Moral Dilemmas
Trolleys, lifeboats and white lies: how do you decide what's right?
Free, no account needed.
You are about to face a series of moral dilemmas, from the famous runaway tram to problems that only exist because of modern technology, followed by a few general statements. For each dilemma, pick the answer closest to what you would actually do or believe, and read the reasons carefully: two options may lead to the same action for very different reasons. There are no trick questions and no correct answers; philosophers have argued over every one of these cases for decades or centuries.
At the end you will see how strongly you lean on five classic ways of moral thinking, where you stand on two key questions about the greater good, and which moral philosophers reason most like you.
What it measures
Consequences
How much the outcomes of an action, the total good and harm it produces, drive your judgement.
Low: Outcomes matter to you, but they rarely settle a moral question on their own.
High: You judge actions largely by their results: what matters is how much better or worse the world ends up.
Duty and rights
How much you rely on duties, rights and moral limits that hold whatever the consequences.
Low: Rules and rights are useful guides to you, not unbreakable limits.
High: Some things are simply not done: you honour promises, truth and rights even when breaking them would pay.
Character
How much you ask what a person of good character, honest, brave, wise and kind, would do.
Low: You focus on the act and its justification more than on what it says about the person.
High: You see ethics as a matter of who you are and become; the right act is what a good person would do.
Care
How much your judgement follows relationships and responsiveness to the particular people involved.
Low: You try to judge impartially, setting aside your personal ties to the people involved.
High: You start from relationships: what the real people in front of you need, and what you owe those close to you.
Fair agreement
How much you test choices by fairness: whether they could be justified to everyone affected, as equals.
Low: Whether everyone could agree to a principle matters less to you than whether it is right in itself.
High: For you, right is what could be justified to everyone affected, including the person who loses out.
Instrumental harm
Protect the individual ↔ Accept harm for the greater good
Whether you accept harming or using someone when it is the means to a much greater good (Kahane et al.).
Protect the individual: You hold firm limits on what may be done to one person, even to save several.
Accept harm for the greater good: You are willing to accept serious harm to a few when it clearly prevents greater harm to many.
Impartial beneficence
Near and dear first ↔ Everyone counts equally
Whether you give the wellbeing of strangers, distant people, animals and future generations the same weight as those close to you.
Near and dear first: Special ties matter morally: family, friends and people you can see come first.
Everyone counts equally: Everyone's wellbeing counts equally, however distant in space, time or relationship.
Possible results
About this test
Moral philosophy offers several great families of theory. Consequentialists such as Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick judge acts by their outcomes; rule consequentialists apply that test to practices rather than single acts. Deontologists, above all Immanuel Kant, hold that duties and rights limit what we may do even for good ends, and the natural law tradition of Thomas Aquinas grounds such limits in human nature. Virtue ethicists from Aristotle and Confucius to Philippa Foot ask what a person of good character would do. Care ethics, developed from the 1980s, centres relationships and responsiveness to particular others. Social contract theorists, from Hobbes to John Rawls, see morality as the principles people would agree to, or could justify to everyone affected. Pluralists, following W. D. Ross, weigh several basic duties case by case.
The two extra scales come from psychology. Guy Kahane, Jim Everett and colleagues showed that a utilitarian outlook has two parts that are largely independent in ordinary people: accepting instrumental harm for the greater good, and impartial beneficence, the view that everyone's wellbeing counts equally, however distant. Trolley-style dilemmas measure only the first, and many people are high on one and low on the other.
Each option is tagged with the frameworks its reasoning reflects, and the general statements add to the same scores. Your result is the profile closest to your pattern of emphasis, after allowing for how often each framework was on offer. Pluralism wins only when your pattern is clearly more balanced than close to any single framework. Philosopher positions are rough simplifications of subtle views. Scores are relative to the answer range, not to population norms, and hypothetical answers are not real choices: treat this as a mirror for reflection, not a verdict on your character.
References
- Foot, P. (1967). The problem of abortion and the doctrine of the double effect. Oxford Review, 5.
- Thomson, J. J. (1985). The trolley problem. Yale Law Journal, 94(6), 1395-1415.
- Singer, P. (1972). Famine, affluence, and morality. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1(3), 229-243.
- Kahane, G., Everett, J. A. C., Earp, B. D., Caviola, L., Faber, N. S., Crockett, M. J. & Savulescu, J. (2018). Beyond sacrificial harm: A two-dimensional model of utilitarian psychology. Psychological Review, 125(2), 131-164.
- Williams, B. (1973). A critique of utilitarianism. In J. J. C. Smart & B. Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against.
- Kant, I. (1785). Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
- Mill, J. S. (1863). Utilitarianism.
- Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics.
- Ross, W. D. (1930). The Right and the Good.
- Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice.
- Scanlon, T. M. (1998). What We Owe to Each Other.
- Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education.
- Hooker, B. (2000). Ideal Code, Real World: A Rule-Consequentialist Theory of Morality.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: entries on consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, contractualism and natural law.
For self-reflection and curiosity, not diagnosis. Scores describe how you answered, relative to the possible range; they are not compared with population norms.
Moral Dilemmas
About 12 minutes · 41 questions
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