Moral Dilemmas
What is an intracultural example of a moral argument that cannot in principle be resolved? Whatever one is, it would seem to involve an example of a moral dilemma. However, trying to find a real example of a moral dilemma might prove simply to be a banal exercise. Moral dilemmas result from apparent conflicts between moral requirements, and the total number of moral dilemmas could therefore prosaically be the power set of all the different moral requirements that exist.
What, therefore, would be an advantage of exploring a moral dilemma? First, it would serve the purpose of clarifying what our moral duties actually are, by throwing them into sharp relief. If we were to work out what all our duties were on a case-by-case basis, not all of them might be obvious if we were simply to act on them as a matter of course. But if we had a temptation not to act on them, the obligation would be clearer, because that is what would make the decision difficult.
For example, consider a dilemma posed by Socrates. He proposes a counterexample to Cephalus in Book I of Plato's Republic to the notion that justice consists in telling the truth and paying our debts. He asks whether it would be right to return a borrowed weapon to a friend who is not in his right mind. Here, there is a dilemma between repaying one's debts and protecting others from harm. Yet the notion of protecting others from harm was not even introduced until it had been thrown into the sharp relief of being one of the horns of a dilemma. It was a duty that Cephalus had no doubt assumed unconsciously before he spoke. But it was not brought to his conscious awareness until it was introduced in this example as conflicting with something that he recognised as a duty. It can be seen in this example that there are two conflicting duties: repaying one's debts and protecting others from harm.
This is one possible approach to ferreting out various moral duties. Simply perform a series of thought-experiments that pit us in various moral dilemmas and then extract the two conflicting duties on either horn of the dilemma. This also has the benefit of being a reasonably interesting intellectual exercise. Each one of these moral duties would presumably play a role in social norms.
Of course, as expressed, this is not a strong empirical approach. We might base our notion that these are moral dilemmas from memories of our own experiences, but this is secondhand, not firsthand, research. If we are to remain faithful to our first paradigmatic assumption, we would do better to investigate actually documented moral dilemmas. This seems reasonable, in that I still suspect that they will lead to more reliable intuitions.
However, there is support for considering hypothetical moral dilemmas. It comes from an article in the journal Social Behaviour and Personality, "Moral Reasoning in Hypothetical and Actual Situations." (1978, 6 (), 205-210) Gerard F. Sumprer and Eliot J. Butter gave college students a test of their responses to hypothetical moral dilemmas. Two months later, the students were presented with two real moral dilemmas and apparently their reasoning remained the same.
I'm going to have to look at that article in more detail before I really believe in it, however. It could make a big difference to the theory. That is going to have to wait for another section, but I can now see exactly why the task of an empirical theory of ethics would be virtually endless if carried out thoroughly. A good reason to see if I can devise a moral paradigm so that other people can carry out the work in the same vein!
What, therefore, would be an advantage of exploring a moral dilemma? First, it would serve the purpose of clarifying what our moral duties actually are, by throwing them into sharp relief. If we were to work out what all our duties were on a case-by-case basis, not all of them might be obvious if we were simply to act on them as a matter of course. But if we had a temptation not to act on them, the obligation would be clearer, because that is what would make the decision difficult.
For example, consider a dilemma posed by Socrates. He proposes a counterexample to Cephalus in Book I of Plato's Republic to the notion that justice consists in telling the truth and paying our debts. He asks whether it would be right to return a borrowed weapon to a friend who is not in his right mind. Here, there is a dilemma between repaying one's debts and protecting others from harm. Yet the notion of protecting others from harm was not even introduced until it had been thrown into the sharp relief of being one of the horns of a dilemma. It was a duty that Cephalus had no doubt assumed unconsciously before he spoke. But it was not brought to his conscious awareness until it was introduced in this example as conflicting with something that he recognised as a duty. It can be seen in this example that there are two conflicting duties: repaying one's debts and protecting others from harm.
This is one possible approach to ferreting out various moral duties. Simply perform a series of thought-experiments that pit us in various moral dilemmas and then extract the two conflicting duties on either horn of the dilemma. This also has the benefit of being a reasonably interesting intellectual exercise. Each one of these moral duties would presumably play a role in social norms.
Of course, as expressed, this is not a strong empirical approach. We might base our notion that these are moral dilemmas from memories of our own experiences, but this is secondhand, not firsthand, research. If we are to remain faithful to our first paradigmatic assumption, we would do better to investigate actually documented moral dilemmas. This seems reasonable, in that I still suspect that they will lead to more reliable intuitions.
However, there is support for considering hypothetical moral dilemmas. It comes from an article in the journal Social Behaviour and Personality, "Moral Reasoning in Hypothetical and Actual Situations." (1978, 6 (), 205-210) Gerard F. Sumprer and Eliot J. Butter gave college students a test of their responses to hypothetical moral dilemmas. Two months later, the students were presented with two real moral dilemmas and apparently their reasoning remained the same.
I'm going to have to look at that article in more detail before I really believe in it, however. It could make a big difference to the theory. That is going to have to wait for another section, but I can now see exactly why the task of an empirical theory of ethics would be virtually endless if carried out thoroughly. A good reason to see if I can devise a moral paradigm so that other people can carry out the work in the same vein!
Comments