Do not decide base only on your feelings!

MORAL DILEMMA
Take a pause
Moral dilemmas are situations where two or more
moral values or duties make demands on the decision- Stop
maker, who can only honor one of them, and thus will Look
violate at least one important moral concern, no matter
what he or she decides to do. Listen

It is a situation where there is tension between moral

values and duties that are more or less on equal footing.
Ethical Decision Making is a Reasoned Process
In a narrow sense, a moral dilemma is a situation where
❖Facts
the moral values at stake are of equal importance.
❖Stakeholders
Competing values

A moral dilemma is a situation where the decision- ❖Values

maker has to give priority to one moral value over ❖Options
another.
❖Consequences
Moral Dilemma is not about 2 or more opposing choices
but of opposing values 1. Gather the facts

Moral dilemmas are a pervasive part of working life. What do I already know?
They occur in the public and private sectors and from
What are the things I need to know?
the smallest to the largest organizations.
2. Stakeholders
In hectic working environments, people can become
blind to the moral dilemmas they face, by failing to see What is at stake?
the moral dimensions of their choices.
What are their interest that they protect?
They arise when we are facing a difficult situation.
Father- Family, happiness, respect of children
False moral dilemmas
Mother- Love from Father, Fidelity of husband, Family
- are instances where it is clear what a person ought to
Children - family
do, but he or she is either tempted or pressured to do
something else. 3. Articulate the Dilemma (Values)
The choice is clearly between a morally right and a Respecting my Father’s privacy, preserving peace and
morally wrong option harmony in the family
Antonette Palma-Angeles PhD Vs.
I just saw my father sitting in a corner of an expensive Fidelity in marriage, upholding the Truth
restaurant kissing a woman on the lips. She is clearly not
my mother. I do love my father who I idolize. He has Competing Values
been a good provider and he always spends time with 4. List the Alternatives (Options)
us. But my mother does not deserve this. She is devoted
to him and us her children. I do love her very much, too. 1. Tell my Mother

What should I do? 1. Keep quiet

How can we decide? 1. Talk to my Father and demand that he confess. If he

does not, etc.
5. Compare the Alternatives with the Values Justify your decision!

Alternatives Values What do you have?

1. Tell my Fidelity in
Mother Marriage Reasoned process
Right to the You cannot make this on every decision that you have
Truth to make
2. Keep quiet Respect my
Father’s Do this in important decisions that you have to make

privacy Be patient!
Preserve peace PROCESS
and
harmony in the 1. Gather the fact
family
3. Talk to my Fidelity in 2. Stakeholders
Father and Marriage 3. Articulate the Dilemma (Values)
demand Honesty
that he 4. List the alternative (Options)
confess. If
he does not 5. Compare the alternative with values
etc. 6. Weigh the consequences
6. Weigh the consequences
7. Make a decision
Alternatives Values (Step Consequences (Step 6)
(Step 4)
1. Tell my
5)
Fidelity in Mother –Effects and
FREEDON AND
Mother Marriage
Right to the
+Effects
Father –Effects and
RESPONSIBILITY
Truth +Effects What is FREEDOM?
Children –Effects and
+Effects Topics
2. Keep Respect my Mother –Effects and
quiet Father’s +Effects • Freedom as Illusion
privacy Children –Effects and • Absolute Freedom
Preserve +Effects
peace and Is a person a product of his environment or are the
harmony social conditions he/she is into are his/her own making?
in the family
3. Talk to Fidelity in Mother –Effects and Is human life really something that a person’s choice
my Father Marriage +Effects totally determines or is it something that is defined by
and Honesty Father –Effects and internal and external structures?
demand +Effects
that he Children –Effects and FREEDOM AS ILLUSION
confess. If +Effects B. F. Skinner (Burrhus Frederic Skinner)
he does not
etc. Law of Nature / Total Determinsm

B. F. Skinner (Burrhus Frederic Skinner)

7. Make a decision
There is no painless decision Sometimes the best
decisions are the toughest to make
•He famously claimed that human freedom is nothing
but our ignorance of the basic laws of nature.
‘humans can be controlled’
• The environment is what creates the human beings. Jean Paul Sartre

• This can be done by redesigning and manipulating EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE

his/her physical environment.
What does it mean to say that existence preceded
• The recurrence of any behavior can be increased or essence, and how does this formula bear on our
decreased. understanding of human nature?

