Killing Babies, Saving the World - Radiolab
This Radio Lab brings up a very difficult question, would you smother your baby to save the village?
I enjoyed the episode because it deals with philosophy. Killing the baby to save a village is based on utilitarian principles, which involves acting to save the most amount of lives. Keeping the baby alive is based on filial obligation. How could someone kill their own baby and, on the other hand, how could you save your baby knowing that the village would die if it coughed? The question is really an impossible one for me as well. I believe that killing the baby is the right thing to do but not many would do it. Morality really involves a higher level of abstract thinking. How do my actions affect the greater good? They also discussed the Flynn Effect, which is the general trend of generations to increase IQ over time. He says that in the last century, people have learned to think abstractly. This means that our morality levels are increasing. This means that over the past one hundred years, people have developed their abstract thinking and this could lead to a strengthening of morality.
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