Ethics and Perception

This post comes from something I found earlier today. While looking around the internet I ran into this scenario.

You're the conductor of a train, and on the tracks up ahead, you see five construction workers standing on the tracks. You know that if you do nothing, the train will hit these five people. However, you have a lever next to you that can divert the train onto another set of tracks where there is only one construction worker. Would you pull the lever? Okay, same scenario. Only this time, it's a single track and you're standing on a bridge above. Standing next to you is a large person who is leaning just a little too far over the bridge's bannister. You realize that if you push this person just a little, he'll fall over onto the tracks and his body will stop the train. Do you push him? Most people who are aksed these questions answer yes to the first one and no to the second one. The question is why?

This question was actually studied by a scientist who looked at the brain at the time of answer. Feel free to take a listen, it's actually quite interesting. http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/02/09/morality-rebroadcast/

What is the ethical decision?

Everyone says yes to the first situationg, yet no to the second. That is clear. The real question here is why?

After listening to the podcast, I was appalled by my own answers. Yet my answers (Yes than no) are the same as everyone else. But why does everyone have different answers to seemingly the same question posed differently? The thing is they're not the same. The scientist proposes they are similar if not equal but yet in fact they are not. The motion of pulling a lever changes the course of the train. Yes, we do know what will happen if we pull the lever but it is not that action that kills the man. Yet pushing someone off a bridge is a direct action of murder. The push itself causes death upon that person. The difference is in perception -- how someone views their actions to the result.

In this world perception is everything. One judges someone else by what they see. The way you see anything is the way it appears to you, and therefore the way you beleive it to be. If pushing a person into a train looks to be a more direct feel murder than people will see it that way. In the opposite case, just pulling a lever is much more innocent. Perception, in this case, differentiates in the human mind the right and wrond doings of murder. Why? Well I don't know why, i guess thats just how the human mind works.