Lesson 3

Moral Dilemmas
The Pregnant Lady and The Dynamite
• A pregnant woman leading a group of five people out of a cave on a
coast is stuck in the mouth of that cave. In a short time high tide will
be upon them, and unless she is unstuck, they will all be drowned
except the woman, whose head is out of the cave. Fortunately, (or
unfortunately,) someone has with him a stick of dynamite. There
seems no way to get the pregnant woman loose without using the
dynamite which will inevitably kill her; but if they do not use it
everyone else will drown.
Meaning of Moral Dilemma
• A moral dilemma is a problem in the decision-making process between possible options, neither of which is acceptable from
an ethical perspective. The Oxford Dictionary defines ethical dilemma as a “decision-making problem between two possible
moral imperatives, neither of which is unambiguously acceptable of preferable. It is sometimes called an ethical paradox in
moral philosophy.”

• Based on three definitions, moral dilemmas have the following in common: 1. The agent is required to do each of two (or
more) actions where are morally unacceptable; 2. The agent can do each of the actions; 3. But the agent cannot do both or all
the actions. The agent thus seems condemned to moral failure; no matter what he/she does, he/she will do something wrong
(or fail to do something that she ought to do).

• This means that moral dilemmas are situations where two or more moral values or duties make demands on the decision-
maker, who can only honor one of them, and thus will violation at least one important moral concern, no matter what he or
she decides to do. Moral dilemmas present situations where there is tension between moral values and duties that are on
equal footing. The decision-maker must choose between a wrong and another wrong. The decision-maker is a deadlock.

• In the case of the pregnant lady and the dynamite, there were two options – use the dynamite and kill the pregnant woman
but save the other 5 or do not use the dynamite and all the 5 will get drowned except the pregnant woman whose head is out.
Meaning of Moral Dilemma
• To have a genuine dilemma, one of the conflicting solutions should not override the other. For instance, “… the
requirement to protect others from serious harm overrides the requirement to repay one’s debts by returning
a borrowed item when its owner so demands.” Hence, “in addition to the features mentioned above, in order
to have a genuine moral dilemma it must also be true that neither of the conflicting requirements is
overridden.” This means that none of the conflicting requirements is solved by the other. The persons involved
in the dilemma are in a deadlock. They find themselves in a “damn-if-you-do and damn if you don’t” situation.

• Another example of a moral dilemma is the story from the Bible about King Herod. On his birthday, his
stepdaughter, Salome danced so well in front of him and the guests at his party that he promised to give her
anything she wanted. Salome consulted her mother about what she should wish for and decided to ask for the
head of John the Baptist on a platter. The king now had a choice between honoring the promise to his
stepdaughter or honoring the life of John the Baptist. Herod chose to have John the Baptist beheaded. The king
had inadvertently designed a moral trap for himself, a dilemma where whatever he decided to do would be
morally wrong.
Meaning of a False Dilemma

• On the other hand, a false dilemma is a situation where the decision-maker has a moral duty to do one thing
but is tempted or under pressure to do something else. A false dilemma is a choice between a right and a
wrong. For example, a lawyer or an accountant can face an opportunity to prioritize self-interest over the
client’s interest.

What to Do When Faced with a Moral Dilemma

• Ultimately, dilemmas are conflicts in the application of moral standards. The question is which moral
standards must be followed? In a state of emergency, necessity demands no moral law. You must decide
based on your best judgement or choose based on the principle of lesser evil or greater good or urgency.
 Lesson 4
The Three Levels of Moral Dilemmas
1. The mission of Catholic School #1 is to serve the poor by giving quality education. It is torn between the
obligation to charge low tuition to help the poor and to pay better salaries to keep quality teachers.
2. Heinz’s wife was dying from a particular type of cancer. Doctors said a new drug might save her. The drug had
been discovered by a local chemist, and the Heinz tried desperately to buy some, but the chemist was
charging ten times the money it cost to make the drug, and this was much more than the Heinz could afford.
Heinz could only raise half the money, even after help from family and friends. He explained to the chemist
that his wife was dying and asked if he could have the drug cheaper or pay the rest of the money later. The
chemist refused saying that he had discovered the drug and was going to make money from it. The husband
was desperate to save his wife, so later that night he broke into the chemist’s laboratory and stole the drug.
3. A principal ought to welcome and encourage parents and community participation in school affairs. Based on
her experience, parents and community are passive and so principal always ends up deciding and doing things
just the same. She is obliged to observe parents’ and community participation which don not give any input at
all at the same time she is obliged to accomplish things on time.
A. Individual

