Ethical dilemma

An ethical dilemma is a situation in which competing moral obligations or principles make every available choice ethically costly or difficult.

Moral obligation: A requirement to act or refrain from acting grounded in moral reasons. Dilemmas arise when obligations point toward incompatible actions.
Deontological ethics: An ethical approach that judges actions by duties, rules, or constraints rather than outcomes alone. Conflicting duties can make its guidance hard to apply in a dilemma.
Trolley problem: A family of thought experiments asking whether one may redirect a runaway trolley to save more people at another person's expense. It isolates conflict between minimizing harm and refusing to cause harm directly.
Medical ethics: The study and practice of moral questions arising in medicine and health care. Clinical decisions often pit patient autonomy, welfare, and professional duties against one another.
Moral principle: A general standard used to judge whether actions are morally right or wrong. Conflicting principles can make every available choice ethically costly.
Consequentialism: An ethical approach that evaluates actions by the consequences they produce. It may resolve a dilemma by prioritizing the choice with the best expected results.
Heinz dilemma: A moral-development thought experiment in which Heinz considers stealing an unaffordable drug to save his wife's life. It pits respect for law and property against the duty to preserve life.
Informed consent: A person's voluntary agreement to an intervention after receiving relevant information and understanding its implications. Urgent treatment can create tension between respecting refusal and preventing serious harm.
Moral conflict: A clash between values, duties, or reasons that bear on what someone ought to do. Ethical dilemmas are a particularly difficult form of moral conflict.
Virtue ethics: An ethical approach centered on character and the virtues needed to live well. It asks what a practically wise and virtuous person would do amid conflict.

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