Some of the things you want to do may not be within your power; then you can't do them. Regarding the rest, you can do whatever you want to whomever you want. If you say "screw the social contract" and do nasty things to other people, it's quite likely that the social contract will screw you back. You'll end up in jail, and there very few attractive things will be left within your power to do. What's great about morality is that it affords a way to get along without the violence that results when some are set to do whatever they want to whomever they want and others are trying to stop and disable them. With morality widely accepted, we agree to restrain ourselves and so get less of what we want, but we also get less of what we definitely don't want: namely physical violence, jail time, and other social penalties inflicted on us. For most people, this is a good deal, and manifestly so. But perhaps not for you. Perhaps you want to do some nasty things so badly that you don't much mind going to...

The answer is NO . Whatever incoherence there might be in wishing that *I* were just like David Beckham, this does not render it incoherent or irrational to desire or view as beneficial things which would, in effect, make one a different person. Thus suppose that I wish that the person sitting in this chair one minute from now (and from then on) shall not be subject to any of the worries and temptations that distract me from what's important and that he shall otherwise be committed to the same ends as I am. Now would this person be me? That's an irrelevant question, because nothing about this topic was contained or implied in my wish. So my wish is perfectly coherent -- and also rational, I think, for my ends would be better promoted if my wish came true. Now, of course, if your real end is that *you* should experience the positive reactions that many visit upon Beckham, then you better not wish for the person sitting in your chair a minute from now to be just like Beckham....

Short as it is, this question is tricky because of two ambiguities. 1. "rational" could be understood in the sense of choosing what are foreseeably the most effective means to given ends, or it could be understood in a more ambitious sense that would allow the commitment to certain combinations of ends, or even single ends, to be irrational as well. 2. for each of the disambiguations for 1, the word "rational" could be understood to mean "rationally permitted" or "rationally required". I will read your "to be immoral" as shorthand for "to act in a way that is morally wrong." Suppose your overriding end in life is to make your sister happy. Her greatest wish is for a golden necklace that you cannot afford to buy. But you have a way of stealing it. This theft would be immoral. But it it rationally permitted and even required on the thin notion of rationality: stealing is the foreseeably most effective means for you to attain your end. This answer remains adequate even if we allow that...

I think hope is often not irrational. Here is an example. You get lost in a nature preserve with little food and water. You remember someone telling you that, in a situation like this, it makes sense to walk in a straight line with the help of the sun and your watch. That's what you do, while hoping that you'll get to a road before nightfall. This hope is not irrational relative to what you know: there are a few hours left in the day, the terrain is not too difficult, and you recall from the map that the nature preserve isn't all that large. So you have good reason to believe that there are roads no more than a few miles away in all directions and that you can cover a few miles well before nightfall. The hope is also not irrational in a practical sense. You know that people sometimes panic in situations like this, thereby making their predicament much worse through bad decisions caused by fear or anxiety. Your hope helps you keep your cool. Calmed by your confident belief that your method is...

This is a clever and interesting question. Much depends on how we understand the word "understand." In one sense of "understand" the answer to your question is yes: we can train a guide dog (or a robot or a child) the command "left" -- and successfully so, in the sense that the dog (or robot or child) really turns left whenever it receives this command -- without teaching it the command "right" (or any other command that makes it turn right). But this dog (or robot or child) then has an impoverished understanding, one that fails fully to appreciate the role the word "left" plays in our language game of spatial orientation. I would offer this analogy. A child can, in some very rudimentary sense, understand what a knight (in chess) is without knowing anything at all about any of the other pieces: she simply knows how a knight can move around the chess board. But someone who actually knows how to play chess has an understanding of what a knight is that's much richer than the child's.

If you wanted to say something in favor of this view, you might point to the absence of observed discrepancies between what we all believe and the truth. But, on reflection, this isn't a strong argument because there are observed discrepancies between what is commonly believed now and what was commonly believed at some earlier time. At the earlier time, p was commonly believed. Now not-p is commonly believed. If what's commonly believed were true, then both p and not-p would be true. But p and not-p cannot both be true. Therefore it is not the case that whatever is commonly believed is true. Now you might say that what you mean is that truth is nothing more that what's commonly believed throughout the ages, the future included. So here is an argument against this revised view. There are lots of propositions about which there is no common belief shared throughout the ages: neither p nor not-p have been commonly believed. Does it follow that neither p nor not-p are true? For example, it has not been...

I've argued for an affirmative answer in my response to question 2466. This appears also to be the view of Joseph Levine (response to question 2535). If these earlier responses leave you unsatisfied, then please write in again and say what these reasons are.

What's outside the agent's control is, I think, somewhat narrower than what you call "perceptions or cognition." Suppose new DNA evidence reveals that a black man on death row is actually innocent. And suppose the jurors who declared him guilty say that they couldn't help seeing him as guilty when he was brought before them. I think we should be most reluctant to accept this excuse. Perhaps they could not have avoided a certain negative emotional rection to the accused (given the racism of their society and upbringing). But perceiving a person as guilty (of some crime) involves a good bit of judgment on the basis of testimony and other evidence. And here we can examine whether the jurors weighed the evidence carefully, deliberated thoroughly, and so on. As a juror one is not bound to let one's emotional reactions prevail. One can, and one ought to, try one's utmost to put these reactions aside and to judge the case on the basis of the evidence alone. Now let's look at the narrower question whether...

About both, I would think: about their relation. Your quoted sentence says something about tastes (that they respond positively to strawberries) and also something about strawberries (that they evoke a positive taste response). Still, there is something to your deflationary "just": What you are saying about strawberries is not true of them apart from (human) tastes. So your sentence is shorthand for a longer sentence that specifies a subject ("... to me", or "... to human beings"). This is similar to how the sentence "elephants are big" is shorthand for "elephants are big animals" (or "... big relative to other animals").

I think Leaman is right that, in war and elsewhere, one must often choose between morally unpalatable alternatives. For example, the only way to protect innocent people from being massacred may be an intervention that risks killing other innocent people. And then your question (how would you feel if one of your loved ones were killed as collateral?) would be balanced by a similar question on the other side (how would you feel if one of your loved ones were massacred because we decided not to intervene?). Having said this, I also feel I understand what upset you in Leaman's answer. There are two relevant passages. One says that "try[ing] to distinguish as far as possible between civilians and insurgents .. is a pretty empty policy once the bullets start flying. Right now the US and British military in Afghanistan have responded to pressure from the Afghan government to unleash less remote bombing operations to cut down on civilian deaths, and this has resulted predictably in increased military...