• This refers to personal dilemmas. It is an individual’s damn-if-you-do-and-damn-if-you-don’t situation. The

case of Heinz as mentioned before is one of the best-known individual dilemmas of Kohlberg’s. Kohlberg’s
dilemma questions were as follows: “Should Heinz have stolen the drug.” If he did not steal the drug that
would mean his wife’s death. He was torn between stealing the drug and saving his wife. The dilemma is
faced by an individual who is torn between 2 obligations – to save the wife or obey the law.
B. Organizational
• This is a puzzle posed by the dual necessities of a social organization and members’ self-interest. It may exist between personal
interests and organizational welfare or between group interests and organizational well-being. The example of the Catholic school
mentioned beforehand shows the dilemma between the goal of the school to give quality education for the poor and so must
charge the lowest tuition fee possible and yet to keep quality faculty the school must raise their salary and consequently, must raise
tuition. Organizational dilemmas may likewise occur in business, medical, and public sector.

• The following hypothetical case highlights the story of Mr. Brown, a 74-year-old man who is seriously ill of metastatic lung cancer.
Mr. Brown completed a full course of radiation therapy as chemotherapy for treatment of his cancer, and he is now hospitalized
with severe shortness of breath and pneumonia. His physician has managed the symptoms associated with the lung disease,
including chest pain, fever, infection, and respiratory distress, but believes that there are no other options available to aggressively
treat the underlying cancer. Both Mr. Brown and his wife clearly state that they want everything done.

• The dilemma here lies in the conflicting concerns: a. the financial problems of Mr. Brown and his wife, b. the hospital concern of
focusing its attention on his hopeless patient when there are other cases which have still possible remedies, c. the other hospital
patient’s concern, particularly their need of the medicine used by Mr. Brown, d. the concern of the medical staff, etc.

• Organizational dilemmas may arise due to different opposing concerns between various groupings in an organization.
C. Structural

• The case of the principal whether to be participatory or non-participatory in school affairs but due to her not so favorable
experience of attempting to be participatory ended up to one-woman rule is an example of a structural dilemma. There are more
examples of structural dilemma.

Differentiation Vs. Integration in Structural Dilemma

• Different divisions have their own different culture and so coordination between divisions or bringing them together for becomes
more difficult. With decentralization, local governments have become more empowered to direct their affairs just as schools have
become empowered to address their problems or are given opportunity to localize the given curriculum. In effect, local
governments and schools have likewise become more differentiated and so it becomes more difficult to integrate them for a
unified structure. Local governance and schools curricula have become more complex. There is need for more costly coordinate
strategies.

• Any attempt to introduce reform in society or government creates structural dilemma. For example, promoting or introducing
universal health care, which is tantamount to socialized health care, gives rise to a structural dilemma, that is, a conflict of
perspective of sectors, groups and institutions that may be affected by the decision. Why would those who contribute less to the
social fund enjoy the same benefits as those who contributed big amounts of premium? In a study on the prices of medicines in
the Philippines, it was established that “patients are buying medicines from the private sector at many times their international
reference price.” If the government intervenes by introducing price control, the drug stores may lose so much that they may close
shop. If the government does not do anything at all, the patients will continue to suffer because they may not be able to afford
the high prices of medicines.
Gap Versus Overlap

• There may be gaps and overlaps in roles and responsibilities. If key responsibilities are not clearly assigned, there may be gaps or overlaps in
important tasks. If there are gaps, organizations end up with no one doing the responsibility. If there are overlaps, things become unclear
and may lead to more confusion and even conflict and worse wasted effort and perhaps even resources because of the unintended overlap.

• Here is an example. A patient in a teaching hospital called her husband to report how disturbed she is and how sleepless she was during the
night. At night, she could not sleep because hospital staff kept waking her up, often to repeat what someone else had already done. This is
an overlap of nurse duty. Conversely, when she wanted something, her call button rarely produced any response. There is a gap as to who
according to rule is supposed to respond the buzzer.

