Why can’t science tell us what morality ‘is’? In the trivial sense, science can certainly catalog the diversity, commonalities, and contradictions of cultural moral standards and moral behaviors. But science is very good at teasing out underlying principles. What forbids determining such principles (if any exist) using the normal methods of science? For instance, we might propose an observation like “Almost all moral behaviors are strategies for increasing, on average, the synergistic benefits of cooperation and are unselfish at least in the short term” as an hypothesis about what moral behaviors ‘are’. Then we could evaluate its provisional ‘truth’ as a matter of science by how well this hypothesis meets criteria for 1) explanatory power for the diversity, commonalities, and contradictions of moral standards, 2) explanatory power for puzzles about moral behavior, 3) predictive power for moral intuitions, 4) universality, 5) no contradictions with known facts, and so forth. Of course, provisional ...

I think science can probably tell us lots of things about how people reason morally, that is, how they think about what they ought to do. And it might well be interesting to look at cross-cultural differences, and perhaps even more interesting to look for cross-cultural similarities, that is, "moral universals", in the sense of moral principles, or forms of reasoning, that are in some sense universal. Psychologists and philosophers have been doing just this in recent years. But it seems important to recognize the contrast you cite at the end of your question: No such investigation could possibly tell us what moral behavior ought to be, that is, tell us what one actually ought to do. Suppose there turn out to be certain "moral universals". It would be a coherent position that these are just wrong, that is, that, by reasoning in accord with them, one will not typically arrive at the thing one ought to do. One cannot just assume otherwise. That is not to say that it would not be interesting, even on...

Is hypocrisy morally wrong? Suppose you publicly advocate some good principle X, but privately violate X. Violating X is wrong, but surely it's still right to advocate X in public. You shouldn't encourage others to violate X like you do!

That all seems right, to be sure. But I'm not sure we're thinking about the question whether hypocrisy is wrong in quite the right way. For note, first of all, that, even if hypocrisy is wrong, that does not mean that the solution should be to cease advocating what is right. It might, rather, be to stop doing what is wrong. But there are other options you might consider. The case you suggest has it that what is being advocated is good, but is privately violated. There seem to me to be other cases, however; and even this case has different versions. Here are some cases: Fred might vociferously advocate that one ought to do X, when, indeed, one ought, but not himself do X. Fred might wholeheartedly insist that one ought to do X, when it is morally permissible but not obligatory to do X, and himself not do X. Fred might repeatedly claim that one ought to do X, when it is morally im permissible to do X, but himself refrain from X-ing. Fred might strenuously argue that one must not...

What is wrong with watching child pornography? Let's be clear that child abuse is wrong, and anything that makes more of it likely in the future is also wrong. Even if we agree that watching child pornography which encourages further harm to children is wrong, it seems less clear where the wrong is in doing so when there is no chance of causing harm. There are many pictures of adults and children who have been harmed to an extent at least on a par with the victims of such child abuse from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we do not normally think that viewing those images is wrong or makes us complicit. The most obvious candidate is the motive of sexual gratification on the part of the viewer. What makes that different from the motives of readers of bombs in the Middle-East? Is it the fact that the viewer must have a deviant sexual orientation or because they are benefiting from the harm in a way that the reader isn't? The first reason seems off the mark since it seems that the act of...

Let me ask a view questions. Is it clear that viewing child pornography is always wrong? Consider a detective who is viewing it in an attempt to establish the identities of the participants. Is it clear that any photograph of children being sexually exploited by adults is ipso facto wrong? Consider a reporter who takes pictures of some politician in bed with a pre-pubescent boy. What is distinctive of the case in which we would intuitively regard the viewing as wrong? What attitude towards the participants does such viewing involve? In particular, what attitude towards the children does it involve? Does viewing child pornography as a way of achieving sexual gratification seem compatible with a compassionate attitude towards children and a proper respect for their interests and their autonomy? Does it seem compatible with a proper appreciation of their suffering? The wrong might lie less in the viewing than it what one's viewing such things as a means of sexual gratification says about...

Recently the headlines have reported some clerks of the court refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in states where same-sex marriage has been recently legalized. If such a person has strong beliefs about the immorality of gay marriage, are they acting ethically if they refuse to issue these licenses?

No, they are not. They are violating the legitimate rights of the people who are applying for the license. This is the sort of place that a comparision to inter-racial marriage is worth making, even though there are lots of differences between the two cases. It really did happen that inter-racial couples were denied marriage licenses to which they were legally entitled, and the clerks who refused to issue such licenses may well have been, and probably were, acting out of "strong beliefs about the immorality of [inter-raical] marriage", beliefs that may, just like some people's beliefs about gay marriage, have been founded on their religious views. Unless we can find some relevant difference between these cases, then, we shall have to say the same thing about them. People nowadays seem to me to forget how widespread opposition to inter-racial marriage once was. States had and enforced "anti-miscegenation" laws because very large portions of the populations of those states wanted to have such...

Putting aside the legal aspects and ramifications of illegally downloading music - is doing so morally wrong? Put another way, do we do something morally wrong when we download or otherwise take music that we did not pay for? If we acknowledge a private right to property, and that taking someone's property is stealing, then, can we say we steal (in the same sense, which is to say with the same moral implications) when we take the recognized intellectual property of another, specifically some artist's or artists' music?

