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Ethics

Is it morally justifiable to joke about serious crimes like rape? Humor can be a coping mechanism for people to deal with something so reprehensible, while at the same time acknowledging that it is a serious and immoral crime. Yet it's possible that for rapists or potential rapists, seeing how some parts of the community treat the crime so light-heartedly might mitigate their moral qualms about committing rape. Are there some things which we just shouldn't joke about?

I don't think so. As you say, by laughing at something we manage to cope with difficult events and people. Laughter does not imply taking something as not serious, quite the reverse. Even tragic situations often have a funny side to them and it is a sign of our humanity to acknowledge this and use it to make sense of those situations.
Punishment

I am often appalled by how sadistically Americans and people of other nations regard their criminals. I am appalled because that very sadism itself reduces people to the level of evil as the people we punish. But how does one go about confronting the absolutely wicked notion that because we dislike a persons behavior we should inflict pain on that person thereby perpetuating the evil. Perhaps it can be argued that on utilitarian grounds that some evil should be permitted if it allows less evil to result in total. But that seems to go against the instinct that their is something immoral about being the author of an evil action even if the ends supposedly justify the means. It seems like an ethical system that acknowledges the truth that punishment is nothing more than a perpetuation of evil is utterly impotent. Is there any way at all to resolve this fundamental contradiction between morality and reality?

There are a variety of ways of justifying punishment, not all utilitarian, and some would argue that punishing a criminal respects him or her since we apply a sanction to them which to some degree matches the crime. It is only sadistic if we enjoy their suffering, and surely most members of the public do not, especially as it is very expensive to incarcerate criminals. On your measure, causing any suffering at all is to bring about evil, and this is implausible. Sometimes offenders have to be brought face to face with the nature of their actions by punishing them, and they may reform or they may not, but they are not punished to make them suffer per se. The way in which this topic was described suggests that all punishment is evil, and we can easily think of cases where this is implausible.
History

Some people and philosophers seem to see individual human activity as arising, not from interaction between individuals, but from interactions between social groups - that is, what gives rise to the behavior of individual men and women is the dymanic between men and women, as social groups. They see people's motivations as rooted in power, never in lust or greed or any other emotion (or if they do, these emotions are reduced to expressions of power). Everything is symbolic - wars are started not for resources, but in order to impose realities and dominate discourse. My question is this: isn't this all a bit far-fetched? A man who flirts with a woman doesn't seem to be doing so because he feels compelled to exert sexual power over her in accordance to patriarchal discourse; he thinks she's cute. The media doesn't distort information in order to control the all-immersing hyperreality we all live in; individuals simply simplify and exaggerate stories to gain more viewers. What is it that makes this...

I think the sort of language you are complaining about does incorporate the human characteristics you mention at the end, it is just that the argument goes that we act within a context defined by the basic power relationships in our culture, and the norms which have been created as a result. This seems plausible to me. In a culture in which men and women are not free to flirt with each other the notion of flirting would take on an entirely different character, as a subversive act, perhaps. Who can flirt with whom, how they go about it, where it degenerates into something objectionable or even illegal, are all reflections of basic social rules. Lust and greed are certainly important, but they operate within parameters defined by more general relationships between people, or so it is argued, and this is not to suggest that there is no interaction between individuals. It is just that that sort of interaction is affected strongly by interaction between social groups. I am interacting with you now by...
Punishment

Rape seems to be a crime that is very difficult to deal with, legally, especially when the two parties are in some way or another involved. Assuming there is no video evidence and no medical evidence (i.e. injury), the rapist can always claim the sex was consensual, and assuming the two know one another (as is often the case), the idea that they might have sex is always possible; this makes it relatively easy for rapists to defend themselves. Rape can, furthermore, be used to horribly smear somebody's reputation, cause them to lose their job and ruin and relationship they might be in at the moment - and though it is difficult to prove, it is also very difficult to disprove, except by having a convincing alibi. If two people have consensual sex, and one party decides to claim they tried to turn down sex but were raped, there is little the other party can do to defend themselves. Assuming innocence until proven guilty could let rapists walk free, but assuming guilt until proven innocent could get...