• To illustrate further the consequence of a gap and overlap, here is a story to show what happens where is a gap or overlap. A boy wanted his
pants shorter. So he went to his mother to ask him to shorten it. His mother was busy computing grades and told her son to ask his sister to
do it. His sister was busy reviewing for the final exams and asked her brother to ask their elder brother to do it. But his older brother was
also busy with his school project and so could not also attend to it. The boy highly frustrated went to sleep. His pants were beside him. After
finishing her grades, Mother peeped into her son’s room, saw the pants and remembered her son’s request. So she took a pair of scissors
and shortened them. Before she went to bed, the sister also remembered her brother’s request. Full of remorse she went to her younger
brother’s room, saw the pants, got a pair of scissors and shortened them, too. The older brother finally completed his school project and
suddenly remembered his brother’s asking for help to shorten the pants. So he went to his younger brother’s room, got a pair of scissors
and cut them, too. When the younger brother woke up, he was surprised to see a pair of extremely short shorts. The pants which he
wanted to make just a little shorter ended up too short to him.

• This is what happens when there are gaps or overlaps in an organization. The gaps leave an important thing in an organization undone. The
overlap results in unnecessary and counterproductive, redundant procedures which ultimately lead to waste of resources.
Lack of Clarity Vs. Lack of Creativity

• If employees are unclear about what they are supposed to do, they often tailor their roles around personal
preferences instead of system wide goals, frequently leading to trouble. Most McDonald’s customers are not seeking
novelty and surprise in their burgers and fries. But when responsibilities are over defined, people conform to
prescribed roles and protocols in “bureaucratic” ways. They rigidly follow job descriptions regardless of how much the
service or product suffers and so end up uncreative.

• ‘You lost my bag!’ an angry passenger shouted, confronting an airline manager. The manager’s response was to
inquire, ‘How was the flight?’ ‘I asked about my bag,’ the passenger said. ‘That’s not my job,’ the manager replied.
‘See someone in baggage claim.’ The passenger did not leave as a happy airline customer. The job of the manager was
over defined and made the manager uncreative and inefficient. Her job in relation to the airline system wide goals was
neither clear and so ended up giving the wrong answer that turned off the airline passenger.

Flexibility Vs. Strict Adherence to Rules

• You accommodate by bending rules to help someone or you stick strictly to rules no matter what and so unable to
help someone who is thrown into a helpless situation. Or you may become being too accommodating that all rules are
no more. Your jobs are defined so clearly that you will stick to them even if circumstances are such that by sticking to
your job description the service or product that your organization provides suffers.
Excessive Autonomy Vs. Excessive Interdependence
• This refers to being too isolated versus too much coordination. When individuals or groups are too autonomous, people often
feel isolated and disconnected. School teachers working in self-contained classrooms and rarely working with other teachers
may feel lonely and unsupported. Yet, efforts to create closer teamwork have repeatedly failed because of teachers’
difficulties in working together. In contrast, if units and roles are too tightly linked, people are distracted from work and waste
time on unnecessary or too much coordination.
• IBM lost an early lead in the personal computer business in part because new initiatives required so many approvals – from
levels and divisions alike – that new products were over designed and late to market. Hewlett – Packard’s ability to innovate in
the late 1990s was hindered by the same problem.
• Structural dilemma is the dilemma arising from conflicting concerns among various sectors of society. In the first example, the
dilemma is how to enforce a decision, policy, or rule intended for everybody among many different or unique groups or
individuals. In the second, the dilemma arises because of either gaps or overlaps in the procedure of implementation of
certain projects or policies among involved agencies like the FBI and CIA in the USA or like the NBI and the INP in the
Philippines.
Resolving Moral Dilemmas
• The following offer some techniques in resolving moral dilemma: One way is to think of available alternative options revealing
that the dilemma does not exist. This happens where there are available alternative options. For instance, one is experiencing
a dilemma between stealing or not stealing otherwise his family will either die of hunger or survive. The creative moral agent
will try to think of other alternatives, like “alternative means of income or support such as social safety net, charity, etc.”
• Another way is choosing the greater good and lesser evil or..., or one may apply the situation ethics approach, following the
rule, one must do only what he can where he is. Do not resort to extraordinary or supernatural means.
• Joseph Fletcher offers some principles in resolving moral dilemma. He uses Kant’s “ought implies I can” rule. If I ought to do
something, then I can do it. By contraposition, if I cannot do something, then I cannot be obliged to do it. Or by implication,
either I cannot be obliged to do something or I can do it. So Fletcher says, “do what you can where you are.” Or quoting St.
Augustine’s ‘Love and do what you will’. The extent of one’s obligation and responsibility is the extent of one’s ability and the
measure of the “extent” is one’s capacity for love.