Talk:Ethical dilemma

Untitled
ethical dillemma in managerial decisions

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kathll101.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:53, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

A real life example
Marriage. The rewards for staying married to a rational person grow each year until they become irriplaceable. You are not only financially invested in the person you are married to and his or her pension, but no one else shares your ever-deeper past, your family and children, or understands your needs, weaknesses and fears. Yet the drive to risk it all on an ocassional affair is nearly impossible to overcome, and can provide some of the greatest joy in life—if you don't fall seriously in love. What to do? Mexican women, who will almost certainly be killed by their husbands for cheating, are as discrete as any Mosad agent. (See, for example, Distant Neighbors by Alan Riding.) Where the punishment is more unpredictable, people are a bit uncoordinated but risk losing less. However, this game of balancing choices becomes a crisis during the decade of "last chances," from approximately age 45 to 55. The risk of a long-term, irredemable mistake is at its maximum during this time, and only by knowing what is at stake is imperative but impossible. It's a paradox everyone shares. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.102.94.76 (talk) 23:40, 15 September 2012 (UTC)


 * "It's a paradox everyone shares"... even those who never marry 2.98.58.222 (talk) 13:13, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

This is a good argument, however it is for the specific case of adultery rather than marriage as a whole. This normally would not be a significant issue, however including "marriage" on a list of ethical dilemmas with no justification within the article looks like someone has vandalised the page for a joke. The majority of your argument revolves around fidelity within marriage; using such a broad title for a specific point lacks clarity and specificity. I changed the link to adultery as I feel it both better reflects your point and has less potential to be misconstrued. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not claiming that your argument is invalid, rather that if it is to appear on the page as "marriage" without justification then it lacks credibility, simply as it is unclear if it was vandalism or not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ben8142 (talk • contribs) 11:07, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

What does this mean?
"Design of a voting system other electoral reform, a criminal justice system, or other high-stakes adversarial process for dispute resolution will almost always reflect the deep persistent struggles involved. However, no amount of good intent and hard work can undo a bad role structure:"

It seems to come from nowhere and mean nothing coherent with the preceding (or indeed following) text, though perhaps I just missed something. —Preceding unsigned comment. added by 217.235.74.134 (talk) 16:52, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

What paradox?
I'm not a philosopher. Hell, I'm at tech school, the closest I'll come to logic is computer programming. The beginning of the article mentions a contrast involving "love your neighbor", but I just don't see the paradox. It can't be argued "Love thy neighbor for all eternity" because its inherent the loving human will die eventually. The paradox doesn't appear between loving your neighbor and self-defense because that assumes you can avoid death forever, which isn't possible.

I'm not sure if that makes sense outside of my head. Liastnir 03:05, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

sysop/trolls paragraph removed
I removed the second paragraph in "Roles within structures" since it was confusing and references Wikipedia directly, and seems NPOOV. Can someone come up with a real-life example that those outside of the Wikipedia culture might understand?

i think that if all people do live in GODs name ,the chances of a perfect home is 99%

Recurring Struggles
This section is not clear and not related to ethical dilemmas.

Some more examles please
I hoped the article might list some classic examples, along the lines of "Sophie's Choice", family of four with a lifeboat for three, etc. I believe there are some ethical dilemas regularly used in military training and psychological research. If anyone is familiar with these a list would benefit the article greatly, I believe. I'm not really qualified to make such a list myself. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 210.239.48.141 (talk) 04:35, 22 March 2007 (UTC). Update: Ah, I see that link to The Generalized Structure of Ethical Dilemmas provided at the end of the article leads to a page with lots of good examples.

Roe vs Wade Removed
I've removed the "see also:" link to Wikipedia's Roe vs Wade article since there appears to be no coherent link between the US Supreme Court case and the general question of what an ethical dilemma is. Furthermore, the entire Roe vs Wade article lacks any reference to either 'ethics' or 'dilemmas' and so the link seems superfluous.

If there's any counter-arguments, I'd be happy to hear them. Otherwise I feel the link is best left removed.

Roles within structures
This whole section appears to be bizarre and unsupported... if anyone agrees can they flag or remove it or something. Didn't want to delete the whole thing without getting a second opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.175.95.181 (talk) 17:29, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Karl Marx
"According to some philosophers and sociologists, e.g. Karl Marx, it is the different life experience of people and the different exposure of them and their families in these roles (the rich being constantly stolen from, the poor in a position of constant begging and subordination) that creates social class differences"

I'd be really surprised if I saw a quotation of Karl Marx saying that. From the "Karl Marx " article:

"Marx did not understand classes as purely subjective (in other words, groups of people who consciously identified with one another). He sought to define classes in terms of objective criteria, such as their access to resources"

This would seem to contradict this article. I think it makes sense - Karl Marx thought about social classes in objective terms, and "life experiences" does not fit at all. Talking about "rich" and "poor" when discussing the marxist conception of social classes is misplaced. From the "social class" article, theoretical models, marxist:

" Marxists explain the history of "civilized" societies in terms of a war of classes between [...] capitalists (bourgeoisie) and wage-workers (the proletariat)"