✔by way of positive and negative reinforcement, Sartre argues that we cannot explain human nature in
reward and punishment, and extinction. the same way that we describe a manufactured article.

•Increase good behavior – reward

• Decrease bad behavior – punishment

Law of Nature

- it is the environment that forms human

nature...control it in order to achieve the desired
results.

In this sense, he is suggesting that human freedom is an

illusion.

Total Determinism

•In philosophy, theory that all events, including moral
choices, are completely determined by previously
existing causes
• Skinner’s stimulus response theory is a matter of
cause and effect
Sartre believed that if there is no God, then there is no
given human nature precisely because there is no God
to have a conception of it. Human nature cannot be
defined in advance because it is not completely thought
in advance.

BUT, man can never be reduced to the automatic

reactions to the stimuli he finds in the environment.

MAN CAN ALWAYS TRANSCEND HIS PHYSICAL

CONDITION IF HE CHOOSES TO.

The person is the owner of his life.

He cannot be solely determined by his environment.

“It would seem that determinism as a scientific method

has a great deal to offer us in helping us understand
how one’s historicity influences one’s behavior. As a
total explanation of all human behavior, it fails to
People as such merely exist, and only later do we
account for the data of questioning, self-reflection, and
become our essential selves.
intelligent inquiry.” - John
To say that existence precedes essence means, Sartre
Kavanaugh(Human Freedom)
says, that people exist, confront themselves, emerge in
ABSOLUTE FREEDOM the world, and define themselves afterward.
Jean Paul Sartre First, we simply are, and then we are simply that which
we make of ourselves.
Existentialism | Absolute Freedom
 For Sartre, man lives alone in a world that is bereft of
meaning. Since man has no past to cling on to, no
human nature to depend on, the person must be solely
responsible for everything, including the values that he
creates in the world
Is man free to do everything he wants?
• “Freedom is man; man is freedom.” In essence then,
man is nothing but the choices that he makes.
“Freedom” in Sartre’s concept is not the freedom to
just do something or anything. He says “you are free”
because the person always has a choice, “therefore
choose.”

In order to answer this, Sartre mentions in Being and Final Notes:

Nothingness the three types of being: En soi (in-itself),
•Man must not simply go with the flow
pour-soi (for-itself) and pour-autrui (for-others)
• You are free to determine yourself and become the
En soi (in-itself
person you want to be
• The being-in-itself represents human facticity. It refers
• This implies human possibilities, the power to go
to human situatedness. The being-in-itself refers to that
beyond the momentariness of life situations
which is static and self-contained. Man is set under the
background of tradition, culture and language • Be responsible
Pour-soi (for-itself)

• For Sartre, the being-for-itself is truly dynamic and

reflexive. It is not fixed. The being-for- itself then refers
to transcendence and possibility. Man holds the ability
to go beyond his given situations. He can rise above his
circumstances.

• Sartre tells us that man has a choice it is for this

reason that for Sartre, existence is a curse, for man is
condemned to be free.

•Man is responsible for himself.

Pour-autrui (for-others)

• Sartre asserts that when a man is making a choice in

the process of making himself, he chooses not only for
himself but for all of humankind.

• Man is therefore responsible not only for his own

individuality. He is responsible for everyone.

• Thus, man creates not only his individuality but the

individuality of the whole humanity.

• Thus, although a person may create his own values in

making himself, we nevertheless create at the same
time an image of humanity as we believe it ought to be.

Absolute Freedom

•In the act of choosing, man chooses alone for he is the

one and final arbiter of his choice. Freedom in this
regard is absolute.