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Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Quasi-moral dilemmas

Moral dilemmas are interesting for several reasons. Catholic apologists assure us that a Magisterium can give us crucial moral guidance which Protestants lack. Yet in many cases, Catholic theologians don't even pretend that the Magisterium has all the answers. Traditionally, there are competing schools of casuistry in Catholicism–some stricter and some laxer. 

Moral dilemmas also raise questions about the kind of world we live in. Is it a world governed by divine providence–or a random universe where bad things happen for no reason at all? Calvinism may rule out moral dilemmas whereas freewill theism may generate them. 

Moral dilemmas a paradoxical inasmuch as it might be argued that if an agent, through no fault of his own, finds him thrust into a situation where no right course of action is open to him, then that absolves him of culpability. He ends up to doing something that would normally be wrong, even heinous, if he had a better option. 

From my reading, examples of moral dilemmas either involve doing something wrong or not doing the wrong thing, but if you don't, someone else will do it in your place. Suppose I'm a POW. Suppose two of my fellow POWs are caught stealing food. The prison guard gives me a choice: if I shoot one of them, he will spare the other. Up to me which one I shoot. If I don't shoot one of them, he will shoot both. 

Now let's switch to a different example. Suppose I'm a young bachelor who gets drunk, then drives home drunk, killing a cyclist on the way home. I don't turn myself in because I've got too much to lose, and I can't restore the life of the hit-and-run victim. And it remains an unsolved crime. Although that's a hypothetic case, there are many real-life examples. 

Putting aside what I ought to do in that situation, let's complicate it. A few years later I get married and have kids. Where does my duty lie now? I now have dependents. Prior obligations. So whatever I should have done before, it may now be too late for me to turn myself in, because to turn myself in at this stage conflicts with my present and future duty to my wife and kids. There's a conflict between past and future duties. 

This, however, is different from a moral dilemma in the usual sense. I'm not in a situation where I must do something wrong (or normally wrong). It's not a forced option where the only available alternatives are to do something wrong, or leave it to someone else to do it. 

Rather, it's about me not doing the right thing. Are there situations in which there's a moral distinction between doing the wrong thing and failing to do the right this? This example seems like a candidate. 

The point is that sometimes we may not know the right answer because there is no right answer. That are wrong courses of action, but not necessarily a right course of action moving forward. There are limitations to ethnics in a fallen world. In addition, this is why only God can exact perfect justice. 

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