Possible Dilemmas Raised by Impossible Moral Requirements

Possible Dilemmas Raised by Impossible Moral Requirements

The priority that Tessman’s argument gives to phenomenological and neuropsychological explanations of moral requirements entails a fundamental shift in our understanding of these. Two central problems of normative theory come together in Tessman’s account. The first arises when an agent’s sense of requirement clashes with what a systematic theory prescribes. The second arises when neuropsycholo...

Moral dilemmas and moral rules.

Recent work shows an important asymmetry in lay intuitions about moral dilemmas. Most people think it is permissible to divert a train so that it will kill one innocent person instead of five, but most people think that it is not permissible to push a stranger in front of a train to save five innocents. We argue that recent emotion-based explanations of this asymmetry have neglected the contrib...

Sentimentalism and Moral Dilemmas

It is sometimes said that certain hard moral choices constitute tragic moral dilemmas in which no available course of action is justifiable, and so the agent is blameworthy whatever she chooses. This paper criticizes a certain approach to the debate about moral dilemmas and considers the metaethical implications of the criticisms. The approach in question has been taken by many advocates as wel...

The Possible ‘Impossible’ Turn

Turning back after engine failure during the take off phase of flight in a single engine aircraft is examined using a simplified analytical model. The important parameters are identified. The analysis shows that the optimum flight path is teardrop shaped with a 45◦ bank angle at stall velocity during the turn. The effects of engine failure altitude, wind direction and velocity, and bank angle o...

Moral dilemmas and nonmonotonic logic