I’m really confused about the point of this discussion.
The simple answer is: either a moral system cares whether you do action A or action B, preferring one to the other, or it doesn’t. If it does, then the answer to the dilemma is that you should do the action your moral system prefers. If it doesn’t, then you can do either one.
Obviously this simple answer isn’t good enough for you, but why not?
The tricky task is to distinguish between those 3 cases—and to find general rules which can do this in every situation in a unique way, and represent your concept of morality at the same time.
Well, yes, finding a simple description of morality is hard. But you seem to be asking if there’s a possibility that it’s in principle impossible to distinguish between these 3 cases for some situation—and this is what you call a “true moral dilemma”—and I don’t see how the idea of that is coherent.
Most dilemmas are situations where similar-looking moral guidelines lead to different decisions, or situations where common moral rules are inconsistent or not well-defined. In those cases, it is hard to decide whether the moral system prefers one action or the other, or does not care.
It seems to me to omit a (maybe impossible?) possibility: for example that a moral system cares about whether you do A or B in the sense that it forbids both A and B, and yet ~(A v B) is impossible. My question was just whether or not cases like these were possible, and why or why not.
I admit that I hadn’t thought of moral systems as forbidding options, only as ranking them, in which case that doesn’t come up.
If your morality does have absolute rules like that, there isn’t any reason why those rules wouldn’t come in conflict. But even then, I wouldn’t say “this is a true moral dilemma” so much as “the moral system is self-contradictory”. Not that this is a great help to someone who does discover this about themselves.
Ideally, though, you’d only have one truly absolute rule, and a ranking between the rules, Laws of Robotics style.
But even then, I wouldn’t say “this is a true moral dilemma” so much as “the moral system is self-contradictory”.
So, Kant for example thought that such moral conflicts were impossible, and he would have agreed with you that no moral theory can be both true, and allow for moral conflicts. But it’s not obvious to me that the inference from ‘allows for moral conflict’ to ‘is a false moral theory’ is valid. I don’t have some axe to grind here, I was just curious if anyone had an argument defending that move (or attacking it for that matter).
I don’t think that it means it’s a false moral theory, just an incompletely defined one. In cases where it doesn’t tell you what to do (or, equivalently, tells you that both options are wrong), it’s useless, and a moral theory that did tell you what to do in those cases would be better.
I’m really confused about the point of this discussion.
The simple answer is: either a moral system cares whether you do action A or action B, preferring one to the other, or it doesn’t. If it does, then the answer to the dilemma is that you should do the action your moral system prefers. If it doesn’t, then you can do either one.
Obviously this simple answer isn’t good enough for you, but why not?
The tricky task is to distinguish between those 3 cases—and to find general rules which can do this in every situation in a unique way, and represent your concept of morality at the same time.
If you can do this, publish it.
Well, yes, finding a simple description of morality is hard. But you seem to be asking if there’s a possibility that it’s in principle impossible to distinguish between these 3 cases for some situation—and this is what you call a “true moral dilemma”—and I don’t see how the idea of that is coherent.
I did not call anything “true moral dilemma”.
Most dilemmas are situations where similar-looking moral guidelines lead to different decisions, or situations where common moral rules are inconsistent or not well-defined. In those cases, it is hard to decide whether the moral system prefers one action or the other, or does not care.
It seems to me to omit a (maybe impossible?) possibility: for example that a moral system cares about whether you do A or B in the sense that it forbids both A and B, and yet ~(A v B) is impossible. My question was just whether or not cases like these were possible, and why or why not.
I admit that I hadn’t thought of moral systems as forbidding options, only as ranking them, in which case that doesn’t come up.
If your morality does have absolute rules like that, there isn’t any reason why those rules wouldn’t come in conflict. But even then, I wouldn’t say “this is a true moral dilemma” so much as “the moral system is self-contradictory”. Not that this is a great help to someone who does discover this about themselves.
Ideally, though, you’d only have one truly absolute rule, and a ranking between the rules, Laws of Robotics style.
So, Kant for example thought that such moral conflicts were impossible, and he would have agreed with you that no moral theory can be both true, and allow for moral conflicts. But it’s not obvious to me that the inference from ‘allows for moral conflict’ to ‘is a false moral theory’ is valid. I don’t have some axe to grind here, I was just curious if anyone had an argument defending that move (or attacking it for that matter).
I don’t think that it means it’s a false moral theory, just an incompletely defined one. In cases where it doesn’t tell you what to do (or, equivalently, tells you that both options are wrong), it’s useless, and a moral theory that did tell you what to do in those cases would be better.