Thread: You could be Phineas Gage, minus the massive brain injury

I'd push no.

The reason why, is not because I enjoy being saddled with sentimental feelings, but rather because I believe that conscience and the associated emotions like empathy, sympathy, guilt and remorse are essential to successful decision making process in humans.

In modern psychology, decisions in humans are believed to be chosen from a range of possible decisions based on two factors: these are typically labelled Intution and Conscience.

Intution (which is different from what you might normally call intution AKA guessing or having a "hunch") is essentially a measure of how advantageous or disadvantageous we believe a particular action will be for the self. Conscience is similarly a measure of how advantageous we believe others feel a particular action is for themselves.

All decisions can therefore be described as lying at some point on a spectrum between between Intution and Conscience, and which particular action we take depends upon how much we weight Intuitive and Conscientiousness in each decison, or, where on the range between Intuition and Consciences we choose to make the decision.

In some decisions ( e.g. what colour underpants to wear today) we might weigh Intuition very heavily and Conscience not at all, because it doesn't matter to others, or it's none of their business. While in other decisions, we might weight the 2 factors in a more balanced way (e.g. whether or not to drink the last of the milk in the fridge).

My point is; Conscience has a purpose.

That purpose is to allow us to estimate how others might react to our actions, and whether it might therefore lead to positive or negative actions. It also protects us from actions which have long-term negative consequences, that might not be immediately apparent.

If we are lacking in Conscience and we decide that killing someone is extremely advantageous thing to do right now, then we can end up being in prison, or even being killed ourselves. So conscience is actually vital to long-term success in life. The key is finding the right balance between Conscience and Intuition, between what is good for us and what is good for others.

In conclusion, even discounting the needs of others completely in choosing whether to press the button or not; that is, abandoning Conscience already before I press it or not, my Intution alone, my sense of what is good for me, is sufficient to tell me that it is not a good idea.