I think you are asking whether international law ought to be revised so as to avoid the two intuitive injustices you assert. With regard to your first intuitive injustice, international law already recognizes a right to asylum and a duty of non-refoulement . But many states implement this right in arbitrary and quite ungenerous ways, with the result that many desperate people are either returned to a situation where their life or health are at risk or else confined for long periods in inhumane detention centers. Here a modification of international law -- involving a consistent and efficient international process for determining refugee status as well as a fair allocation of recognized refugees among suitable asylum countries -- would indeed be a great improvement. As for your second intuitive injustice, it may not be an injustice at all. Imagine a million Europeans eager to move to the Solomon Islands. Their presence would not really harm the locals -- in fact, it might greatly boost...

There are all sorts of regulations about this in different jurisdictions, but I assume you are interested in the moral prohibition and the reasons for it. I don't think it's wrong in general for teachers and students to become romantically involved with each other. It is wrong only when they also have a student-teacher relationship, or a potential student-teacher relationship. I believe that, in such cases, becoming romantically involved is always wrong. This belief is plausible only if the word "potential" is understood in a robust sense. Otherwise any romantic relationship involving a teacher would be wrong (because it is always possible for the other party to become this teacher's student). So I mean it in a robust sense: You are potentially my teacher only if I am a registered student in a unit of a university in which you teach -- a graduate student in your department, say, or an undergraduate in your college -- even if I have not taken a class with you. Such student-teacher...

I think there are three plausible candidates for the title of most urgent issue on humanity's political agenda. Global warming is is one. A substantial change in the global climate, induced by human activities, might well have catastrophic consequences. The second, somewhat related problem is that of world poverty. Today, the bottom half of humankind are still living in severe poverty, and quite avoidably so: the bottom half of the human income hierarchy have less than 2 percent of global income and even much less of global wealth. Among these people, some 850 million are reported to be chronically undernourished, 1037 million to be without access to safe water, 2600 million without access to improved sanitation, about 2000 million without access to essential drugs, some 1000 million without adequate shelter, and 2000 million without electricity. Some 18 million of them (including 10.6 million children under five) die prematurely each year from poverty-related causes, which amounts to nearly one...

This is a very important concern in the post-9/11 political world. Still, we need to be clear about the perspective from which we are looking at the problem. One important perspective is that of the government, which has the best available information about the threats to national security (or rather to the legitimate interests contained under this horribly vague and overly capacious label). Another important perspective is that of us citizens. Your use of the word "state" might indicate that you are interested in the former perspective. But your reference to "we" suggests the latter perspective, and so I will read "state" in the sense of "country" rather than "government". On this reading, the trade-off is really somewhat different from what you suggest. By giving the government exceptional authorities and moral support, we are losing both knowledge and control of whatever trade-offs it makes in our name. For the rights and liberties our government will curtail first and foremost are rights to...

It is logically possible to consider yourself Dracula or Cleopatra (people do it), and considering oneself in love after three weeks is surely no less possible. Some consider themselves in love with Schwarzenegger and have never met the guy! So I assume the question you're really interested in is whether it is actually ("empirically") possible to be in love after knowing someone for merely three weeks. Of course, this depends on what it means to be in love. Let me propose that being in love does not mean having built a relationship of love together, but merely something weaker: being emotionally ready and personally committed to build such a relationship with this person. This can surely happen in the space of three weeks. For one thing, you may easily have spent 100 hours together -- more than you spend with your closest friends in the space of a year. And many of these hours may have been extremely intense (compared to shooting the breeze or watching a movie or going swimming...

It's very hard in a matter like this to avoid self-deception -- hard, that is, to separate the (morally irrelevant) discomfort involved in straightening things out from the (possibly morally relevant) concern of not hurting people. Here it may help to imagine yourself in the position of the other (the one you have lied to), reflecting on how important the truth would be to her and how hurtful its belated revelation. The weight of the first of these considerations depends on the (esp. expected future) importance of your relationship. If you told some tall tale to a stranger on a train, then letting these lies stand is unlikely significantly to augment the harm. So there may then be no great moral urgency to try to locate that stranger in order to set things right. You've acted wrongly, but there is no serious wrong in just letting things ride. At the other extreme, if you lied to the person you love and hope to spend your life with, then the reason for straightening things out is much stronger....

Congratulations on the new job. Without claims to completeness, let me make one point in response to your query. An important new element in your next job is that you will have a voice and a vote in your department and possibly in other university bodies as well. University politics can be very dirty and corrupt, all the way up to the top. Let's hope that in your new academic home all is decent and above board. But do be critically observant, even a bit suspicious at the beginning. And when you find that some matter morally requires action on your part, do take some time for further thought and study. Do not take for granted that just pointing out that (and why) some proposed decision or policy would be plainly immoral will suffice to get this proposal off the table. It is equally possible that your intervention will not alter the outcome and permanently sour relations with some of your colleagues. There are no easy prescriptions about how to act (as an untenured professor) in some particular such...

Not rude at all -- just uninformed. Well understood, philosophy does not pretend to be "a way to truth," nor does it ask to be classified with science. First coined in ancient Greek, "philosophy" means "love of wisdom." So, it is not truth but wisdom we are after. And we don't pretend to deliver it to you, but merely invite you to love and seek it with us. So what is wisdom, you will ask. A decent first answer may be: understanding what matters. Here I mean "what matters" not in an empirical sense -- as in "it matters to Mr. Smith that his dog should win the beauty pageant." What matters is not what Smith or I or you or anyone happens to care about. Rather, what matters is what is worth caring about, what is important. Persons are wise insofar as they understand what is worth caring about. I speak of understanding rather than knowledge to indicate two points. First, that XYZ matters is not a fact out there which, with "something like case-control or cohort methodology" (Question 1071...

Human rights are understood as very basic rights that every human being has. By virtue of having these rights, every human being enjoys some minimal moral protections against being treated in certain ways by other (individual or collective) human agents. And by virtue of having these rights, every human being also enjoys some minimal moral protections against having certain laws or social practices imposed upon him or her. For example, your human right not to be tortured imposes a stringent moral duty on all human agents that they not torture you and that they not collaborate in imposing upon you laws or social practices under which you are avoidably exposed to torture. Your human right to freedom of expression imposes a stringent moral duty on all human agents that they not prevent you from expressing yourself and that they not collaborate in imposing upon you laws or social practices under which you might well be so prevented. And your human right to basic necessities imposes a stringent moral...

Wow -- 90,000 pages over a career, the promise of a 300-volume set of her collected works! I am not sure what to say on question 1. Nussbaum would obviously be a good, interesting panelist. But this would take time away from all her other pursuits, of which writing is only one, and the loss from that might exceed the gain to the users of this site. I suspect her own judgment is decisive here: If she wanted to be on the panel, she would be. There is obviously some quantity/quality trade-off in the writing of philosophy. Looking at the profession as a whole, we seem to be erring on the side of quantity. Professional philosophy would be in better shape, I believe, if we published 60% (or even 80%) less while spending as much time as now composing it. Why is so much philosophy being published? One reason is the one you give: "publish or perish," that is, the requirement on professional philosophers to publish (enforced through tenure, promotion, and salary decisions). From a world of a few...