Well, what did you think about the trolley problem?  I wonder if you would have pulled the lever and changed the course of the train or let it continue on its track.  Like I said, there’s no easy answer…that is what makes it a moral dilemma.  The temptation is to try and expand our choices and to avoid the dilemma altogether—“oh, I would pull the lever but then untie my friend because I would have time to save a single person.”  But the value of the question really lies in accepting the difficult circumstances and forcing yourself to make a hard choice, not in trying to come up with clever ways around it.  The whole point is to struggle with a decision that seems to admit of no good options, because that is what real life presents us with sometimes. 

So, with that in mind, here’s another one for today:

Imagine you are a son or daughter who has built a life of honesty and justice, and you discover that your father has stolen one of the neighbor’s sheep.  Should you sacrifice your loyalty to your father and turn him into the authorities, or should you remain loyal and leave it up to your father to decide whether to confess the crime himself?  Now, imagine that the neighbor is a wealthy man who has many sheep and does not even realize that one was taken—does that make any difference?  And what if you all lived in a country where the government punished theft very harshly, so that turning your father in would mean condemning him to life in prison?  Would that change your answer, and if so, why?

Give it some thought, and

Have a wonderful day.