Adrift In A Moral Sea Analysis

Adrift in a Moral Sea Life often throws people some difficult challenges where there ends up being more than one right course of action. Everyone has their own different morals that they have acquired through out their life and this helps them decide which ethical perspective that they believe in. One instance, of where you can look at multiple ethical perspectives to solve a problem comes from the essay “Lifeboat Ethics” by Garrett Harden, which is about being shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean and having to choose who you want to let on the boat. There are 50 people who are on the boat and there is room for only 10 more people, while there are 100 people who are stranded in the water outside of the boat. There are various theories …show more content…
Relativism can be subjective, which is the view that an action is morally right if one approves of it or it can be cultural, the view that an action is right if one’s culture approves of it. As long as a person has approval for an action it will be considered the right action for them to make. Not every relativist is going to have morally correct beliefs because what seems right to one person may seem wrong to another. For example, some cultures believe that there is nothing wrong with committing crimes such as murder, rape, stealing because this is what is accepted and seen as normal in their culture. When looking at criterion 1 of moral criteria of adequacy, this theory appears to be inconsistent with considered judgments because what one person approves of can be seen as immorally incorrect. If you look at criterion 2, this theory is inconsistent because with relativism you are looking at your own beliefs and sometimes you can be wrong with the decisions that you make. Lastly this theory is useful with moral problem solving because you can look at your own culture and beliefs to end up making a decision. With that being said, when trying to decide what to do with the lifeboat situation, there can be a variety of actions that can be taken. For instance, one person may believe that men are superior to …show more content…
There definitely needs to be a lot thought put in to deciding on what to do with the lifeboat ethics situation because you have choose who is going to end up living in the end. This clearly isn’t an event that happens in everyday life, but by examining this what to do in this situation could help you learn something and you could apply this to a situation that you may face in the future. In the end, there is no true right approach in this situation because there is so many options that you can choose