Three Major Moral Dilemmas For Reflection

Moral dilemmas are paradoxical situations where there is a contradiction of values. In these scenarios, a person’s actions will somehow always cause harm. What one needs to evaluate is which alternative causes less damage and / or which of the alternatives have a greater ethical connection.

One of the most well-known moral dilemmas is the train dilemma. In it, a train runs at full speed. During the trip, you realize that there are five people tied to the rails. However, you have the option of pressing a button to change the route. The catch here is that there is also a person bound to the other way.

In this case, the dilemma depends on what to do. The debate is whether it is morally more acceptable to let the train go its way and kill five people or consciously decide to kill the one bound in the other direction. If things went their normal way, the person would not die. Whoever decided to press the button would cause one person to lose their life.

From this hypothetical situation, several moral dilemmas have arisen. The most famous are the man on the roof , the loop road and the man in the garden . Let’s see what each one of them is about.

1. The man on the roof

“The man on the roof” is one of the moral dilemmas that comes from the train dilemma. The situation is quite similar. It is a train going towards five people who are tied to the rails. In this case, however, the alternative is to throw a weight in front of the train, to stop it before it reaches the people who are tied up.

The only possibility is that there is an overweight man next to the road. If he was thrown in front of the train, he could stop it and prevent the other five people from dying. What should be done? The difference in this case is that you have to perform an active task that will consciously end a person’s life.

Utilitarian ethics indicates that the decisive factor is the number of victims, which means that it is well worth sacrificing a life in exchange for saving five. Humanistic ethics, however, points to something else. The man next to the road is in full use of his rights. One of them is the right to live and therefore not to serve as a means of saving others.

2. Løkkeveien, one of today’s three major moral dilemmas

Within the framework of moral dilemmas, the “loop path” is quite similar to the one we just talked about. What happens in this case is that it is a loop path, in other words a circular path. No matter what you do, you always get back to square one.

In this case, there are five people tied to the rails. You can also operate the train to take another route. In this scenario, a man is tied up. He is quite large and can stop the train before it goes in a circle and reaches the other five victims. What would you do?

The classic train dilemma says that there are only two possibilities: One or the other way. You can not avoid both. When it comes to the loop, there is a small modification that involves a more thoughtful decision. Basically, a man will be deliberately hired as an obstacle to saving five people.

The man in the garden

The third of the moral dilemmas we will mention in this article is “The Man in the Garden”. In this case, the situation is the same as the original. However, the only possible way to divert the train is to derail it. As a consequence, the train would overturn into a garden where a man was resting in his hammock.

This means that if you decide to activate the deviation, the person who will end up dying is someone who has nothing to do with the situation and who will end up being the victim of a completely external decision. The catch with all these moral dilemmas is the opposite. You are either doing something good for a larger number of people, or taking measures that violate essential rights.

A study conducted by Guy Kahane from the University of Oxford in the UK indicated that people who have no problem hurting someone seriously to save other people are antisocial. On top of that, it was also concluded that these people are less careful when dealing with others and do not care about harming them.