Think of a world in which everyone -- at least initially, when they come of age -- is entitled to a space of their own with enough space left over for roads, markets, and the like. In that world, it might be fair to ask anyone who wants to occupy more than a fair share of privately occupied land to pay compensation to those who occupy less than a fair share. In that world, you would be entitled to occupy up to a fair share of privately occupied land without paying any rent or mortgage to anyone. Do you have a right that our world be organized in the way just sketched? I think in one sense yes and in one sense no. Yes in the sense that you cannot rightly be forced to make do with less than what you would have in that imaginary world. Many people growing up under feudalism were forced to work for a landowner, and accept his near-complete personal domination, in order to survive. And this was unjust coercion based on leaving people no option as good as what they would have in the imaginary world...

Much that people and corporations do contributes to a sexist culture, undermining equality of men and women. Such conduct is wrong in most cases. But there's a big step from this insight to the conclusion that such conduct should be outlawed. Outlawing wrong conduct can easily be counterproductive in much the same way as Clare Short's proposal was by getting her ridiculed for being unattractive and whining. And it can have other bad effects as well -- just imagine what a law against lying with a $100 fine attached, or a law against sexist jokes and remarks, would do to interpersonal relations and the court system. I don't have enough information to judge whether it makes sense to outlaw that Page 3 in the UK. If it does make sense, there are probably better ways for most citizens to spend time and effort toward reducing sexism than organizing a Ban-Page-3 campaign. More importantly, if it does not make sense -- and even if it would be wrong -- to outlaw Page 3, this does not undermine your...

Skill level is under one's control to some extent: one can become more skilled -- in juggling, say -- through practice. One has less control over how far one can improve one's skill, and how fast; that's more a matter of inborn endowments (dexterity), upbringing, environment. Hard work, as you say, is similar. One has a lot of control over how hard one works, but much less over the limits of one's capacity for hard work, though these limits can normally be expanded with practice. One's inclination toward hard work, similarly to the limits of one's capacity for hard work and limits to the skill level one can reach, is under one's control only to a small extent. How does all this bear on the proposed norm that one should compensate for a lack of skill with hard work? Not much, I think. For even if one's inclination to, and the limit of one's capacity for, hard work were rigidly fixed, one could still compensate by working hard up to one's limit even if this goes against one's inclination. That...

It's probably okay just to be mediocre and content, but what you write suggests you don't really have the option, at this stage, of being content with mediocrity. Should you try to be so content? Is it selfish not to be? Hardly. The question then is whether you have a good alternative to mediocrity. You suggest doing something great, something you and everyone else would recognize as extraordinary. This merits further thought. You would not want to make a name for yourself by doing something that's extraordinarily silly or evil, obviously. So, think about whether there is some goal that you recognize as truly important (whether lots of others do may not matter so much), that you are in an especially good position to promote, and that would interestingly engage your abilities and personal strengths. Think through two or three of the more plausible candidate goals in some detail and see whether one grabs you and might sustain your commitment. If you can come up with such a special goal, you have a...

"Thick" and "thin" are generally applied to predicates such as "is a person", "is wrong", and "harms". (The first of these can be applied to living organisms, the second to pieces of conduct, and the third -- a two-place predicate -- to ordered pairs of agents.) Often, such predicates are used in different senses or meanings. Two such senses of the same predicate are related as thicker and thinner just in case all the marks or meaning elements contained in the latter sense are also contained in the former, but not the other way around. In this case, anything that qualifies for the predicate in its thicker sense must also qualify for it in its thinner sense: If the predicate in its thicker sense is true of anything, then the predicate in its thinner sense is also true of that thing. If the predicate in its thinner sense is false of anything, then the predicate in its thicker sense cannot be true of that thing. (These sentences must be modified in obvious ways for multi-place predicates, e.g.: If a...

Look at some of the ancients (Homer, Plato, Aristotle) for the idea that ethics is all about becoming and being the best that you can be, leading the best possible life. They had different ideas of what this was, emphasizing different excellences. But they shared the idea that such nobility is not merely what one ought to strive for but something which, with some understanding, one wants to attain. The duty focus of later moralities -- Christianity, Kant, utilitarianism -- is strongly criticized, partly with appeal to the ancients, by Nietzsche and Bernard Williams. See esp. the Genealogy of Morals by the former and Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (and perhaps also Shame and Necessity ) by the latter.

It is hard to see why proximity (in the sense of physical distance) should make a difference. The kind of suffering and the nationality of the sufferer may well be relevant, however. Both may provideevidence about your causal relation to the sufferer. And the former mayalso provide information about how severe the suffering is, which issurely morally relevant. You focus on one kind of suffering inparticular: starvation. The UNDP reports some 850 million chronicallymalnourished people, and there are certainly more than this numberagain who suffer intense hunger occasionally. Suffering of this kind istoday pretty much completely avoidable through reforms of economicrules and policies on the national and global levels. Suffering of thiskind may then be suffering for which you and I and many others sharesome responsibility. Insofar as we do, we have more moral reason tocare -- and moral reason to care more. The thought that webear some collective responsibility is very hard to dismiss...

Yes, the fact you cite is consistent with what Malthus claimed. But many other facts are not. There is a strong negative correlation between countries' affluence and their fertility: The more affluent countries tend to have lower fertility, with many affluent countries having fertility rates well below what is needed to maintain their population (Italy's and Spain's are now at 1.28 children per woman, Japan's and Germany's at 1.39, versus 4.96 for Kenya -- find data for other countries e.g. in the CIA World Factbook on the web). The negative correlation holds diachronically within countries as well: As countries become more affluent, their fertility rate drops. This phenomenon can be observed the world over, across continents and cultures. A good example is the Indian state of Kerala. It used to be among the poorer ones in terms of per capita income, but has had a very strong and effective commitment to the fulfillment of basic social and economic needs, including education for women. In...

I don't think "spying" is the word. I would say that both your ex and his friend violated your privacy -- the former by inviting a stranger to witness a conversation you had reason to regard as personal and private between him and yourself, and the latter by accepting this invitation. What they did is presumptively wrong in the same way (though not to the same degree) as that psychiatrist watching, by invitation of your ex, a romantic encounter between you and your ex. The presumption that what they did is wrong can be overcome in various ways. The most obvious is consent. Had you consented to the psychiatrist listening in, then neither of them would have done anything wrong. Since you did not know about the listening in, you obviously had not consented to it. The presumption could also be overcome by prior wrong conduct of yours. Your ex claims that he did not trust you at the time. If you were doing wrong to him at or before that time, and if he had solid reason to suspect this, then he...

Being naturally good in your sense would require knowing without further reflection how one ought to conduct oneself. But the modern societies in which we are participants are far too complex for us to have such knowledge. How can one know, without further reflection, one's responsibilities with regard to the poor and the unemployed, world hunger and climate change, fair trade coffee, quarrelling neighbors, shrinking rain forests, AIDS sufferers, and threatened species? How can one know how much weight (if any) each of these purported responsibilities, and dozens of others, merits, and how they are all best incorporated into a single moral life? I see your point that the answers to some moral questions are obvious, and that it is offensive to raise such questions as if the opposite answer were perfectly respectable. But when philosophers raise such questions they typically have other reasons for doing so. Take a question that strikes many people nowadays as deeply offensive: "What...