DR.

ARVELLA MEDINA – ALBAY

ETHICS INSTRUCTOR
RECOGNIZE AND RECALL A MORAL
EXPERIENCE
DETECT A MORAL DILEMMA
IDENTIFY THE THREE LEVELS OF
MORAL DILEMMAS
ACTIVITY:
FOR INDIVIDUAL DILEMMAS:
CASE DISCUSSION ON
STUDENTS’ MORAL DILEMMAS
DILEMMA
REFERS TO A SITUATION IN WHICH A
TOUGH CHOICE HAS TO BE MADE
BETWEEN TWO OR MORE OPTIONS,
ESPECIALLY MORE OR LESS EQUALLY
UNDESIRABLE ONES
NOT ALL DILEMMAS ARE MORAL
DILEMMAS
 ETHICAL DILEMMAS
 Situations in which there is a choice to be made
between TWO OPTIONS, neither of which resolves
the situation in an ethically acceptable fashion.
 MORAL DILEMMA INVOLVES CONFLICTS BETWEEN
MORAL REQUIREMENTS
 In such cases, societal and personal ethical guidelines
can provide no satisfactory outcome for the individual.
Ethical dilemmas assume that the
INDIVIDUAL will ABIDE by societal
norms, such as codes of law or
religious teachings, in order to make
the choice ethically impossible.
 A. THE AGENT IS REQUIRED TO DO EACH OF TWO (OR
MORE) ACTIONS
 B. THE AGENT CAN DO EACH OF THE ACTIONS; BUT THE
AGENT CANNOT DO BOTH (OR ALL) OF THE ACTIONS
 IN A MORAL DILEMMA, THE AGENT THUS SEEMS
CONDEMNED TO MORAL FAILURE;
 NO MATTER WHAT HE DOES, HE WILL DO SOMETHING
WRONG, OR FAIL TO DO SOMETHING THAT HE OUGHT TO
DO
 A. PERSONAL DILEMMAS
 PERSONAL DILEMMAS are those experienced and resolved on the personal level. Since
many ethical decisions are personally made, many, if not most of, moral dilemmas fall
under, or boil down to this level
 If a person makes conflicting promises, he faces moral conflict
 When an individual has to chose between life of a child who is about to delivered and the
child’s mother, he faces ethical dilemma
 B. ORGANIZATIONAL DILEMMAS
 ORGANIZATIONAL DILEMMAS are refer to ethical cases encountered and resolved by
social organizations
 Includes moral dilemmas in business, medical field, and public sector
 Life of a dying patient – shortened and unpreventable pain shl not be tolerated
 C. STRUCTURAL DILEMMAS
 STRUCTURAL DILEMMAS are moral dilemmas refers to
cases involving network of institutions and operative
theoretical paradigms
 Usually encompass multi-sectoral institutions and
organizations, they maybe larger in scope and extent than
organizational dilemma
 Prices of medicines in the Philippines
ONLY HUMAN BEINGS ARE RATIONAL,
AUTONOMOUS, AND SELF-CONSCIOUS
ONLY HUMAN BEINGS CAN ACT MORALLY
OR IMMORALLY
ONLY HUMAN BEINGS ARE PART OF THE
MORAL COMMUNITY
 ONE OF THE REASONS ANIMALS CANNOT BE TRULY ETHICAL IS
THAT THEY ARE NOT REALLY AUTONOMOUS OR FREE.
 ROBOT, NO MATTER HOW BENEFICIAL ITS FUNCTIONS MAY BE,
CANNOT BE SAID TO BE MORAL, FOR IT HAS NO FREEDOM OR
CHOICE BUT TO WORK ACCORDING TO WHAT IS COMMANDED
BASED ON ITS BUILT-IN PROGRAM
 MORALITY IS A QUESTION OF CHOICE
 PRACTICALLY, MORALITY IS CHOOSING ETHICAL CODES, VALUES,
OR STANDARDS TO GUIDE US IN OUR DAILY LIVES
 PHILOSOPHICALLY, CHOOSING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT FREEDOM
MORALITY REQUIRES AND ALLOWS CHOICE
 THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE EVEN DIFFERENTLY
FROM OUR FELLOWS.
 PEOPLE MAKE THE CHOICE TO GIVE TO
CHARITIES, DONATE TIME AND MONEY TO
SCHOOLS, MENTOR CHILDREN, OPEN BUSINESS,
OR PROTEST AGAINST ANIMAL CRUELTY
 JAMES RACHELS holds that moral judgments must
be backed by sound reasoning and that morality
requires the Impartial considerations of all parties
involved.
 Thus, submitted that reason and impartiality
compose the “minimum conception” of morality, or
as some put it, the minimum requirements of
morality
 REASON
 As a requirement for morality entails that human feelings may be important in
ethical decisions, but they ought to be guided by reason.
 Sound reasoning helps us to evaluate whether our feelings and intuitions about
moral cases are correct and defensible
 IMPARTIALITY
 Involves the idea that each individual’s interests and point of view are equally
important.
 Also called evenhandedness or fair-mindedness
 Impartiality is a principle of justice holding that decisions ought to be based on
objective criteria, rather than on the basis of bias, prejudice, or preferring the
benefit to one person over another for improper reasons
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
 Micah had several friends including Diane and Ella. Diane has
recently met and started dating a wonderful lad named Angelo.
She is convinced this is a long term relationship. Unknown to
Diane, Micah observed them at a restaurant several days ago
and realized Angelo is the husband of her other friend Ella.
 Micah is deciding whether to tell Diane that Angelo is married
when she receives a call from Ella. Ella suspects her husband is
having an affair and since they and Ella share many friends and
contacts, she asks if Micah has heard anything regarding an
affair.
To whom does Micah owe greater
friendship to in this situation? No
matter who she tells, she is going to
end up hurting one, if not both
friends. Does she remain silent and
hope her knowledge is never
discovered?
 Societal Dilemmas

