
How Morality Changes in a Foreign Language - bangda
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-morality-changes-in-a-foreign-language/
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thr0waway1239
Perhaps I missed it, but I feel like an important aspect is being left out of
this article. For the average person, English is not their native language.
[1]

However, it is also becoming the 'lingua franca' of science and the leading
edge of technology - that is, even if it is only a second language, people are
spending a lot of time thinking in it. As someone who is not a native English
speaker, I am very often lost for words when expressing certain ideas in my
own mother tongue (someone will helpfully point out that it is possible I
didn't learn my own language very well, which might also be true),
_especially_ when communicating concepts like privacy and such.

This leads to a gap - the number of ideas and concepts that can be expressed
by the average person in their native language is less than the number of
ideas and concepts that can be expressed in a non-native language, assuming
the non-native language is English. Correspondingly, it is possible your brain
is just that little bit more open and receptive to ideas, and sort of turns
down its emotional reaction a little bit.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers)

~~~
int_19h
I get what you're saying, but the reverse is also true - other languages have
concepts that don't translate nicely (or at all) to English. I'm not sure it
is easy to quantify, between two languages, which one has means to express
more ideas and concepts.

And, of course, having more ideas and concepts doesn't necessarily translate
to more open-mindedness, or being more receptive. For example, one of those
concepts could be extreme emotional-level xenophobia. Or, say, loss of face
that is only preventable by extreme measures (such as suicide or "honor
killing").

~~~
thr0waway1239
I completely agree with the first statement. I am not so sure about the second
one.

Learning ideas and concepts is a sort of additive process - hopefully learning
one will not subtract away something you already had. Having been exposed to
an idea which cannot be expressed in English now gives your brain multiple
interpretations to choose from - that is, something which might be considered
a real mistake in one culture (e.g. society judging individualism) might be
more acceptable to you if you were a part of another culture (e.g. where
society did judge individualism but also compensated by being more supportive
of failure in general without creating indirect social safety nets which can
be interpreted as one generation stealing the others' wealth). The concept of
suicide, for example, is a good example of learning a bad idea, but it should
hopefully be balanced by the other ideas you have learnt too.

~~~
int_19h
The "hopefully" part doesn't always hold, though. For example, Sayyid Qutb -
the founder of modern Salafism, more or less - became radicalized, in part, by
him being exposed to the American culture. He learned the ideas alright - and
found them appalling.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb#Two_years_in_Ameri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb#Two_years_in_America)

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jondubois
Regarding the Trolley problem, it doesn't make sense to push someone off a
bridge in order to save 5 people, this is very different from just flicking a
switch for several reasons:

\- There is a chance that this plan might fail and 6 people would get killed
instead of 5.

\- Maybe there is a reason why the 5 people are tied to train tracks - Honest
people don't usually end up like this - Maybe they're in the mafia and their
deaths would be an expected consequence of their high-risk criminal lifestyle.
On the other hand, the guy standing on the bridge is more likely to be a
regular person who did nothing wrong.

\- You would go to jail for manslaughter.

\- You would psychologically damage yourself by pushing the person off a
bridge.

\- Maybe you have an undiagnosed case of schizophrenia and the 5 people on the
tracks are not real. The odds of it being an illusion (and that you are crazy)
are probably higher than it being real - It's quite arrogant to trust your own
senses (to the point of killing someone) when you're confronted with such an
incredibly unlikely situation.

~~~
dsacco
You're really over thinking this. The classical problem is more or less
designed to be a utilitarian thought experiment. Are you willing to be
actively unethical for a greater ethical action? Are you willing to be
passively unethical to allow a greater ethical action to happen? Is it
possible to be passively unethical?

There is enough philosophical meat in the thought experiment without going
"out of bounds" and trying to undermine the question. Your comment would make
for a good modern essay, but it frankly dismisses the spirit of the problem.

Good faith arguments in philosophical debates require both parties to have a
common set of premises. If you don't both work from those premises, you need
to go "down" to your next set of shared premises and start arguing "up" from
there. If you don't do this, you're just talking past each other and you end
up in a Wittgenstein-ian limbo where each of you is arguing coherently but
disparately and no one is going to take the other's point.

Given this, it's not a good faith argument against the trolley problem to say
that an action doesn't make sense due to premises that are not typically
included in the classical problem.

Furthermore, the only reason we have thought experiments like this is because
it is difficult to reason in the abstract without formal training. Using
concrete allegories helps to give participants mental "skin in the game" to
illustrate whether or not their opinions are coherent.

