MORAL

DILEMMAS
DR. ARVELLA MEDINA – ALBAY
ETHICS INSTRUCTOR
OBJECTIVES
RECOGNIZE AND RECALL A MORAL
EXPERIENCE
DETECT A MORAL DILEMMA
IDENTIFY THE THREE LEVELS OF
MORAL DILEMMAS
WHAT ARE MORAL
DILEMMAS?
ACTIVITY:
FOR INDIVIDUAL DILEMMAS:
CASE DISCUSSION ON
STUDENTS’ MORAL DILEMMAS
WHAT IS A DILEMMA?
DILEMMA
REFERS TO A SITUATION IN WHICH A
TOUGH CHOICE HAS TO BE MADE
BETWEEN TWO OR MORE OPTIONS,
ESPECIALLY MORE OR LESS EQUALLY
UNDESIRABLE ONES
NOT ALL DILEMMAS ARE MORAL
DILEMMAS
WHAT ARE MORAL
DILEMMAS?
 ETHICAL DILEMMAS
 Situations in which there is a choice to be made
between TWO OPTIONS, neither of which resolves
the situation in an ethically acceptable fashion.
 MORAL DILEMMA INVOLVES CONFLICTS BETWEEN
MORAL REQUIREMENTS
 In such cases, societal and personal ethical
guidelines can provide no satisfactory outcome for
the individual.
ETHICAL DILEMMA
Ethical dilemmas assume that the
INDIVIDUAL will ABIDE by societal
norms, such as codes of law or
religious teachings, in order to
make the choice ethically
impossible.
KEY FEATURES OF MORAL
DILEMMA
 A. THE AGENT IS REQUIRED TO DO EACH OF TWO (OR
MORE) ACTIONS
 B. THE AGENT CAN DO EACH OF THE ACTIONS; BUT THE
AGENT CANNOT DO BOTH (OR ALL) OF THE ACTIONS
 IN A MORAL DILEMMA, THE AGENT THUS SEEMS
CONDEMNED TO MORAL FAILURE;
 NO MATTER WHAT HE DOES, HE WILL DO SOMETHING
WRONG, OR FAIL TO DO SOMETHING THAT HE OUGHT
TO DO
THREE LEVELS OF MORAL
DILEMMA
 A. PERSONAL DILEMMAS
 PERSONAL DILEMMAS are those experienced and resolved on the personal level.
Since many ethical decisions are personally made, many, if not most of, moral
dilemmas fall under, or boil down to this level
 If a person makes conflicting promises, he faces moral conflict
 When an individual has to chose between life of a child who is about to delivered
and the child’s mother, he faces ethical dilemma
 B. ORGANIZATIONAL DILEMMAS
 ORGANIZATIONAL DILEMMAS are refer to ethical cases encountered and resolved
by social organizations
 Includes moral dilemmas in business, medical field, and public sector
 Life of a dying patient – shortened and unpreventable pain shl not be tolerated
THREE LEVELS OF MORAL
DILEMMA
 C. STRUCTURAL DILEMMAS
 STRUCTURAL DILEMMAS are moral dilemmas refers
to cases involving network of institutions and
operative theoretical paradigms
 Usually encompass multi-sectoral institutions and
organizations, they maybe larger in scope and
extent than organizational dilemma
 Prices of medicines in the Philippines
ONLY HUMAN BEINGS CAN
BE ETHICAL
ONLY HUMAN BEINGS ARE RATIONAL,
AUTONOMOUS, AND SELF-CONSCIOUS
ONLY HUMAN BEINGS CAN ACT MORALLY
OR IMMORALLY
ONLY HUMAN BEINGS ARE PART OF THE
MORAL COMMUNITY
FREEDOM AS A
FOUNDATION OF MORALITY
 ONE OF THE REASONS ANIMALS CANNOT BE TRULY ETHICAL IS
THAT THEY ARE NOT REALLY AUTONOMOUS OR FREE.
 ROBOT, NO MATTER HOW BENEFICIAL ITS FUNCTIONS MAY BE,
CANNOT BE SAID TO BE MORAL, FOR IT HAS NO FREEDOM OR
CHOICE BUT TO WORK ACCORDING TO WHAT IS COMMANDED
BASED ON ITS BUILT-IN PROGRAM
 MORALITY IS A QUESTION OF CHOICE
 PRACTICALLY, MORALITY IS CHOOSING ETHICAL CODES, VALUES,
OR STANDARDS TO GUIDE US IN OUR DAILY LIVES
 PHILOSOPHICALLY, CHOOSING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT FREEDOM
FREEDOM AS A
FOUNDATION OF MORALITY
MORALITY REQUIRES AND ALLOWS CHOICE
 THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE EVEN DIFFERENTLY
FROM OUR FELLOWS.
 PEOPLE MAKE THE CHOICE TO GIVE TO
CHARITIES, DONATE TIME AND MONEY TO
SCHOOLS, MENTOR CHILDREN, OPEN
BUSINESS, OR PROTEST AGAINST ANIMAL
CRUELTY
MINIMUM REQUIREMENT
FOR MORALITY: REASON
AND IMPARTIALITY
 JAMES RACHELS holds that moral judgments
must be backed by sound reasoning and that
morality requires the Impartial considerations
of all parties involved.
 Thus, submitted that reason and impartiality
compose the “minimum conception” of
morality, or as some put it, the minimum
requirements of morality
MINIMUM REQUIREMENT
FOR MORALITY: REASON
AND
REASON