 A pregnant woman leading a group of people out of a cave

on a coast is stuck in the mouth of that cave. In a short time
high tide will be upon them, and unless she is unstuck, they
will all be drowned except the woman, whose head is out of
the cave. Fortunately, (or unfortunately,) someone has with
him a stick of dynamite. There seems no way to get the
pregnant woman loose without using the dynamite which
will inevitably kill her; but if they do not use it everyone will
drown. What should they do?
 The mood at Baileyville High School is tense with anticipation. For the
first time in many, many years, the varsity basketball team has made
it to the state semifinals. The community is excited too, and everyone
is making plans to attend the big event next Saturday night. Jeff, the
varsity coach, has been waiting for years to field such a team. Speed,
teamwork, balance: they've got it all. Only one more week to practice,
he tells his team, and not a rule can be broken. Everyone must be at
practice each night at the regularly scheduled time: No
Exceptions.Brad and Mike are two of the team's starters. From their
perspective, they're indispensable to the team, the guys who will
bring victory to Baileyville. They decide-why, no one will ever know-
to show up an hour late to the next day's practice.
 Jeff is furious. They have deliberately disobeyed his orders. The rule
says they should be suspended for one full week. If he follows the
rule, Brad and Mike will not play in the semifinals. But the whole team
 Joe is a fourteen-year-old boy who wanted to go to
camp very much. His father promised him he could
go if he saved up the money for it himself. So Joe
worked hard at his paper route and saved up the
forty dollars it cost to go to camp, and a little more
besides. But just before camp was going to start, his
father changed his mind. Some of his friends
decided to go on a special fishing trip, and Joe's
father was short of the money it would cost. So he
told Joe to give him the money he had saved from
the paper route. Joe didn't want to give up going to
camp, so he thinks of refusing to give his father the
money.
 In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer.
There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a
form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently
discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was
charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $400 for
the radium and charged $4,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick
woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the
money and tried every legal means, but he could only get together
about $2,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his
wife was dying, and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later.
But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to
make money from if." So, having tried every legal means, Heinz gets
desperate and considers breaking into the man's store to steal the
drug for his wife.
 Judy was a twelve-year-old girl. Her mother promised her that she
could go to a special rock concert coming to their town if she saved
up from baby-sitting and lunch money to buy a ticket to the concert.
She managed to save up the fifteen dollars the ticket cost plus
another five dollars. But then her mother changed her mind and told
Judy that she had to spend the money on new clothes for school. Judy
was disappointed and decided to go to the concert anyway. She
bought a ticket and told her mother that she had only been able to
save five dollars. That Saturday she went to the performance and told
her mother that she was spending the day with a friend. A week
passed without her mother finding out. Judy then told her older sister,
Louise, that she had gone to the performance and had lied to her
mother about it. Louise wonders whether to tell their mother what
Judy did
 Tony, a data analyst for a major casino, is working after normal business hours to
finish an important project. He realizes that he is missing data that had been sent to
his coworker Robert.Tony had inadvertently observed Robert typing his password
several days ago and decides to log into Robert's computer and resend the data to
himself. Upon doing so, Tony sees an open email regarding gambling bets Robert
placed over the last several days with a local sports book. All employees of the
casino are forbidden to engage in gambling activities to avoid any hint of conflict
of interest.
 Tony knows he should report this but would have to admit to violating the
company's information technology regulations by logging into Robert's computer.
If he warns Robert to stop his betting, he would also have to reveal the source of his
information. What does Tony do in this situation?
 Alan works in the claims department of a major hospital. Paperwork on a recent
admission shows that a traumatic mugging caused the patient to require an
adjustment in the medication she is prescribed to control anxiety and mood
swings. Alan is struck by the patient's unusual last name and upon checking her
employment information realizes she is one of his daughter's grade school
teachers.
 Alan's daughter seems very happy in her school and he cannot violate patient
confidentiality by informing the school of a teacher's mental illness but he is not
comfortable with a potentially unstable person in a position of influence and
supervision over his eight year old daughter. Can Alan reconcile these issues in an
ethical manner?
Knowing how to best resolve difficult moral
and ethical dilemmas is never easy especially
when any choice violates the societal and
ethical standards by which we have been
taught to govern our lives.