Here is a moral dilemma in a thought experiment. You see a train coming down the track towards a group of workers. Standing near a lever, you must decide whether to leave the lever along and let the train kill the workers, or to pull the lever to let the train change tracks and kill only one worker on s subsidiary track. What would you do?
This moral dilemma can be considered using a consequentialist, deontological and virtue-ethics framework. According to consequentialist view something like the greatest good for the greatest number of people is to be obtained. Prima facie, a utilitarian might prefer to pull the lever. Deontology prescribes duties, such as not killing people. Prima facie, a deontologist might not pull the lever, e.g. because of the duty not to be actively involved in the killing of an innocent person. Finally, a virtue ethicist might focus on one’s capabilities, e.g. practising intellectual virtues like theoretical and practical wisdom, and moral virtues like prudence, justice, temperance and courage. Prima facie, a virtuous agent might pull the lever, in as far as this is in accordance with the human/societal flourishing.
A thought experiment like this is not just a theoretical exercise. When dairy farmers are confronted with exploding field mouse populations, it may cost about 100.000 Euro’s/dollars per farm. Population control using poison is considered socially undesirable, and alternatives like drowning and gassing also have serious drawbacks. As a result, farmers prefer to wait for a cold spell, such that large numbers of mice would be frozen to death. Another example is the myxomatosis rabbit. It has swollen eyes, sits by the side of the road and doesn’t run away. Such rabbits don’t eat and will eventually die when left alone. However, it may be more humane to take a minute to kill the rabbit so as to reduce unnecessary future suffering. The train, the mice and the rabbit constitute moral dilemma’s because they involve a choice between being passive or being active, and between more or less harm done to the individuals concerned.
Train: Pull lever → 1 person dies; don’t pull lever → 5 die
Mice: Poison/gas/drowning →quicker death; wait for cold →slower death
Rabbit: Hit → quick death; leave along →die more slowly
What is better: to stand by and let ‘nature’ take its course, or to act so as to reduce overall harm?
The morally best course of action would be to do one’s duty in minimizing harm and maximizing happiness and flourishing. While contributing to happiness and flourishing may be supererogatory, i.e. morally good/laudable but not required, it is a morally required obligation to refrain from causing considerable harm to others whenever possible.
In general, moral dilemma’s can be solved relatively easily. This is because the bigger the dilemma, the smaller the difference between the moral value of the alternatives. Hence, the bigger the dilemma, the more likely it is that the problem can be solved by tossing a coin. For tossing either will make you do what is morally right, or it will make you do what approaches doing what is morally right, and there is no strong moral obligation to be perfect.
Another route to solving moral dilemma’s may be to critically examine the underlying assumptions, e.g. that non-human animals can suffer and that human lives are valuable. When animals were mere reflex machines, then all concern about animal welfare would be erroneous, and the moral dilemma’s of the mouse overpopulation and the myxomatosis rabbit would dissolve instantly. Similarly, when humans were only destroying the earth by overpopulation and self-interested hedonistic materialism devoid of moral decency, or something like that, then we may be mistaken about the presumed value of human life. If the railroad workers were in fact morally equivalents of somebody like Hitler, then surely the approaching train could be turned into a moral solution, rather than a moral dilemma.
