...