Re: The Moral Dilemma Thread
While the premise of this thread could be interesting, the initial "dilemma" that was posed seemed a bit, um, superficial.
Here is one variant of a moral dilemma that has an extensive literature in philosophy, called "the trolley car problem."
it comes with different variations and the moral implications change.
The basic version: Imagine you were out for an afternoon stroll and came upon a bridge that overlooked a train track. The track splits in two and upon one of the tracks five men are playing a game of cards and eating lunch. On the other track is a solitary man who appears to be sleeping. As you look down upon this peaceful scene your heart starts to race. A runaway trolley suddenly rounds a far corner of the tracks. It’s painfully obvious that is going to hit the five men playing cards, a fact that they are unfortunately oblivious to. They are too far away for you to call out to them. In your panic you look around for some way to alert the men when you see the track switch only a couple of feet away. It occurs to you that if you were to throw the switch you would successfully divert the trolley’s path onto the other track, the one upon which lays the sleeping man. He won’t know what hit him and you will have saved the lives of five men. So… do you throw the switch?
(If you act, you will be responsible for the death of one; if you do nothing, does that make you responsible for the death of the five due to your inaction?)
Then different variations are put forward. Rather than flip a switch to change tracks, you have to push someone in front of the trolley car instead. does this change your answer?
Someone turned it into a Q&A website here, which I have not explored very far.
http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/fatman/
Here is another take on the dilemma:
http://www.philosophywalk.com/solution-trolley-problem/
I tried to find something on point in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (a truly remarkable resource! highly recommended), but I did not find anything specific in the 30 seconds I applied to their site search engine.
http://plato.stanford.edu/