Moral Dilemmas / Problems

In relation to ethics the terms ‘conundrum’, ‘dilemma’, ‘predicament’, ‘problem, and ‘quandary’ are often used interchangeably, but it is important to distinguish different notions corresponding to different types of situation. Here the terms problem, perplexity, and dilemma are used to distinguish these. First, then a moral problem is a feature or state of affairs that poses a challenge or makes a demand on how to act. Someone who becomes pregnant but does not want to have a baby faces a moral problem expressed by the question ‘what is the right thing to do?’: a) to end the pregnancy, b) to continue it but to seek immediate adoption, or c) to have and raise the child. The woman may be clear as to which of these she believes it is right to pursue but nonetheless recognise that the situation is problematic and that others might judge there are reasons to choose a different course. A moral perplexity is a situation in which it is not clear what the right thing to do is or even what the way to work this out may be. For example it is sometimes argued that reparations should be made for slavery. But to whom and by whom and on what basis should this be done? Is it for the direct descendants of slave owners to make reparations to the direct descendants of their ancestors’ slaves? What if there are no direct but only distant descendants on either side? What if in some case the descendants of owners are poorer than the descendants of slaves, or have no resources? What if the principal beneficiaries of slavery were not the owners but their societies? Should it then be for the (descendant) society to make reparation? The point here is that in thinking about the issue all sorts of further questions arise and it is difficult to know how to answer them, hence how to address the issue of reparation. Finally, a moral dilemma is a situation in which it seems that whatever one does one will not have done something one ought to have done. This may take two forms. First, where one ought to do A and one ought to do B but circumstances make it impossible to do both. Doing neither is a double failure, and doing one is a single failure. Second, where one ought to do A and one ought not to do A. Here the dilemma is not created by a circumstantially impossible requirements but by directly contradictory ones. An example would be where you had promised X that you would do A and promised Y that you would not do A. Unlike problems and perplexities dilemmas seem so directly contradictory that some philosophers have argued that they are illusory and they seek to explain away the appearance of them.