High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! An Ethical dilemma is a complex situation that will often involve an apparent mental conflict between moral imperatives, in which to obey one would result in transgressing another. This is also called an ethical paradox since in moral philosophy, paradox often plays a central role in ethics debates. "Love your neighbour" (Gospel of Matthew 5:43) is sometimes in contradiction to an armed rapist: if he succeeds, you will not be able to love him. But to pre-emptively restrain them is not usually understood as loving. This is one of the classic examples of an ethical decision clashing or conflicting with an organismic decision, one that would be made only from the perspective of animal survival: an animal is thought to act only in its immediate perceived bodily self-interests when faced with bodily harm, and to have limited ability to perceive alternatives - see fight-or-flight response.