Being Moral Beings
Sweet Bites for June 27, 2025
Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy and human flourishment—aka how to live “the good life.” Each month we tackle a new theme.
This month we’re exploring the theme of Morality.
Welcome to another edition of Sweet Bites, Mind Candy’s bite-sized newsletter with thought-provoking finds to send you into the weekend with.
😇 Two Famous Mini Moral Thought Experiments
Thought Experiment 1: The Trolley
Central question: Would you sacrifice one person to save several?
Premise: You’re standing next to tracks and a trolley is fast approaching. Tied to the track are five individuals who are unable to escape. There is a lever, and if you pull the lever, the trolley will be diverted to a new track. However, on the new track, there is a single individual also chained and unable to escape. You must decide, should you divert the train to save five lives or save the single individual?
Next level reflection:
1) What if the single individual was a child, and you knew nothing about the other five people?
2) What if the single individual was a child and the five individuals were in their 70s?
3) What if the single individual was destined to cure cancer but one of the five was a known murderer, but the remaining four were good people?
—
Thought Experiment 2: The Pond
Central question: If we can make a difference and save a life, why don’t we?
Premise: On your way to work you walk by a pond. You look over and see a child drowning. If you jump into the water, you can safely rescue the child. However, by doing so, you will destroy your brand new shoes and be late for work. What would you do?
Next level reflection:
1) If you choose to allow the child to drown because your shoes cost $500 and you have an important meeting for work, what does that say of your morals and priorities?
2) If you choose to save the child and do not care about ruining your shoes or being late to work, stop and reflect for a second. If you live in a first world country, and you could save a life, wouldn’t you?
3) Now think of this situation against the backdrop of world hunger and poverty. If you don’t mind ruining your shoes, is it better to buy cheaper shoes and donate some of the money that would have gone to an expensive pair in order to help provide food for starving children and save their lives?
🧠 This Week in Mind Candy 📚
🧘🏻 Monday Meditation
🦉 Wednesday Wisdom
📰 Article Worthy of a Read
Getting Real About Right and Wrong by Clay Naff and Andy Norman
If you’re like me and you still read physical things (articles, books, essays) and you’d like a physical copy, you can subscribe to Skeptic Magazine and get a physical copy of this article and many more on morality in their Volume 23 Number 3 issue.
Favorite passages:
“Social animals have cooperative instincts. When a pack of wolves hauls down a deer, its members share the spoils. When that same pack of wolves threatens a herd of bison, adult male bison encircle the females and their young, and help protect them. When one capuchin monkey gets a coveted grape for completing a simple task, and a second gets only a lousy cucumber slice for doing the same, the second monkey will throw a fit to protest the unfairness of the transaction.”
—
“We work out social contracts— systems of shared expectations-and call conformity to these systems "good," and violations of them "bad." And here we have the natural origins of good and evil.”
—
“If we want a society that truly works to promote human flourishing, history suggests that we cultivate civic virtue and build a well-balanced system of public and private institutions.”
📖 Book to Continue This Week’s Theme
Outraged by Kurt Gray
If you enjoy the work of Jonathan Haidt and his book, The Righteous Mind, you may also enjoy this one. Haidt and Gray dig toward the same question—why we’re moral, how morality forces us to act, why we all hate each other right now—but they come to vastly different conclusions on where our morality originates.
Where Haidt believes our moral foundations stem from our cultural upbringing, Gray argues, convincingly, that our morality originates, regardless of culture, with feelings of vulnerability, and in turn, if and when we feel harmed by another.
💭 Five Thoughts on Morality
Morality is Always Desling with Clashing Views
“A moral dilemma arises when two legitimate moral values clash.”
David Brooks
—
Morality Requires Both Virtue and Education
“The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but no morals . . . Intelligence plus character, that is the goal of true education.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
—
A Proper Society is Made Up of Diverse Ideas
“Society means a community of ideas; without shared ideas on politics, morals, and ethics, no society can exist.”
Lord Devlin
—
Morality Starts with Emotion
“Morality is rooted in innate, hardwired emotional responses that are only slightly modified by self-conscious adult reasoning.”
Alison Gopnik
—
We Believe Our Morality is the only Morality
“While human beings have different moral codes, each competing view presumes its own universality.”
Sam Harris
🎙 Podcast to Listen To
Following the theme of moral foundations with Kurt Gray, you can listen to him and Michael Shermer discuss his book Outraged and hear directly from him on where he and Haidt differ on the origins of morality.
Think someone you know would enjoy these? Hit below to forward and spread the love.
Until next time,
D.A. DiGerolamo
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.