I find this hard to respond to because the meaning of the relevant expressions and especially the background assumptions are not clear to me. For example: Why do you so easily deny that life it not worth living (while also denying that it is worth living)? What's the third possibility here? Why do you think (or at least suggest) that life is rendered objectively meaningless by there being no God or by there being an end to the universe or to human life? W(hy w)ould life be objectively meaningful if there were a God or if the universe and its inhabitants were sure to hum along forever? What is the thought behind connecting the three ideas the way you do: Life's being objectively meaningless, why does this make it neither worth nor not worth living? (E.g., could life's being subjectively meaningful make it worth living?) And why does life's being objectively meaningless make it harder to justify staying alive? Why does it not, for instance, also make it harder to justify suicide)?

I agree that your solution works as well or better. Here are two different arguments a consequentialist might make. (1) Suppose all attempted murders are punished equally, regardless of success, with each attempt being punished with 6 years in jail and 30% of punished attempts successful. Now consider this reform: We increase punishment for successful attempts from 6 to 13 years and decrease punishments for unsuccessful attempts from 6 to 3 years. This reform leaves constant the jail time per punished attempt (which consequentialists typically count as a negative): 13 x 30% + 3 x 70% = 6. (Obviously, the numbers here are just for illustration.) But the reform is likely to increase deterrence, because prospective murderers are going to focus more on the "successful" outcome that risks a 13 year penalty than on the (actually more likely) "unsuccessful" outcome that risks a 3 year penalty. As a result of better deterrence, fewer murder attempts are made, fewer people are murdered, and fewer...

Jeremy Bentham comes to mind as someone who believed that people always seek their own happiness (pleasure minus pain). Given the great diversity of human conduct across epochs and cultures, it is easy to find plausible counter-examples. But such counter-examples can always be rebuffed by a remark such as the one you have in parentheses: The act appears to be selfless, but was really motivated by the satisfaction the agent expected to derive from assuaging his guilt or from the approval by others. Even when a person throws himself on a hand granade to save his comrades, one can say that the expected satisfaction from the anticipated approval of his comrades must have outweighed his dread of the anticipated pain and death. The problem with such rebuffs is that they lead to circularity: The fact that a person acted in a certain way is taken as sufficient to show that he must have had some selfish motive for doing so. And the proposition in question (that all human actions are born of self-interest) then...

A very interesting question! Ordinary language generally is not all that precise. Philosophers often try to make important terms more precise in ways that capture the essential meaning elements intended in most ordinary usage. But such precision cannot do justice to every ordinary use of the term. With this disclaimer, let me give it a try. The word "evil" is primarily applied to agents. What makes an agent evil is not so much the conduct this agent engages in or is prepared to engage in. Rather, to be evil, an agent must be pursuing immoral ends. (People who cheat to enrich themselves are usually called bad or immoral, not evil. I suppose this is because their end is permissible.) You suggest a good example of this: An agent who enjoys the suffering of others and acts to give himself this enjoyment is an evil person. When applied to actions, the word "evil" similarly refers to the action's end. An action is evil when it is performed in pursuit of an immoral end. Sometimes, the only immoral...

Do you want her to feel obliged to tell you (do you even really want to know) what she is thinking of in those moments? Chances are you are both happier together as things are now. And the two of you have surely no duties to anyone else to change your ways.

My response was composed for Steve B. But, with thanks for Jyl's intervention, let me try to rephrase in a way that Alan may find more congenial. Suppose you were indeed morally obligated to tell your sex partner when you fantasize about someone else whilst making love to her. This obligation would not be one owed to any third party. So it would have to be one you owe to her. But it is questionable that you owe her such disclosures. To see this, consider that, if you owed her such disclosures, then she would owe you such disclosures as well. Now ask yourself whether such disclosures from her would really be in your interest: Would you want to know what she fantasizes about when the two of you make love? Would you be happier if she gave you this information, or do you think she would be happier if she gave it to you? If the answers to these -- yes! -- empirical questions (see Q866 and answer) are negative, then it is hard to see how she could owe you such disclosures that you would not want and...

You seem to think that my earlier response commits me to affirmative answers to the three questions you pose. As far as I can see, this is not the case. So, to answer the new questions in sequence: 1. No, a person's obligations are not determined by this person's self-interest. Even when performing some action is not in one's self-interest, one can still have a moral obligation to perform it. And even when an action is in one's self-interest, one can still lack a moral obligation to perform it. This holds for obligations in general, and it also holds, as you suggest, for obligations to disclose information. In my previous answer, the connection I drew was not between an obligation and interests of the same person, but between an obligation and interests of another (the person to whom the obligation is owed, here: the person's partner). This is the target of your second question. 2. Again, I would say no . The obligations one person, A, has toward another, B, are not determined by B...

This revolutionary question was raised in a different way by Andy Warhol when he first painted Campbell soup cans (around 1962, I believe) and especially when he displayed Brillo boxes in gallery and museum settings (these were commercial wholesale boxes containing little steelwool soap pads for use in cleaning pots and pans). People asked what he presumably meant them to ask: Is this art? And how does one tell (properties of the object, intent of the presenter, setting and context, or what)? There are different responses to these questions. One of these is that the very distinction between art and non-art is untenable -- or, perhaps better, has been subverted by the evolution of art itself. Some wonderful philosophical reflections on this theme can be found in the work of Arthur Danto. See e.g. his "The End of Art" (in his The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art ) or The Transfiguration of the Commonplace.

Much depends of how these two lives are causally connected: Why is killing the one necessary to saving the other? One obvious connection is this: A is about to kill B and killing A is your only way of preventing this. In this sort of case, killing A is ordinarily justified (see answer to question 620) -- though there are obvious exceptions as when A's attempt to kill B is justified by the threat B poses to A or to some third party. Another possible connection is that C happens to be in the way of your rescuing D. Perhaps C is blocking your approach to D or your approach, with D, to the hospital, and you cannot get C moved, at least not quickly enough, to accomplish your mission. In this sort of case, assuming C is not intentionally blocking your path to effect D's death, it would be wrong to kill C in order to save D's life. This prohibition, however, is presumably not absolute. So, if there are many people whose rescue C is innocently blocking then it is permissible to kill C in order to...

With respect to some aspects of sovereignty, there may be a good reason. The fact that a country is ruled undemocratically is not sufficient justification for conquering and annexing it. With respect to other aspects, there is no good reason. We recognize dictators as entitled to sell us their country's natural resources, because we benefit from being able to buy them. (Imagine what crude oil would cost if we could buy it only from democracies!) We pay the dictator; he conveniently uses it to buy from us the weapons he needs to stay in power and invests the rest in our economy (under his own name, of course, or that of his family members). This practice is a clear-cut injustice perpetrated by the dictator in conjunction with rich-country banks, corporations and governments, against the populations of the countries in question. Their resources are taken without their consent and the proceeds are used to keep them oppressed. This is part of the explanation of the so-called resource curse (or Dutch...

The Queen v. Dudley and Stephans