I don't see what is special about rape from the evidence point of view. There are many crimes which take the form of one party saying one thing, and the other something else. In the Anglo-American legal system a jury may well have the opportunity to decide on who is telling the truth, and sometimes it is difficult and sometimes it is not. Juries have to decide what was going on in the minds of the accused and the other people involved in a vast variety of cases, including fraud, deception, conspiracy, murder and so on, and prejudice is potentially present in a whole variety of cases.
Ethics

I was recently watching a program on National Geographic about North Korea in which a young man was interviewed about his time in the country. He was being imprisoned in one of the 'work camps' in the country in which he was treated as a slave. I understand that North Korea relies on slave labor to keep its weak economy moving because it's so insular. Anyway, this young man managed to escape the camp, and eventually, the country. I believe he lives in South Korea now, as a free citizen. However, because this young man escaped, his entire immediate family was murdered. Apparently, this is a way that North Korea dissuades people from escaping. Additionally, this young man knew that his family was going to be murdered if he successfully escaped from the work camp and he did so anyway. Is he morally responsible for his family members' deaths? After all, he knew they'd be murdered if he succeeded, and because he undertook the task, he intended to succeed...and yet, there seems to be some nagging question about...

It is an interesting issue, and stems from the distinction between directly doing something and letting something happen. Some philosophers think that this is a largely false distinction, and that if we know what the consequences of an action are, but we are not ourselves the primary agents of those consequences, then we are nonetheless responsible for those consequences. There are a whole variety of different cases where this seems more and less plausible. If someone is held to ransom and the ransom is not paid, and the prisoner is then killed, is the person who did not pay the ransom the murderer? This seems wrong, since although he could perhaps have prevented the murder, he did not actually kill anyone at all. In the example you give, someone is suffering horribly and his only way of relieving his suffering is to escape or perhaps commit suicide, and this has terrible consequences for his family. Certainly he has a role in their subsequent deaths, but it seems to me a stretch to say that he...
Children
Ethics

Do parents have a responsibility to take care of their biological children. Or do they just have a responsibility to make sure their biological children are being taken care of (and it need not matter who does the actual taking care.) To illustrate the difference, suppose a wife and husband are perfectly capable of producing healthy children together. However, the wife has a demanding career and would rather avoid pregnancy. So the couple finds another woman who is willing to be inseminated by the husband, and pays her some money in exchange for delivering the baby. When the baby is born, he is genetically the son of the surrogate mother, however he will be taken care by the wife. Has the child been wronged, since his biological mother will not take of him? Or did the biological mother fulfill her obligation to her child (making sure he will be taken care of by someone, even if that person is not his biological mother?)

Anyone can look after a child well, and many of the best carers are not biologically related to the child. Those who are hostile to surrogacy do have a point though in wondering at whether the subsequent psychological and legal issues would bring in their train difficulties for the growing child. How flexibile can society allow its links between parents, carers and children to become? We have quite rapidly moved away from a particular image of the traditional family where the father works, the mother stays at home with the children to a very different constellation of different arrangements, where there all sorts of domestic arrangements, and a nagging feeling that there must be something wrong about it all. Yet in the past the so-called traditional family was often replete with problems, and there is no reason to think that as the family changes it will not be able to reconstitute itself quite satisfactorily in a different form.
Emotion
Philosophy
Rationality

What role can emotions, principles and personal (or borrowed) convictions play in a philosopher's reasoning process when approaching a specific issue? What role can they play in a philosopher's way of seeing things, or even in a given philosophical trend in which a number of philosophers share similar ideas about a certain number of issues? Is it possible to be completely or at least reasonably neutral when approaching a subject, in spite of your own personal background? If not, then, is it still a good idea for philosophers to try to be neutral? What happens, for example, if you as a philosopher are not aware of the fact that some of your arguments, or thoughts, are being "influenced" by something other than reason, like fear or rage, for example? Are the conclusions of such influenced ways of reasoning, something that you can refute (or at least recognize as "impure") in the long run through uninfluenced (if possible) or at least reasonably uninfluenced reasoning? And finally, are there any known...

