Advances in Medical Ethics
Open Access

Ethical Dilemma Peer-review Journals

An ethical dilemma or ethical paradox is a decision-making problem between two possible moral imperatives, neither of which is unambiguously acceptable or preferable. The complexity arises out of the situational conflict in which obeying would result in transgressing another. Sometimes called ethical paradoxes in moral philosophy, ethical dilemmas may be invoked to refute an ethical system or moral code, or to improve it so as to resolve the paradox.Ethical dilemmas can be solved in various ways, for example by showing that the claimed situation is only apparent and does not really exist (thus is not a paradox logically), or that the solution to the ethical dilemma involves choosing the greater good and lesser evil (as discussed in value theory), or that the whole framing of the problem omits creative alternatives (such as peacemaking), or (more recently) that situational ethics or situated ethics must apply because the case cannot be removed from context and still be understood. See also case-based reasoning on this process. An alternative to situational ethics is graded absolutism.