Most people believe that humanity’s moral character is in a steep decline, especially in the U.S. From Gallup’s June 2023 Politics newsletter, we learn that “Americans’ already poor ratings of the state of moral values in the U.S. have fallen further to the lowest point in Gallup’s 22-year trend. The 54% of U.S. adults who rate moral values in the country as “poor” marks a four-percentage-point increase since last year and the first time the reading has reached the majority level.” Add to that, over 80% of respondents say that it is trending worse, also a record.
Why has it gotten so bad? Has there been a change, or just a perception of one? Are we too irreversibly cynical, lazy or self-centered to work on this problem?
Or could it be that we are simply out of practice? That is a hopeful explanation because it means that poor morals or ethics can be remediated. Toronto Pursuits’ Nixing Nihilism: A Survey of Contemporary Philosophy will serve up a “moral dilemma of the day” for seminar participants to consider.
What is an example of a moral or ethical dilemma? The following is a short version of the most famous of all, the “Trolley Problem,” which is attributed to Philippa Foot of Oxford University:
A runaway trolley will kill five people on the track ahead. There is no escape for them. The only way to save the five people is for you to pull a switch that will turn the trolley onto a side track where it will kill only one person. There is no escape for him if you pull the switch. Do you pull the switch?
If popular opinion serves to give us the right answer, about 80% of respondents say they would pull the switch and be responsible for the death of one person. Perhaps this is a clear choice, but it is not an easy one. Behaving ethically is a lot more challenging than simply retrieving the right moral code and applying it to an unambiguous situation. It’s when values, laws or norms collide that we see the need to sort things out and justify our decisions.
In addition to a “dilemma du jour,” CP Toronto’s “Contemporary Philosophy” course will read and discuss important and relatively recent essays on all aspects of moral and ethical formation, why such formation is needed, and why it seems such an endangered species in today’s world. The hope is that we can nix nihilism, or at least show the value of seeking common ground about what is right and what is wrong.
— John Riley, seminar leader
