The view you find attractive is usually called psychological egoism. It says that agents always act to promote their own interests and that self-interest is always one's ultimate motive. You mention two kinds of reasons for accepting this doctrine: that we always act on our own desires and that when we help others we do so to get the satisfaction of doing so. Let's look at these arguments separately. One reason that is sometimes given for accepting psychological egoism is that agents are always and necessarily trying to satisfy themselves when they act. Each of us has his own ideas about what is important in life, and these ideas shape our desires. When we act, we attempt to satisfy our desires. In this way, each of us always does what he wants. Even when we don’t like the way things turn out, it’s still true that we acted in the way that we wanted to at that time. This argument starts with a truism – that we always act on our own desires. It goes on to a substantive conclusion about the...

I just want to supplement Tom Pogge's response. Some approaches to responsibility view responsibility as a historical concept whose application depends not just on what's true of the agent at the time of action but also how the agent came to be that way. Some historical approaches to responsibility embrace a "tracing principle" that allows us to trace an agent's responsibility through time to earlier crucial decisions. On one such view, lacking suitable competence or control is not sufficient to excuse an agent if she is responsible for lacking competence or control. Tom discusses the normal case in which someone who gets sufficiently drunk loses competence and control but is presumably responsible for becoming irresponsible because she was competent and in control before she got drunk and could have drunk less, arranged for alternative transportation, etc. In such a case the tracing principle implies that the agent is responsible for the harm she does while drunk even though she was not responsible...

I am inclined to think that public figures typically do have obligations to the public that go beyond the obligations of non-public figures. Often, there are forward-looking consequential reasons for this additional responsibility. As public figures, their behavior is likely to be more influential, and so the obligation we all have to exercise our influence responsibly requires more of them. Also, there are often backward-looking reasons for this additional responsibility. Of course, in the case of some public officials, they have campaigned for positions of public trust and have taken oaths to serve their constituents and/or the common good. But many other public figures, who have not run for public office and taken oaths of responsibility, have nonetheless knowingly pursued public exposure and benefited financially (and otherwise) from their roles in the public eye. Fairness arguably generates duties toward other participants in a practice one has benefited from. These forward-looking and...

It does seem plausible that all else being equal it is more important or at least more valuable to save the life of a younger person than that of an older person, because when all else is equal doing so should produce more value. But, of course, all else being equal abstracts from a great many variables; there are many ways in which things might not in fact be equal. Assume A is the younger person and B is the older person. Consider some potential forward-looking differences. Even though A is younger, B might still live longer than A. Or B might lead a much more valuable life than A, either prudentially or morally. Or consider potential backward-looking differences. B might be more deserving of aid than A. Perhaps A is more responsible for her plight than B. Or B might be worse-off overall, and some people think that priority should go to the worse-off. So even if we agree that all else being equal it's better to benefit A than B, there may nonetheless be a great many situations in which...

Most people think that power, like money, is an instrumental good -- not good in itself, but rather good, if at all and because, it enables us to do other things that are good, prudentially or morally. And, of course, power can often be instrumentally bad, insofar as it enables us to do imprudent or immoral things. If that common view about the value of power is correct, then it would be inappropriate to value power for its own sake.

We should distinguish one's views about a given topic and how one holds them. Theism and atheism are rival views about the existence of God or gods. One can hold either view dogmatically or in an open-minded way. So neither theists nor atheists, as such, need be dogmatic. Typically, being open-minded is linked with a recognition of one's own fallibility -- the possibility of being mistaken. Recognition of fallibility does not requires suspending belief. But it does mean accepting beliefs defeasibly and being prepared to revise one's beliefs in light of undermining evidence. Being a fallibilist means being willing to question one's beliefs. While one might be willing and able to question any given belief, it's probably not possible to questions all of one's beliefs simultaneously. One must rely on some beliefs, albeit defeasibly, while questioning other beliefs. To borrow a metaphor from Otto Neurath and popularized by Quine, as believers we are like sailors on a ship at sea who must overhaul the...

For starters, there are different practical questions in this area -- one question is whether the state should find MJ guilty and punish; a different question is what any of us should believe about MJ and what reactive attitudes, if any, to adopt toward him. Since these are quite different practical questions, involving different actors and different actions, there's no reason to assume that the failure of the legal case against him implies that it would be inappropriate for individuals to blame him. Even if the legal and moral questions were not separate, one could still blame on the ground that one thought the legal issue had been mistakenly decided. I think that his was a legitimate reaction to OJ Simpson's acquittal. That seemed like a fairly blatant miscarriage of justice, and so there seemed no reason for variou private individuals to refrain from personal blame. Not having followed the MJ case, I have no idea if his acquittal was similarly suspect. But one needn't think the acquittal...

There is a complicated literature in moral philosophy about how to draw the distinction between doing and merely allowing harm and whether this distinction has moral significance. Without trying to navigate that deep intellectual thicket, it is still possible to begin to address your question. If I'm complicit in doing something bad, for instance, harming another person, then it seems I share the aim of my accomplices in harming someone else. I intend harm. By contrast, if I merely allow someone else to harm, I needn't and typically don't intend harm. While not intending harm, I may be indifferent to the harm. It depends. I may not be indifferent to the harm in question. I may be averse to it and perhaps would do something to prevent it but for some significant cost or risk involved in prevention. If the only way to save someone else from harm (whether intended or not) requires risking my life, then we cannot infer indifference from my failure to prevent harm. Perhaps I am averse to the harm and...

It's an interesting question whether the existence of an is-ought (or ought-is) gap is inconsistent with the voluntarist principle that ought implies can. I think the answer depends on how we understand the gap. You frame it in terms of inference -- you can't infer an ought from an is. Others frame it in terms of validity, entailment, or logical consequence -- on one formulation, no is statement entails an ought statement. If we focus on entailment, we may need to distinguish different conceptions of entailment. On a metaphysical or modal conception, one statement entails another just in case there is no possible world in which the former is true and the latter is not. But sometimes we understand entailment as this modal relation obtaining by virtue of the logical form of the argument (If P, then Q; P; therefore, Q). This requires a syntactic or epistemic conception of entailment. With this distinction in mind, we can see that whether voluntarism is compatible with the gap may depend on which...

Perhaps. It may depend on whether the agent's false beliefs were reasonable. Philosophers sometimes say we have a concept of objective right and wrong, which is what's right or wrong depending on what the facts are, whether or not the agent does or can recognize these facts. This concept of objective rightness or wrongness is often contrasted with a concept of subjective rightness or wrongness, which relativizes rightness and wrongness to the agent's beliefs or to information that was available to the agent at the time. Those who make this distinction often say that moral appraisal of actions is a matter of objective rightness but that praise and blame ought to be tied to subjective rightness. If we do this, we can make room for the idea that someone might have done something wrong but remain blameless for it. But I'm not sure we want the mere fact of sincere false belief to excuse. One way to think of subjective rightness or wrongness is as what would be right or wrong if the beliefs on which the...