Challenges to moral decision making

• Challenges to moral decision making

  • lack of sufficient understanding
  • habits of doing wrong
  • strong emotions
  • social and peer pressures
  • inadequate moral formation
  • moral relativism
• Lack of sufficient understanding

  • people fail to make responsible choices because they don't understand the options sufficiently.
  • Lead to rushing into decisions rather than taking the time to reflect and come to the correct decision.
  • Can cause confusion, particularly about situations that concern the moral principles of right and wrong.
• Habits of doing wrong

  • Wrongdoing diminishes human freedom - once one has done wrong, it becomes easier to do wrong again.
  • In order to grow in freedom to make good moral decisions, people need to keep striving to do what is good, which grows and becomes easier with practice.
  • This means that the better decisions we make, the easier it is to make those decisions more often.
• Strong emotions

  • strong and overwhelming feelings can arise in daily life situations, and if not properly directed, can lead to the kind of thinking that makes responsible choices difficult.
  • These can also pressure people to rush into saying or doing things that they later regret, as they can find it difficult to take the time needed to think through the alternatives and ask themselves what is the morally correct thing to do.
• Social/peer pressures

  • Peer pressure can be difficult to resist for fear of being rejected by the group, and incline individuals to accept peer pressure expectations without questions
  • Because of humans desire to 'fit' into society, it leaves them vulnerable to pressures that encourage them to conform to the expectations of others, rather than make their own independent choices.
  • There are a variety of normalised factors in daily life that are overlooked such as media, and other social influences that promote certain values, attitudes, and expectations.
• Absolute morality

  • Rules or laws that never change and must be followed at all times, in all circumstances.
• Relative morality

  • There are no rules or laws that have to be followed - decisions are relative to the time, place, person.
• Moral Relativism

  • maintains that moral principles can change according to culture, circumstance, or personal choice.
  • People who follow a relative approach to moral decision making believe there is no absolute rules/laws.
  • This means that what is morally right can change, which contradicts Catholic's belief that God's laws will never change and the Catholic approach to Catholic moral decision making.