Well, you are asking for my own view, so here it is. I think decisions about who to save are difficult, because we have no secure view on the ideal population level. It might be argued that since resources are finite, and future people are likely to use resources much more efficiently than us, neither should be saved. But let's say I have to choose one. Then I'd choose the newborn, primarily for reasons of equality, broadly understood. Justice requires that each of us has a good enough life, and if we assume that the elderly woman's life has been pretty good then the newborn should be given his or her chance. What if the elderly woman has offered much to society? My view is that desert is a mistaken concept, since it relies on what appears to be an implausible and confused conception of freewill.

Morality has a lot to do with the promotion of joy and excitement. I am inclined to think that parents or carers who tell their children the truth about Santa from the start are, in a small way, acting immorally. They are likely to gain little or nothing from that knowledge, and, as Mark points out, as long as the parents are in general trustworthy, the child's trust in their parents is likely to be undamaged. Grim-faced rationalism is to be rejected, especially at Christmas time!

Some so-called natural lawyers have claimed that the idea of an immoral law is an oxymoron. If some state diktat says that people of a certain race can't travel into certain areas, then that's not a law. That's fine -- but essentially it involves giving a new and special meaning to the word 'law'. Law and morality can be seen as analogous in various ways. They have a similar structure (both involve requirements, permissions, demands, etc.); they serve similar functions (such as coercing people into certain behaviour for social purposes); and they probably have similar origins (see e.g. the work of the anthropologist Christopher Boehm on this). If one sees both law and morality as essentially forms of social coercion, then one is not a branch of the other. In the case of each, we can ask ourselves whether we have a reason to accept it, or parts of it, and whether it can be improved in some way or other.

As I understand you, you are inclined to think that there is nothing that is *really* morally good or bad, independently of our opinions. The first thing to note about such a subjectivist view is that many philosophers have defended the position that it's consistent with doing ethical theory, and with seeking to act rightly. One of the most prominent recent defenders of that view is Simon Blackburn -- take a look at his *Ruling Passions*. Blackburn takes himself to be following David Hume, the C18 Scottish philosopher -- look at his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, esp. app. 1. But perhaps you are inclined to believe that if these ideas are just a matter of our opinions, then the rational thing to do might be to give up on them. In which case, ask yourself the following question. Imagine you come across two people setting fire to a kitten, for fun. Doesn't it seem that you take the view that this is terribly wrong -- or something they have a very strong reason not to do -- *because* that is...

I'm tempted to recommend first that, if you haven't already done so, you take a look at Plato's dialogue *Meno*. That dialogue raises all sorts of issues about what virtue is, and how we should best go about understanding it. The view Socrates takes there seems to be that there is some single property, essential to all virtues, that makes them virtues, and that if we could grasp that property then we'd be in a position to decide whether some alleged virtue (such as those in your list) really is a virtue. Against that, you might want to look at what seems to be the anti-essentialism of Wittgenstein (see e.g. his *Philosophical Investigations*, esp. sects. 65-77). On this view, the claim would be that we group the different virtues together because they bear 'family resemblances' to one another. So the concept, to use another of Wittgenstein's metaphors, is like a rope, but with no single strand running through all of it. Let's say, taking a leaf out of Aristotle's book *The Nicomachean Ethics* book...

A distinction is sometimes drawn between ethics as concerning all the values or goods that might be instantiated in a person's life (well-being, friendship, virtue of character, aesthetic qualities, and so on), and morality as the narrower domain of moral obligation only (right and wrong, what's forbidden and permitted, etc.). Bernard Williams thought that one of the problems with modernity and modern philosophy is an excessive focus on morality as opposed to ethics, the former being what he called 'the peculiar institution' (see his *Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy*, ch. 10). The Greek philosophers, he thought, had a broader conception, one we should try to share.

It might be helpful to follow a strand of British empiricism and to think about 'morality' as a social phenomenon, involving various 'sanctions' such as blame, guilt, shame, and so on. (So in that respect it is rather like law, though the sanctions there are somewhat different.) Your worry is that some moral principle you accept -- that it's wrong to cause serious suffering merely for fun, say -- has emerged only because of the evolutionary advantage conferred on groups which accept something like that principle. So it seems quite contingent which principles we come to believe -- as you imply, in different circumstances we might accept different principles. But, to pick up Alex's point, we have the capacity to stand back from our 'morality' and assess whether we have independent reason to accept its principles. In which case, if you believe there is a reason not to cause suffering for fun, you may think that this justifies the moral principle which forbids it (as it would also justify a law forbidding it).