IMPARTIALITY
 As a requirement for morality entails that human feelings may be
important in ethical decisions, but they ought to be guided by reason.
 Sound reasoning helps us to evaluate whether our feelings and intuitions
about moral cases are correct and defensible
 IMPARTIALITY
 Involves the idea that each individual’s interests and point of view are
equally important.
 Also called evenhandedness or fair-mindedness
 Impartiality is a principle of justice holding that decisions ought to be
based on objective criteria, rather than on the basis of bias, prejudice, or
preferring the benefit to one person over another for improper reasons
ETHICAL DILEMMA
SITUATIONS
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
 Micah had several friends including Diane and Ella. Diane has
recently met and started dating a wonderful lad named Angelo.
She is convinced this is a long term relationship. Unknown to
Diane, Micah observed them at a restaurant several days ago
and realized Angelo is the husband of her other friend Ella.
 Micah is deciding whether to tell Diane that Angelo is married
when she receives a call from Ella. Ella suspects her husband is
having an affair and since they and Ella share many friends and
contacts, she asks if Micah has heard anything regarding an
affair.
ETHICAL DILEMMA
SITUATIONS
To whom does Micah owe greater
friendship to in this situation? No
matter who she tells, she is going
to end up hurting one, if not both
friends. Does she remain silent
and hope her knowledge is never
discovered?
ETHICAL DILEMMA
SITUATIONS
 Societal Dilemmas

 A pregnant woman leading a group of 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
will drown. What should they do?
ETHICAL DILEMMAS
 The mood at Baileyville High School is tense with anticipation.
For the first time in many, many years, the varsity basketball
team has made it to the state semifinals. The community is
excited too, and everyone is making plans to attend the big
event next Saturday night. Jeff, the varsity coach, has been
waiting for years to field such a team. Speed, teamwork,
balance: they've got it all. Only one more week to practice, he
tells his team, and not a rule can be broken. Everyone must be
at practice each night at the regularly scheduled time: No
Exceptions.Brad and Mike are two of the team's starters. From
their perspective, they're indispensable to the team, the guys
who will bring victory to Baileyville. They decide-why, no one
will ever know-to show up an hour late to the next day's
practice.
 Jeff is furious. They have deliberately disobeyed his orders.
KOHLBERG DILEMMAS
 Joe is a fourteen-year-old boy who wanted to
go to camp very much. His father promised
him he could go if he saved up the money for it
himself. So Joe worked hard at his paper route
and saved up the forty dollars it cost to go to
camp, and a little more besides. But just
before camp was going to start, his father
changed his mind. Some of his friends decided
to go on a special fishing trip, and Joe's father
was short of the money it would cost. So he
told Joe to give him the money he had saved
from the paper route. Joe didn't want to give
up going to camp, so he thinks of refusing to
 In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of
cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might
save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same
town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to
make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug
cost him to make. He paid $400 for the radium and charged
$4,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's
husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the
money and tried every legal means, but he could only get
together about $2,000, which is half of what it cost. He told
the druggist that his wife was dying, and asked him to sell it
cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I
discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from if." So,
having tried every legal means, Heinz gets desperate and
 Judy was a twelve-year-old girl. Her mother promised her that
she could go to a special rock concert coming to their town if
she saved up from baby-sitting and lunch money to buy a
ticket to the concert. She managed to save up the fifteen
dollars the ticket cost plus another five dollars. But then her
mother changed her mind and told Judy that she had to spend
the money on new clothes for school. Judy was disappointed
and decided to go to the concert anyway. She bought a ticket
and told her mother that she had only been able to save five
dollars. That Saturday she went to the performance and told
her mother that she was spending the day with a friend. A
week passed without her mother finding out. Judy then told
her older sister, Louise, that she had gone to the performance
and had lied to her mother about it. Louise wonders whether
MORAL DILEMMAS
INVOLVING INFORMATION
ACCESS AND PRIVACY.
 Tony, a data analyst for a major casino, is working after normal business
hours to finish an important project. He realizes that he is missing data that
had been sent to his coworker Robert.Tony had inadvertently observed
Robert typing his password several days ago and decides to log into
Robert's computer and resend the data to himself. Upon doing so, Tony
sees an open email regarding gambling bets Robert placed over the last
several days with a local sports book. All employees of the casino are
forbidden to engage in gambling activities to avoid any hint of conflict of
interest.
 Tony knows he should report this but would have to admit to violating the
company's information technology regulations by logging into Robert's
computer. If he warns Robert to stop his betting, he would also have to
reveal the source of his information. What does Tony do in this situation?
PROFESSIONAL LIFE
VERSUS FAMILY LIFE
MORAL DILEMMAS
 Alan works in the claims department of a major hospital. Paperwork on a
recent admission shows that a traumatic mugging caused the patient to
require an adjustment in the medication she is prescribed to control
anxiety and mood swings. Alan is struck by the patient's unusual last name
and upon checking her employment information realizes she is one of his
daughter's grade school teachers.
 Alan's daughter seems very happy in her school and he cannot violate
patient confidentiality by informing the school of a teacher's mental illness
but he is not comfortable with a potentially unstable person in a position of
influence and supervision over his eight year old daughter. Can Alan
reconcile these issues in an ethical manner?
Knowing how to best resolve difficult
moral and ethical dilemmas is never easy
especially when any choice violates the
societal and ethical standards by which
we have been taught to govern our lives.