A further consideration is that, given that many people have strong wishes -- whether rationally grounded or not -- that their corpses and probably those of their loved ones be treated in certain ways, it would be highly upsetting to many if they were to become aware that such treatment quite possibly wouldn't be provided. In other words, even if you can't harm someone after they are dead, you can harm the living by treating the dead in ways of which the living disapprove.

You seem to be raising a couple of puzzles here. One is how it has come about that human beings are sometimes motivated to help strangers, given that we might have expected evolution to produce beings concerned to promote the survival only of themselves and their kin. One immediate answer to this question is that, despite what some fanatical sociobiologists say, you can't explain everything about human behaviour as it is now merely by reference to our evolutionary history -- even if you allow in cultural as well as biological evolution. Evolution made it possible for impartial benevolence to develop, but it didn't necessitate it. Its emergence -- where it has emerged -- is to be understood primarily in terms of history rather than biology. The second puzzle is why we *should* help others even when doing so doesn't benefit us. Many people have believed egoism -- the view that the only reason we have to do anything is grounded in the promotion of our own well-being. Philosophy has so far failed to...

There's an important difference between airing one's beliefs or preferences and merely possessing them. Many feel that criticizing people for beliefs is unfair, since beliefs aren't voluntary and one can be held responsible only for what's voluntary. But some philosophers doubt this (see e.g. Robert M. Adams's wonderful paper 'Involuntary Sins'). Imagine someone whose beliefs about homosexuality are unusually vicious -- perhaps they think gays should be tortured. Even if we think this person's beliefs are involuntary, we'll probably be tempted to criticize them. (It may be, of course, that this kind of criticism is of a different kind from that we use in the case of voluntary action.) But this general didn't just hold these beliefs. He uttered them, and that is something that he could be held responsible for in the ordinary sense. Here I suspect people might want to criticize him from two angles. First, it might be thought that he was violating some principle of professional ethics. He was speaking...

Other things being equal, perhaps we might. But of course they're not equal. Our social morality -- the morality we live by -- is 'speciesist' in the sense that human beings -- whatever their mental or physical capacities -- are considered to be due special protection. If we were to seek to remove that protection, chances are that it would probably degrade our ethical sensitivities to the point that things went overall worse for non-human animals than they do at present. What we should be asking, rather than your question, is: Why should we continue testing drugs and cosmetics on non-humans to the extent we do, when we wouldn't dream of carrying out such testing on human beings with similar capacities?

Perhaps it depends on how strongly you condemn it. Let's assume that, like many people, you think the invasion of Iraq was a crime under international law, as well as extremely harmful and dangerous. Seems to me that we might want to encourage a public morality according to which people who think this and don't speak out should be considered at least somewhat guilty by association compared with those who do.

An interesting question, and one that has received some -- though surprisingly little -- attention in philosophical ethics (e.g. in discussions about civil disobedience or whistle-blowing). I'm not sure, however, that there is really an 'ethics of anonymity', as if that is something autonomous or independent of some normative ethical view or other. You mention 'the right to anonymity', for example. Some philosophers (most famously Jeremy Bentham, who described rights as 'nonsense' and natural rights as 'nonsense upon stilts) don't believe that we have any rights. Others will say that we do, but there's a great deal of disagreement about which ones. For what it's worth, I suspect that in many areas of life where issues of anonymity arise, there are, or should be, codes of practice governing when anonymity is justified, and that these codes of practice should be based on advancing the well-being of all sentient beings, impartially considered.

As you'll have noticed from the responses by Peter and Thomas, philosophers can suggest different ways of defining 'morality'. So here's another one, which owes a good deal to the British empiricist tradition, and J.S. Mill in particular. Morality can be seen as a system of social control analogous to positive law, though its sanctions are different from those of law. Legal institutions will punish you with, for example, some financial penalty, or a period of detention. Moral institutions punish you with blame, shame, guilt, and so on. (This is not to say, of course, that there isn't much more -- and a more positive side -- to both the law and morality.) So what is meant by a moral reason in some society is a reason which you may be morally punished for not acting on. Here's an example. Some action might have the property of being the sadistic killing of an innocent person. Actions like that will meet with the moral sanctions, so that means the property in question gives us a moral reason. Now, could an...

Many philosophers -- including Immanuel Kant -- have believed that each of us a duty to fulfil our talents. Often the view emerges out of a religious world view in which we are here to serve some divine purpose and are, in some sense, under the command of, or even owned by, God. Modern liberal views tend to involve something like John Stuart Mill's liberty principle, according to which no coercion -- legal, moral, or social -- is to be applied to others on the ground that it will benefit the coerced themselves. That raises the question whether the kind of person you are describing -- who *suffers* for their art -- will in fact be made better off if they are motivated to develop their talents through guilt, shame, or fear of the opprobrium of others. In many cases, of course, moral pressure won't work anyway. But what about a case in which the lives of others won't go as well if the talented individual gives up on her project? Isn't a potential Mozart obliged to use their gift to benefit others? Perhaps,...

I assume we're imagining that the doctor knows that the patient hasn't herself reported her optical problems. I suppose the first thing to try would be asking the patient to do so. Now imagine that the patient refuses, or that the doctor has reason to suspect that the patient won't make a report. The first issue is whether the law requires the doctor to inform the authorities. If it does, then it seems to me pretty clear that she should do so. If the law doesn't require this, then the doctor may be subject to legal, or professional, obligations of confidentiality. If those are absent too, then I'm inclined to think she should go ahead and make the report. It might be said that it would damage the relationship of trust between her and her patient, and I guess that is more than likely if the patient's driving licence is revoked! But that seems a price worth paying. Nor do I think it would do much if any harm to the reputation of the doctor, or doctors in general, if it became known that the doctor had...

The main argument is probably that it *feels* to most of us as if there are objective moral constraints on our actions. So the burden of proof lies on the person who says that we don't feel like that or that if we do then we're making some mistake. It may be that you think that religion can indeed provide an argument for an objective morality. If so, then you need to face up to Plato's *Euthyphro dilemma*: either (e.g.) torturing babies is wrong because God says it's wrong (and morality is indeed dependent on God) or God says it's wrong because it is indeed wrong. If you go for the former, then morality appears arbitrary. If God decreed that parting your hair on the left was a terrible wrong, then it would be. And if you go for the latter, then you will need what you are seeking in your question -- a non-religious argument for objective morality.