Ethical Dilemmas – Right-versus-Right Choices

Do right and risk the consequences - Harry Truman

Right-versus-Right Choices are genuine dilemmas because each side is deeply rooted in our core values.

Four Common Paradigms

• ·         Truth versus Loyalty
• ·         Individual versus Community
• ·         Short-term versus Long-term
• ·         Justice versus Mercy

Moral Temptations – Right-versus-Wrong Choices

Right-versus-Wrong Choices are commonplace and widely understood to be wrong.

• ·         Cheating on taxes
• ·         Lying under oath
• ·         Insurance fraud
• ·         Running red lights

Three Principles for Decision Making gives us a way to test the twin rights of a dilemma:

• ·         Ends-based Thinking – Do whatever produces the greatest good for the greatest number.  It is the staple of public policy debate. At the heart of this principle is an assessment of consequences, a forecasting of outcomes. It demands a type of cost-benefit analysis, determining who will be hurt and who will be helped, and measuring the intensity of that help.

Relevant Terminology – Utilitarianism – Consequentialism – Teleological

• ·         Rule-based Thinking – “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become universal law.” German Philosopher Immanuel Kant. Simply put, “Follow only the principle that you want everyone else to follow.” In other words, act in such a way that your actions could become a universal standard that others ought to obey. Ask yourself, “If everyone in the world followed the rule of action I am following, would that create the greatest good or [in Kant’s words] the ‘greatest worth of character’?”

This principle called “the categorical imperative.” This mode of thinking stands directly opposed to Utilitarianism – Consequentialism – Teleological.

Relevant Terminology – Deontological Thinking

• ·         Care-based Thinking – Putting love for others first: Do to others what you would like them to do to you. It asks you to test your actions by putting yourself in another’s shoes and imagining how it would feel if you were the recipient, rather than the perpetrator, of your actions. Known to philosophers as reversibility, it is often associated with Christianity – Jesus said, “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matt. 7:12 [KJV]. It is in fact so universal that it appears at the center of every one of the world’s greatest religious teachings. For many people, it is the only rule of ethics they know, deserving consideration for the moral glue it has provided over the centuries.                                                                                  

Relevant Terminology – The Golden Rule, focusing on Reversibility


From Rushworth M. Kidder book: How Good People Make Tough Choices