The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson
Containing His Articles, Observations, Thoughts, Meanderings,
and some would say Wisdom (and some would say not).
Situational Ethics and Moral Dilemmas
Introduction
As I have stated in other articles, I have tried to live my life in an ethical and moral manner. There are, however, situational ethics and moral dilemmas in which there are no easy answers. This article examines some of these particulars and their potential consequences.
Situational ethics can be defined as the doctrine of flexibility in the application of moral laws according to circumstances. Moral absolutism is the ethical belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, regardless of the context of the act. Moral relativists say that if you look at different cultures or different periods in history you'll find that they have different moral rules. Therefore, we have the dilemma of situational ethics vs moral absolutism and moral relativism. The answers to this dilemma have engaged philosophers and theologians for thousands of years with no definitive resolutions.
Some examples of these situational ethics and moral dilemmas are:
Lifeboat ethics.
Believe it or not, there are certain circumstances when ethics simply do not apply. Imagine you and one other person are in the middle of the ocean with a lifeboat built for one. What should you do? Ethical behavior requires that you act on a principle that can be applied to everybody else – not just you. Let’s say that you selfishly push the other person aside and grab the lifeboat to save yourself. If the other person acts on the same principle, he will push you aside. So, you both can’t successfully act on the same ethics.
On the other hand, suppose you behave altruistically and sacrifice yourself for the other person’s benefit. If he acts on the same principle, he will sacrifice himself for you. And you both drown.
Bottom line: there is no universal ethics that can solve the lifeboat problem. Ethics don’t seem to apply.
Now if all the world were one big lifeboat, we would be living in a Hobbesian jungle. Each of us would be pitted against the other. One person’s gain would always be another person’s loss. Life, in the words of Hobbes, would be “nasty, brutish and short.”
Fortunately, most of the time we can live by universal ethical principles that allow peaceful coexistence. We can also draw boundaries around the circumstances where ethics don’t seem to apply. But what are those principles and boundaries? At one time most educated people believed there were ethical principles that philosophers could discover. Today, it’s hard to find philosophers who believe that anymore.
Trading one life for another.
The idea of trading one life for another has fascinated ethical philosophers and psychologists alike. In one thought experiment, a runaway trolley is barreling down the track, about to kill five people. However, you can save the five by pulling a switch – diverting the trolley to a different track where only one person will be killed. Should you pull the switch? Why? Or why not?
Psychologists have experimented with a version of this dilemma by giving college students the opportunity to spare a group of mice from electric shocks by diverting the entire electric jolt to a single mouse. This posed a dilemma for the college students and the results were inconclusive for one action or the other.
In all of these cases, normal ethical rules don’t seem to apply.
Dirty Harry movie
The movie “Dirty Harry” provides an example of a moral dilemma in regard to torture. Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan tortures an unsympathetic villain to learn the location of an innocent girl who is about to suffocate in an underground tomb. Is it okay to torture someone to save a life? If the life to be saved was your spouse, your child, or another family member would your answer be any different? The entire subject of torture is fraught with moral dilemmas, especially about what constitute torture or not. The preceding example is one of the simpler moral dilemmas of torture.
Bombing of Coventry
A real-life example of a moral dilemma is the NAZI bombing of the English city of Coventry. British intelligence had stolen a NAZI Enigma cyphering machine and were able to break the codes and determine NAZI operations. They learned that the NAZI's were going to carpet bomb Coventry killing many thousands of civilians. If they evacuated Coventry the NAZI's would have suspected they had broken their encrypted communications which would have led them to change their codes. This discovery would have prolonged World War II and led to many more deaths and perhaps a different outcome of the war. The question was to keep this code breaking a secret thus leading to the deaths of many civilians in Coventry, or to save the civilian lives by evacuating Coventry leading to a longer war and more war deaths? If the more war deaths that was saved was your parent, grandparent, or great grandparent (therefore putting your very existence in question) would your answer be any different?
Atomic Bombing of Japan
Finally, there is the moral dilemma question of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States had just gone through the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa where they suffered immense causalities. The Japanese defenders had fought to the death of almost every Japanese soldier. The civilian population also suffered massive causalities and even mass suicide to prevent capture. Given these battlefield results an invasion of the Japanese islands was expected to take between five hundred thousand to over a million and a half U.S. casualties (and some estimates were even higher), and perhaps over two and a half million to four million Japanese causalities. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were expected to take between two hundred to three hundred thousand Japanese’s causalities, and very few American causalities. Do you sacrifice over three million American and Japanese causalities in an invasion, or three hundred thousand Japanese causalities in an atomic bombing? The other solutions proposed (i.e. an atomic bombing demonstration) were not considered feasible, nor were they expected to be effective given Japanese militarism and obstinance to surrender. If the American causality that was saved was your parent, grandparent, or great grandparent (therefore putting your very existence in question) would your answer be any different?
The Ticking Time Bomb
The Ticking Time Bomb is another dilemma. Image that U.S Homeland Security discovers that there is an NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) bomb about to go off in a west coast U.S. city within twenty-four hours. They have captured a terrorist that knows the NBC type, location and detonation time of the bomb. Is it ethical to torture the terrorist to obtain this information and perhaps save thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of lives? If the life to be saved was yours, your spouse, your children, or another family member would your answer be any different?
Final thoughts
Situational ethics and morals depend on the situation. There is no easy answer or strict guideline for all situations. In all cases you should be cognizant of the (historical) environment, and psychology and sociology of the participant(s) in order to reach an ethical or moral decision. Even then you may not reach a proper decision.
Therefore, be very careful when making a judgement of the person or persons involved in a situational ethics or moral dilemma. You may also want to read my article on “Who are you to Judge?” for more perspective.
A good starting point to the subject of ethics and moral absolutism and moral relativism is the BBC’s “Introduction to Ethics”, “Universal Moral Rules”, and “Featured ethical issues”. There are literally thousands of web sites that deal with these issues. As such I cannot recommend any particular website other than the BBC website previously mentioned.