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Moral Conundrums

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How should we live? Since the dawn of our species, we have struggled to answer this question. For many, they adopt the lifestyle imposed by their society and heritage. Though there have always been individuals who carve their own path, societal attitudes have shifted toward autonomy over the past century causing many to reflect and answer this question for themselves. This is all well and good, however, this reflection has brought greater attention to moral conundrums that should be resolved prior to committing oneself to a new lifestyle. Ethics as a philosophical discipline attempts to outline and justify a way of life. Moreover, a good ethical theory includes with it methods of evaluating moral dilemmas. This means they must assert a basis for morality, and why we should pursue actions conducive to said …show more content…

Often, the time available for us to evaluate a situation is constrained. If a group of utilitarians were confined to a tight space without any means of a quick exit and a live grenade was to be thrown into their confined vicinity such that the only way to prevent their collective deaths was for one of them to jump onto the grenade and mitigate the explosion how should they go about deciding who should sacrifice them self. Ideally, they should evaluate all relevant factors to determine who among them had the least propensity for pleasure, and who’s death would cause the least pain. Although given the nature of the situation there isn’t enough time for sufficient moral deliberation. Though extreme this example is pertinent to moral action from the utilitarian perspective and offers a real problem for the theory. Beyond time constraints our capacity to account for all factors involved and their effects is limited. Perhaps the person that seemed to be best suited for sacrifice would go on to cure cancer thereby preventing pain such that it dwarfed the value of the others propensity for

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