Allow me to restate this problem: "Given a simulation where you have the
choice between certainly observing five people die by taking no action, or
certainly saving five people by taking an action that certainly kills one
person, and all persons are equally familiar to you, what do you do?"

Now, a valid response is to disagree with my problem as stated. That's fine,
but then we need to argue something else because we're no longer talking about
the trolley problem as it is classically defined and intended.

~~~
lisper
> Are you willing to be actively unethical

But the details matter with respect to the meaning of the word "active".
Pushing someone off a bridge and watching them die is very different from
flipping a switch from the "five people die" to the "one person dies"
position.

~~~
blowski
You're taking a decision which results in the death of those people. The
trolley problem is about showing how people's attitudes change when they
become responsible, instead of being bystanders.

~~~
lisper
That's what it's _supposed_ to be about, but the details matter. You can get
different results by tweaking the story in different ways. For example:

You are seated at a console. In front of you is a button. If you don't push
the button, five randomly selected people will die. If you do push the button,
only one randomly selected person will die. That is all you know. Do you push
the button?

Or if that still feels like a moral dilemma to you, try this:

You are seated at a console. In front of you is a button. If you push the
button you will save the lives of four randomly selected people who would
otherwise die. Do you push the button?

~~~
blowski
It doesn't map the real world, and it's not supposed to. It's a model, and
like all models, it's designed to make sense of the world by reducing its
complexity.

~~~
pessimizer
But the problem is that it is needlessly complicated, and the complications
are what make the decisionmaking difficult. If the question was "You must flip
a switch to the left or to the right. If you flip it to the right, one person
will die. If you flip it to the left, five people will die. Again, you must
flip the switch. Which way do you flip it?" everybody would give the same
answer.

Instead, of "you must flip the switch" you get a speeding train. Instead of
the switch you get fat people and bridges. Are the five people children and
does the fat person have heart trouble? Is the fat person fat because he's
greedy, or does he have a glandular problem. Will anyone see me pushing the
fat man? And again, what guarantee do I have that a fat man's body will stop a
train? How old is the fat man? How young are the kids? Are there suspicious
looking people around who, if the train fails to run over the five people,
will just back the train up and try again?

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MandieD
I definitely make "cooler" judgments in situations where I'm speaking German
(learned while living here as a young adult) than I do in my native English. I
also have never lost my temper in a German conversation like I occasionally do
in English, but have gotten good and angry after, once I had some time to
think about what was said.

So I see how discussing an issue in one's second language could affect how
likely someone is to use utilitarian morality.

It's also harder to think about intent the same way in a second language you
can work in, but that you weren't raised in, so that might be part of why the
result of actions appeared to matter more than their motivations to people
reading about the situations in their second languages.

~~~
jnordwick
That's probably because you are forced to slow down and respond less
erratically since more brain power is going to speaking so less can be made in
snap judgements. I know I have a hard time getting excitedly angry when
"speaking" (more like stumbling) in a second language because I can't just
shout something out. I have to take more time figuring out what I'm saying.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
That is completely true - I have to think about what I say more. And I don't
have so much practice speaking angrily in my second language at all, actually.
Practically speaking, those aren't the words I'm using often. I even find it
much harder to speak ill about someone else, just because those words haven't
been nearly as important to me.

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fenomas
That trolley problem has always seemed fundamentally dishonest to me. It sets
out to present two scenarios that are somehow morally equivalent, but they're
only equivalent for for people who magically know the outcomes of their
actions.

That is, "would you push a fat guy in front of a trolley if you knew it would
save five lives?" isn't a question that's relevant to human ethics. It would
need to be "would you push a fat in front of a trolley _because you thought_
it would save five lives" \- and, implicitly, then bear the responsibility for
your action if you were wrong?

~~~
lettergram
My response to the trolley problem always thrown off my philosophy
friends/professors. I always asked why this was a question at all?

To me, all ethics and morals are broken down to how we live with ourselves and
perceive ourselves. Because Everyone made a choice to be in the given position
and assuming no one I care about is on the trolley I have no reason to effect
the system. Sure, saving five people's lives may help some people sleep at
night, but killing another also won't help. For me, I wouldn't be able to
sleep at night if I killed someone.

Not taking action ensures I have done nothing. Meaning, it would be as if I'm
not there, thus everyone is going to die by their own choices not mine. I am
not inflicting my will on others, therefore I am not killing anyone, and I
cannot make a wrong decision.

As you pointed out, you can't know what your actions will do.

For some reason this always makes everyone call me immoral though...