Although philosophers are in the rationality business, well, many of them are, they are no more rational than anyone else about assessing their motives when it comes to themselves. Often we wish to beat someone else in an argument because we want to beat them, not establish the truth, and much motivation for writing books is to be found in promotion and increased pay, rather than pushing the boundaries of knowledge on a bit. This will not come as news to those in the profession. Is there evidence that our personal opinions play into our arguments? Almost every philosopher of religion I have read has a particularly favorable attitude to his or her own religion. When they elucidate its theology they find remarkable similarities with philosophical positions of which they approve. Perhaps the best example of all here is Hegel and his argument that the development of rational religion achieves its apex in what just happens to be his own variety of religion. I don't think this is surprising, we are...
Feminism

I'm interested in creativity and gender: specifically why the discussion of women writers seems to get extraordinarily fraught when one throws in the idea of motherhood. I have seen young female writers write long manifestos about why they'll never be mothers because motherhood will interfere with their work; I've seen how mostly women who are granted bona fide "genius" status are childless (Austen, Dickinson, Eliot, Wharton, O'Connor, Welty). It is less severe today, but still exists: our only universally recognized feminine "geniuses" seem to be the non-mothers Zadie Smith, Joyce Carol Oates, and, of the six female Nobel laureates in literature in the past twenty years, only one half--Morrison, Lessing, and Gordimer--had children, which can't be representative of either the population of women in toto, or that of women who are writers. Worse, and this may simply be an assumption on my part, but oftentimes women don't get judged as "important" as their male counterparts until they are beyond the age of...

No doubt there is a debate on this topic in the literature, but whatever this says, it is surely the case that in most societies mothers are obliged to spend longer looking after their children than are fathers, and this obviously has an impact on the other things they can do. Writing is often a rather solitary activity and childcare does not usually fit in that well. It is hardly surprising that women find it harder to do as compared with men if both have family responsibilities. We still tend to expect more from women, and less from men. It is not just with respect to children but also with caring in general, for siblings perhaps or parents. When I look after young children and take them out I receive all sorts of help and interaction from people, since the assumption is that if a man is doing it then this is unusual and unexpected. When their mother or grandmother take children out they are routinely ignored, this is just what is expected of women. Clearly this has always had a significant...
Animals
Ethics

My landlord has a terrible fear of rats. Over the summer, a young stray cat started hanging around the brownstone meowing for affection and food. My landlord started feeding the cat, and even put a box for it to stay in, because he is convinced that having the cat living in front of our building will scare away rats. But now it's late fall and getting colder; the cat is looking more and more desperate and sad. I'm afraid it won't last much longer out there. So here's the question: having benefited from the cat's predicament, is my landlord now morally responsible in any way for the cat's eventual fate? Is he under a moral obligation to take the cat inside, or to a shelter, etc? Similarly, am I, having indirectly benefited, under any moral obligation to the cat?

I think so, it is not as though the costs of looking after the animal are immense. If one can prevent harm to a sentient being then one ought to, other things being equal.
Religion

Early Islam meets almost every criteria for the definition of a "cult". Believers were removed their friends and families- from Mecca to "The Prophet's Town" Medina, unconditional love was given by a charismatic leader (Muhammad), believers received a new identity based on the group "Muslim", access to material critical of Muhammad or Islam was cut off (the murder of satirical poets by Muhammad), unwavering faith to the group was demanded, leaving the group was prohibited (death penalty for apostates), the beliefs of the group contradict logic and science, it was encouraged that group members only socialize and marry other group members, the threat of hellfire was used to control group members, the beliefs of the group are extremely absolutist ("Islam is the only true religion") and group members were encouraged to gain as many new followers as possible. According to these criteria can Islam still be considered a cult, or has it "evolved" into something else? Furthermore, if we can agree that it at least...

I do not recognize Islam from your description of it. Many religions contain events in their past history which look rather questionable, to put it mildly, and I suppose all new religions, although Islam represents itself as not new at all, will institute practices to try to maintain group solidarity and cohesion within an alien environment. Whether this makes them a cult or not is hardly important, since that is a term which is generally used to designate a religion or quasi-religion of which we disapprove.

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