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Business
Ethics

I was recently pulled into an office at work with a couple of loss prevention agents and they proceeded to let me know that they are talking to all managers about what exactly their role is. I am a manager at a very big retail brand. After we discussed what exactly their role is (which I already know), I felt like they were getting to something. They suddenly started talking about trust and how the company trusts all of their employees, sometimes that trust is broken when some employees decide to steal. I got very uncomfortable and asked what this is about and they let me know that a week previous $20 dollars was missing out of our petty cash and that they have me and another person who was our lead cashier. Any manager that opens the store must count petty cash with our lead cashiers, so there are always two people present. They proceeded to ask if I have ever taken any money from the company or put anything in my pocket. I said absolutely not. I have no reason to steal. They said that they have video. I...

I don't know what your legal rights are. If you are interested, you should consult a lawyer. However, I can understand your outrage and humiliation. As you tell it, their accusation was false and lacked probable cause. They also lied in the course of interrogating you, apparently with the hope of eliciting a confession, rather than as part of a good faith investigation. If it were me, I would follow the issue up with my supervisor or by filing a formal grievance. It sounds like you deserve an explanation and a formal apology. It sounds like the company needs to rethink its understanding of various aspects of due process. If I didn't get a satisfactory reply, I would think seriously about looking for a new position in another firm with a solid track record of fair and honest dealing with employees.
Ethics
Justice

What is the line between justice and revenge called? Or better put, when does justice become an act of revenge?

Retributivists about punishment are keen to distinguish between retributive justice and revenge. They presumably distinguish between punishment as restribution -- where that involves inflicting punishment for wrongdoing because it is wrong and in proportion to is wrongness -- from punishment as revenge -- where that involves punishing indpendently of wrongfulness or out of proportion to wrongfulness. Still, even if a private citizen exacts proportional retribution that smacks of revenge, doesn't it? If so, revenge may sometimes involve a wrongful assumption of penal authority.
Ethics

Do people have a moral obligation to comply with someone's last wishes?

I would think that it depends on the details. If B promises A to fulfill her last wishes, then it seems B has a promissory obligation to A. Also, someone functioning as an executor to an estate has a (legal) obligation ot respect A's last wishes. There may be people related to A in ways that make them quasi-executors. They may have some obligations to fulfill A's last wishes. But absent a promise or some other clear role duty, it would seem to depend upon B's relation to A and the nature of A's wish. Does A's wish concern something that would have been fully within A's control during her lifetime? Does A's wish harm anyone? Would honoring A's wish involve neglecting others to whom A owed things?
Ethics

Is a parent morally obliged to tell an adopted child he/she is adopted? If so, at what age/stage of the child's life should one do so? What about the birth parent(s)? If they are known, it it incumbent upon the adopting parents to make efforts to include them in the child's life? On the one hand, knowing they are adopted/involving birth parents might hurt the child - make them feel unloved, complicate custody arrangements, etc. On the other hand, not telling them or risking that they find out themselves also seems unfair to the child. What is a reasonable course of action in this probably common situation?

That adopted children have a right to know they are adopted and that the adoptive parents have a duty to tell the adopted child that he or she is adopted both seem pretty clear. Surely, one has a right to know whether one's parents are also one's biological parents, and it would be wrong for parents to have their relationsip with the adopted child based on deception. Add to this the fact that the deception might be uncovered, which would prove even more traumatic than if the fact of adoption is discussed openly and honestly .... But when and how to tell the child that he or she is adopted, that's hard. It might be best to explain it in some way early so that the child does not feel that anything is hidden from him or her but then to offer opportunities to discuss it in greater detail when the child is older, more mature, and more reflective. But these are questions better posed to a child psychologist or counselor than a philosopher, I would think. I don't see that it is...
Ethics

Situation: married man and unmarried woman on the verge of involvement. Does the woman have a responsibility to protect his marriage vows, or is the responsibility solely his? In the absence of any specific religious doctrine, how would you frame a principle to facilitate discrimination about where responsibility begins and ends?

You don't have to be religious to think that trust and fidelity are important values that should regulate intimate associations. So, barring some special background that you have not supplied (e.g. the marriage is an "open marriage" or the wife has been in a persistent vegetative state for years), I would think that the extramarital affair was morally wrong, at least in part because it was inconsistent with marital trust and fidelity. It seems to me the unmarried woman does wrong if she knowingly enters such a relationship, even if it is not her vows that are being broken. If it's wrong for you to breach a contract, and I knowingly help you breach your contract, I've done something wrong. Moreover, if the unmarried woman genuinely cares for the married man, then she presumably has reason not to want him to do something wrong. So, to answer your original question, this gives her reason not to contribute to his infidelity. But this seems to be an additional reason not to have the affair, in addition...
Ethics

If one believes that God is an abstract and unknowable concept, then what alternatives are there for guiding a person or society's moral values?

Atheism and agnosticism are only two reasons not settle moral perplexity by trying to ascertain God's will (see below). Atheists and agnostics will try to find reflectively acceptable principles and rules to guide their actions. It makes sense to start with widely shared rules about nonmaleficence, beneficence, honesty, fidelity, and fair play. Different ethical systems justify and sometimes interpret these rules in different ways. Finding the right moral theory is a matter of finding an ethical system that interprets and justifies these rules in a reflectively acceptable way. In the meantime, most of us will try to regulate our affairs as best we can byapplying these secondary rules. The interesting question is not so much how is morality possible independently of religion, but how is religion possible independently of morality. Even if we are theists, there's a strong case for thinking that morality is independent of religion. Socrates long ago asked whether something was right because God...

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