Hugely confused
I am hugely confused as to why a search for moral dilemma redirects to an article named ethical dilemna. Morality and ethics are not the same thing; morality is a personal code of conduct and ethics is a code provided by a group of which you are a part. In the case of an ethical dilemna the individual always has the option to leave the group thus absolving them of any responsibility for the paradoxical situation or its consequences. In a moral dilemna there is no get out of jail free card and the individual has to choose one course of action or the other. However, this article seems to treat the two words as though they were synonymous: Example, "in moral philosophy, paradox often plays a central role in ethics debates." which is pretty much gibberish from my perspective.  Cottonshirt  τ   16:21, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Intro
Removed 2nd sentence, as it expressed merely Gilman's opinion as to what changes are needed in law enforcement training. As such it might belong later in the article, but not in the introduction. For similar reasons I removed the sentence about terconduct (a typo?) and sankat. These unfamiliar terms should be explained, and in any case would belong later in the article, e.g. in a section on moral dilemmas in Hindu military philosophy.CharlesHBennett (talk) 09:14, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Communication Theory and Frameworks Fall 2022
— Assignment last updated by Turnj (talk) 16:15, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Peer Review from Elinor
The article’s lead section is quite strong. It provides a concise overview of definitions of the moral dilemma as well as the categories of ethical problems and the primary philosophical argument about its existence. The table of contents and the lead part of the article are both highly consistent with each other. It is a strong overview for the subsequent sections because neither it has rushed into details nor has it addressed any one section excessively.

Each significant component of the theory has its own section, which is laid out in a logical, understandable way. The article presents a balanced analysis of the controversy surrounding the existence of ethical dilemmas. Arguments on both sides are roughly the same length. To achieve neutrality across points of view, the authors present the counterarguments alongside each pro- or anti-existence argument. It does not attempt to convince the audience to believe in one side. Besides, all of the sources cited in the article are reliable.

The article could use the following improvements:

In the section on arguments in favor of the existence of ethical dilemmas, statements like “it may become apparent in some of these examples that our initial intuitions misled us and that the case in question is not a genuine dilemma after all” seem reluctant to describe the pro-existence argument. It might be clearer if it began with “One way to argue for this claim is to categorize them as epistemic ethical dilemmas...” and then went on to explain the “examples that our initial intuitions misled us” later. By putting the pro-existence argument first and then going over the potential counterarguments, it presents the arguments more obviously.

The article contains a few ambiguous phrases like “some examples” and “somehow”, among others. It may simply erase them or raise the clearance to more precisely indicate their reference.

ElinorSun (talk) 05:30, 18 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello and thanks for your detailed and helpful feedback. You are right that the first paragraph of the subsection "Arguments in favor" needs some work. I've followed your suggestion in spirit if not in letter by trying to clarify the structure of the argument and the response. It is still not the most accessible paragraph so please let me know if these changes helped. I've tried to address some of the vague expressions. In some cases, like for the sentence "But some philosophers have argued that this requirement is too weak, that the moral theory should be able to provide guidance in any situation.", the source itself is vague on who exactly these philosophers are (at least on a short look). Please let me know if you have further ideas on how the article could be improved. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:37, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I just saw that this article (and probably ElinorSun's peer review) is part of the Wiki Education assignment so I hope I didn't interfere with your process. If the main point of the assignment is to improve the article: a short explanation of the trolley problem in the section Ethical dilemma would be a helpful addition. For reliable sources, see, , , and . This could be combined with adding an image of the trolley problem since the article lacks images so far. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:05, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

CCTP 752 – Fall 2022 - Peer Review by Judy
I think this article does really well at being neutral since it provides a large number of arguments for both sides that are in favor of the ethical dilemma and against it.

But at the same time, when reading this particular section, I feel it’s a bit difficult to read. Many arguments entailing philosophy or morality might require readers to be equipped with some background knowledge in order to fully understand them. Besides, what distracted me was that too many terms and claims are introduced in this section, but the article doesn’t connect them in a clear way. Personally, I think a graph or a map could be helpful in illustrating the relationship between different arguments.

Another improvement that could be made is by adding some updated research to the article. I also believe it would be beneficial to introduce a specific single study on this theory in the article, so that readers can gain a better understanding of what it is and what potential ethical dilemmas it may cause. JudyW16 (talk) 02:52, 19 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello and thanks for your feedback. It's true that the section "Existence of ethical dilemmas" uses some technical terms, like the difference between genuine and epistemic dilemmas. They are explained in the section "Types". I changed the section order so that the reader can familiarize themselves with them beforehand. If you are struggling with any particular passage, then please cite it here so we can discuss how it may be simplified.
 * The idea of a map of arguments is interesting. But that could easily result in original research. Generally speaking, different arguments are defended by different theorists so there may not be an important relationship connecting them all. If you know of such a map in the reliable sources then please let me know.
 * Many of the sources are quite recent, from the 2010s and 2020s. Especially given that ethics is several millennia old, these sources are up to date. For most topics in philosophy, there is less short-term change happening than in more modern disciplines, like Artificial intelligence or Neuroimaging, so a few decades don't matter that much here.
 * I'm not sure what you mean by "it would be beneficial to introduce a specific single study on this theory". Many specific examples of ethical dilemmas are discussed in the example section. This section could be expanded in various ways, for example, by discussing the trolley problem, as I mentioned earlier. For the question of what "causes" ethical dilemmas, see the subsection Ethical_dilemma. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:17, 21 October 2022 (UTC)