Philosophy and Responsibility

A friend was recounting a story in which he was driving through a city and saw a stray, abandoned dog running through the streets. Worried that the dog would be hit by oncoming traffic, he called animal control and had the dog picked up. The animal control officer was very kind but also blunt: he said that the city had so many stray and abandoned dogs that the pounds were full of them. The dog would be tested for aggression and if he passed, he would go to one of the pounds, but would be unlikely to ever find a home. If he did not pass, and it seemed as though many don't, he would be euthanized. Seeing the emotion on my friend's face, the officer said, "You did the right thing. He would have been hit by traffic and likely bleed to death in pain. Now he gets a few weeks of shelter and food, and if he had to be euthanized, it would be done in a painless fashion."

The moral dilemma is this: my friend felt that despite saving this dog from certain death, he still condemned him to another kind of death, albeit more peaceful. He felt it a moral transgression to have intervened when the best most likely outcome was still unacceptable to him. What obligation do we owe those we save? What obligation forms or develops where no obligation used to be? If he had simply driven past, he would not have committed any moral error. But in doing what he thought the right thing at the time, he finds himself inevitably bound in some moral gray zone.

Image shown under GNU Free Documentation License, from Wikipedia.