Can there be a correct moral decision when faced with the impossible choice between family loyalty and duty to society?
When it comes to the impossible choice between family loyalty and duty to society, oftentimes there is an issue about whether or not a moral decision can be made when there is a strong dilemma to be faced. There’s the question about whether you should make a decision that benefits your family but potentially harms society, or whether you should make a decision that benefits society but potentially harms your family.
Metaethics is a branch of analytic philosophy that explores the foundations of moral values. Metaethics focuses on what morality itself is. There are two main metaethical views: Moral Realism, the belief that there are moral facts (in the same way that there are scientific facts), and Moral Antirealism, the belief that there are no moral facts, that moral propositions don’t refer to objective features of the world at all.
When using the example of Isma, in which she was faced with the dilemma of whether she should inform the police about Parvaiz in order to benefit the safety of society, or to not inform the police in order to benefit Parvaiz. In this case, Isma chose to inform the police because of the benefits that it had to the safety of the country and to society. We can see that Moral Realism comes into play here, as Isma would have understood that if she withheld the information from the police, she would be putting the lives of the citizens of the country in danger for the benefit of Parvaiz and herself. Putting the lives of other people in danger for your personal benefit can be seen as objectively immoral.