Moral dilemma

A situation in which competing moral requirements appear to demand incompatible actions, so fulfilling one requirement seems to violate another.

Moral obligation: A requirement to act or refrain from acting on moral grounds. A dilemma arises when obligations point toward incompatible actions.
Trolley problem: A family of thought experiments about whether to redirect a runaway trolley to save more lives. It isolates conflict between preventing greater harm and directly causing harm.
Deontological ethics: An ethical approach that judges actions by duties, rules, or rights rather than outcomes alone. Its duties can conflict when each forbids the action demanded by another.
Tragic dilemma: A moral dilemma in which every available option involves serious loss or wrongdoing. It names the especially painful form where no choice avoids grave moral cost.
Moral dilemmas in ethics: The philosophical debate over whether genuine conflicts of moral obligation are possible. The debate asks whether dilemmas expose limits in moral theory or only apparent conflicts.
Moral conflict: A clash between moral considerations that support different judgments or actions. It describes the conflict at the heart of a dilemma.
Heinz dilemma: A moral education scenario in which a man considers stealing medicine to save his wife. It tests how people weigh property rules against obligations to preserve life.
Consequentialism: An ethical approach that evaluates actions by the value of their consequences. It resolves some conflicts by comparing outcomes, unlike approaches that treat duties as constraints.
Prudential dilemma: A choice between options that conflict with a person’s interests or practical goals. It contrasts a conflict of interests with a conflict of moral requirements.
Moral incommensurability: The condition in which values cannot be measured on a single common scale. Incommensurable values may prevent a clear ranking of competing requirements.

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