Before attempting to resolve a dilemma, it is worth considering whether the problem is sufficiently clearly defined to be solved. It may be that the statement of the problem contains vague terms, and that this vagueness must be removed before the best way forward can be seen clearly.

Three common problems that can lead to confusion are ambiguity, subjectivity, and relativity.

Ambiguity

A word is ambiguous if it has several different meanings.

“Crime” for example, might refer to a breach of any one of a number of different laws. There are crimes that involve breaches of the laws of the land, such as theft, murder, and tax evasion. There are also crimes that involve breaches of moral laws, such as telling lies or committing adultery. There are even religious crimes such as failing to recognise the authority of the Pope or teaching heresies.

An act can be a crime in one of these senses but not in another. Telling lies, for instance, might be a moral crime but is certainly not against the law of the land.

The word “crime” on its own could refer to any of these types of crime, and so, unless the context makes it clear which meaning is intended, is insufficiently clear to distinguish between them.

Subjectivity

Problems of subjectivity arise when, even once all ambiguity has been removed from a term, people still disagree about which cases it applies to.

The concept of a moral crime, for example, is a subjective one. Two people may agree precisely about what a moral crime is (e.g. they may agree that it is a violation of an eternal, immutable, and ultimately authoritative law), but disagree about whether telling lies to doorstep salesmen to make them go away counts as one. Perhaps the first person will judge this to be a violation of the moral law, but the second will disagree.

Even when the concept is clearly understood, there are thus difficulties in applying it, due to its subjectivity.

Relativity

Relativity is different to subjectivity because subjectivity involves disagreement about what the facts are, whereas relativity involves the facts genuinely being different for different people.

Moral practices have varied across time and cultures. Some cultures have kept slaves; others have judged slavery to be immoral. Some cultures have confined women to certain roles within society; others have outlawed such discrimination.

Some people (cultural relativists) think that this reflects not merely a disagreement about what is right and wrong, but a genuine difference in what is right and wrong. The facts about morality, they believe, are different in different cultural contexts.

This, of course, raises difficulties in making moral decisions in the abstract.