The notion of "intellectual property" is fraught with difficulty, and my first reaction to this kind of argument is to question whether there is any such thing. Indeed, there are intelligent and thoughtful people who do precisely that. See, for example, this post by Richard Stallman. But one does not have to go that far to think, as many more people do, that copyright (and especially patent) law has gotten completely out of hand. Most people seem to think that copyrights and patents exist to protect the rights of the creator of the work in question. This is questionable. One might hold instead that they exist to further society's interest in encouraging creativity and innovation, and that the laws governing so-called "intellectual property" ought to based upon an understanding that this is, indeed, the sole legitimate purpose of such laws. So, if we value the creation and production of music and wish to encourage it, we would do well to think about what a sustainable and rational ...

What's so bad about Holocaust denial?

Well, the first thing that's bad about it is that it flies in the face of the obvious evidence. But that's not what you meant, presumably. Merely believing something false isn't usually held to be morally objectionable, the way Holocaust denial is. So why is that morally objectionable? Well, I think we have to look at the moral surroundings. People who deny the fact of the Holocaust are not normally historians with a detached interest in the matter. Holocaust deniers do not have good, independent reason to think things are other than the rest of us believe. Rather, they want there not to have been a Holocaust, or for it not to have been as bad as is usually thought, and so they flatly disregard the obvious evidence or invent reasons to discount it. So one thing one might say is that those who deny the Holocaust (almost?) always have an ulterior motive, and it's not so much the denial itself that is problematic as the motives behind it. Indeed, I don't myself see that there would be anything...

This is a difficult question to ask. But does the fact that Hitler had what could be described as noble intentions - he wanted to make the world what he thought would be a better place - in some way mitigate the moral repugnance of his actions?

I don't know if it mitigates it, but I think it's important to understand that, even people who do things as horrific as what Hitler did, very often do not think of themselves as doing anything wrong. Maybe Hitler is a bad example, as he is known to have been pretty nuts, but take Osama bin Laden. From what I've read, he is often described as quite charming and intelligent, and for all I know he's very kind to his various wives and children, generous to strangers, and so forth. But the dude has an axe to grind, and he thinks of himself as justified in grinding it. As for the innocents who die, collateral damage, you know? Or maybe they're not all so innocent, really. And what of the people in the United States who condoned and even encouraged torture? They clearly didn't think they were doing anything wrong, and yet what they did was horrendously wrong. Vice President Cheney, so far as I am concerned, is guilty of war crimes, and he ought to be tried, convicted, and imprisoned forthwith. And yet,...

One of the most common justifications I hear for abortion is "a woman should have control over her body." If humans reproduced oviparously, would that change the debate? Let's say a woman conceives a child, and then immediately lays an egg. The egg would still need incubation and maintenance, though this could be performed by any party, not just the mother. After nine months of development, the egg would hatch into a baby human. Would a woman be justified in crushing this egg? This mimics the abortion debate, except that in this case the fetus cannot be addressed as part of the woman's body. Would that invalidate any abortion arguments?

There are several different questions here. The first is whether, in the circumstances imagined, one would have a right to kill the developing ovum, or whatever. The second is whether a negative answer to this question would invalidate arguments in favor of the the permissibility of abortion. Let me answer the second question first. I think the answer here is "No": At least, I don't see that there are any very plausible arguments it would undermine. If you consider, for example, the central argument of Judith Jarvis Thomson's famous paper "A Defense of Abortion", it depends crucially upon the fact that the developing fetus is dependent upon the woman's body and that the woman's body is affected by the presence of the fetus. Thomson then argues, largely by analogy, that a woman is not morally obligated to carry a fetus under those circumstances. It's this kind of argument that I take to be summed up by "a woman should have control over what happens in and to her body". Thomson actually does...

Why is it that very religious people tend to be kinder and more compassionate (with a few notable exceptions to people they deem unworthy i.e.: homosexuals) than secular people? Is this evidence that we need religion/should be religious?

Are we entirely sure that religious people do tend to be kinder and more compassionate than secular people? And are we sure of this, especially, when we do not set aside the notable exceptions?

Once capital punishment was right and fornication was wrong. Now the reverse seems generally true. Is there any way that philosophy can prepare us for future alterations in our values, perhaps by indicating where they are likely to arise?

It is not at all obvious that captial punishment used to be morally permissible. What is obvious is that most people, or some powerful people, or something along those lines thought it was morally permissible (that is, "right" or "OK"). It may well be that it was always morally impermissible (that is, "wrong"), but people didn't realize this. That would certainly be my view. There's nothing peculiar about what I'm suggesting. People used to think the earth was at the center of the universe. It wasn't. They were wrong. People used to think it was OK to leave babies on the sides of mountains to die in the noonday sun. They too were wrong. Maybe the same goes for capital punishment. And even sex outside of marriage. So philosophy can at least contribute that sort of clarification. And maybe a bit more: By examining our presumptions carefully, perhaps philosophy can help us realize that what we think, even what we really, firmly believe, isn't right, after all.

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