~~~
Ressuder
I can only imagine that they would get quite annoyed at you, sinve you're
ignoring the question and nitpicking on the circumstances. What you're doing
is the equivalent of claiming that the Chinese Room argument holds no water
because nobody could be that good at translating something that way.

I do find your claim that by doing nothing you can't make a wrong decision
quite terrifying though. Let's say that you're standing on a pier with a
lifebuoy in your hands and you see someone about to drown. Surely you can not
believe that you've done nothing wrong if you do nothing in this case?

~~~
lettergram
> I do find your claim that by doing nothing you can't make a wrong decision
> quite terrifying though.

I find in terrifying that people feel it's okay to pull the lever and kill
someone, even if it saves five people. That one person is just walking along,
doing exactly what they should be, then some philosopher comes along, manages
to (almost godlike) interpret five people in a trolley are about to smash into
a wall and only one person is on the other track - so he pulls the lever
saving the five strangers, but killing the person who was just walking along.

Who is he to choose that man deserves to die over the others? The philosopher
chose to impose his will and opinions on the others has done something to
actually kill someone. Inaction is not the same as action. Those five people
(we assume) chose to get on that trolley, they were doomed by the fate of the
trolley. The guy walking along was doomed by the opinion of a philosopher.

In your case of a lifebuoy I would feel inclined to toss the bouy because I
wouldn't be _killing someone_ to _save another_ I would be _saving someone_ at
the expense of some physical effort. Regardless, that's my choice, it
shouldn't horrify you because I didn't make the guy drown - I did _nothing_ to
harm them.

If I am to blame for walking away, what does that say about you? Are you going
to punish me? If so, you must feel it's your duty to impose your opinion on
others because you somehow feel more correct, but does that really make you
moral? I am sure there are many times people feel it's moral to do X, yet
others thought it was sacrilege.

This is the point. If we all are going to get along in a society, we have to
accept that peoples choices don't matter, _as long as they don 't inflict
their will upon you_. That doesn't mean they wont help, that doesn't mean
people wont donate to charity. It's a choice to offer charity, it's a choice
to accept charity - in the case of the trolley it's a choice to walk along the
tracks and to get on the trolley. However, when the philosopher pulls the
lever he has changed the game, he has made a choice for someone else - that's
what I find immoral.

> I can only imagine that they would get quite annoyed at you, sinve you're
> ignoring the question and nitpicking on the circumstances.

I find it quite annoying that this entire scenario has some sort of moral high
ground. In this case, we are given the choice under the impression it is a
choice. I disagree entirely. We (1) cannot know what we are doing is the best
option and (2) if we impose our opinions on others we are morally in the
wrong. The basis of society is that we can all get along, that means I
shouldn't hurt/inconvenience you really at all unless I need to to survive. I
don't claim to be judge and executioner, yet pretty much everyone who ever
answers this question believes they have the moral high-ground to execute
someone/anyone - I don't, so I don't play the game.

 __Edit __: The trolley scenario is always presented as an argument to justify
or way to explain Utilitarianism, Virtue ethics, Deontological ethics, etc.
the basis of which is a justification to inflict your views on life on
everyone else. Personally, I side more with the objectivist philosophy and I
believe that morals are based more on what you can live with. I can personally
not live with myself if I kill someone, I can live with myself if I decide not
to take action. Similarly, I would find it hard to live with myself if I didn
't toss that lifebouy, because there is no harm in not doing it.

------
gcoda
Thinking in a Foreign Language Makes Decisions More Rational

[https://www.wired.com/2012/04/language-and-
bias/](https://www.wired.com/2012/04/language-and-bias/)

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known
"How Morality Changes in a Foreign Language" is the better title

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thyrsus
The article infers that "the greatest good for the greatest number" morality
is the least likely to be dropped under the stress of operating in a second
language (one catalog of the other components is here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory)).
Stipulating that, _should_ you make the same choice in the absence of stress?

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throwanem
Dr. Sapir, Mr. Whorf, please call your offices...

~~~
jnordwick
Only the absolute weakest forms of Sapir-Whorf anymore. It's pretty much a
dead idea.

The answer to this, if it isn't yet another social psych study that can't be
reproduced, probably more lies in the time the people took to think about the
problem or something else that they didn't measure.

The absolute crazy part is that they want to say a foreign language changes
your morality. That should be a huge warning sign that something is off, and
something isn't being accounted for. The foreign language sounds incidental to
the study and there seems to be a deeper meaning.

I really wished they would have timed the people, and they had a control group
that was forced read the problem or thing about before answering. Would
reading have caused a shift in morality? How about reading in a difficult to
read font? I'm sure the would have probably seen these also show interesting
results.

