Moral Dilemmas

What would you do when faced with a difficult

moral choice?
At the end of the discussion, students
are expected to:

Recognize and recall a moral

experience

Detect a moral dilemma

What can you say about the picture?
What can you say about the picture?
What can you say about the picture?
MIMRARNOR
Fishing
 U
U U
U
BRIDGE
boat
C
fish
fish
fish

fish fish
fish
A dilemma is
a situation
where there is
no clear “best
choice”
between two
or more
alternatives.
It’s your final examination today. You
were not able to study because your
mother was rushed to the hospital last
night due to a lingering illness. You need to
pass the exam because that is your last
straw to pass the course. What will you
do?
Hypothetical and Real
Dilemmas
• In ethics, it is helpful to consider
hypothetical and real scenarios of
moral dilemmas.
• Dilemmas help us to focus our
moral intuitions and test our
moral theories.
Are there any real
moral dilemmas?
There are a number of possible reasons for
thinking that moral dilemmas do not really
exist:
1.You might think that the ideal moral theory
should solve all potential dilemmas.
2.You might be a moral nihilist, and so deny
that there is any morally correct choice.
3.You might be a relativist, and so think that
whatever option you prefer is the right
option for you.
There are genuine
moral dilemmas
only if…
• Some things are morally better than others.
• It is unclear which choice is the morally best one.
Is this a moral dilemma?
Why or why not?

OR
If morals are a matter of taste,
then moral dilemmas are no
different than the choice
between strawberry or
chocolate.
Given this, we can go one of
the following directions:
1.Maintain that moral dilemmas amount to
confusions over personal preference, but
insist that they are not for this reason trivial.
2.Appeal to some principles of agreement
about moral preferences that go beyond the
purely subjective dilemma over strawberry
or chocolate.
3.Give up on the idea that morals are a matter
of personal preference.
 Should you always
tell the truth?
• A murderer at the door is looking for
your friend who is hiding in your house.
• Your co-worker is cheating on her time-
sheet.
• You witness a parking-lot accident.
 The “Trolley Problem”
Imagine that you are an employee working for the
train company as a switch operator. One day you
see a train speeding down the track, its driver is
in obvious distress. You realize that the train has
had a malfunction and is unable to stop.
You look ahead of the train and see five workers
working on the track. If you allow the train to go
ahead, it will surely kill all five.
However, you could divert the train by switching
tracks. On the alternate track, there is one
worker, working alone.
If you switch the train, you cause the death of one
worker; if you do nothing, five will die. What
will you do?
 Sophie’s choice
• A classic, real-life example is provided by the
story of Sophie’s choice (based on a true story):

In this story, Sophie is interned at a Nazi

concentration camp. She has two young
children. One day, she is confronted by a Nazi
soldier who offers her the following choice: He
says, “I am going to shoot one or both of your
children. You tell me which one to shoot, or I
will shoot them both.” What do you do?
 Metaethical questions:
• What is good? How do we determine which kinds
of actions are better than others?
• Are there any objective moral goods (i.e., things
that are good in general)?
• Does the good derive from the result/goal, or does
it derive from the nature of the action?
• Should we look for our moral systems to resolve
moral dilemmas or are dilemmas a necessary part
of ethics?