Justice

February 14, 2010, 8:13 am • Tags: , ,

icon_02Ethical dilemma is a complex situation that will often involve an apparent mental conflict between moral imperatives, in which to obey one would result in transgressing another. This is also called an ethical paradox since in moral philosophy, paradox plays a central role in ethics debates. For instance, an ethical admonition to “love thy neighbor as thy self” is not always in contrast with, but sometimes in contradiction to an armed neighbor actively trying to harm you. If he or she succeeds, you will not be able to love him or her.

But to preemptively attack them or restrain them is not usually understood as loving. This is one of the classic examples of an ethical decision clashing or conflicting with an organismic decision, one that would be made only from the perspective of animal survival. An animal is thought to act only in its immediate perceived bodily self-interests when faced with bodily harm, and to have limited ability to perceive alternatives.

However, human beings have complex social relationships that can’t be ignored. If one has an ethical relationship with the neighbour trying to kill you, then, usually, their desire to kill you would likely be the result of mental illness on their part. Such conflicts might be settled by some other path that has strong social support. Societies formed criminal justice systems, ethical traditions and religions to defuse just such deep conflicts. Such systems always impose trained judges who are presumed to have an ethical relationship and also a clear obligation to all who come before them.

Ethical dilemmas are often cited in an attempt to refute an ethical system or moral code, as well as the world view that encompasses or grows from it. Where a structural conflict is involved, dilemmas will very often recur. A trivial example is working with a bad operating system whose error messages do not match the problems the user perceives. Each such error presents the user with a dilemma: reboot the machine and continue working, or spend time trying to reproduce the problem for the benefit of the developer of the operating system and everyone that experiences the same situation.