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Environment
Ethics

What can explain the blindspot of mainstream politics that prevents global warming from being the biggest current agenda? This question is not possible to answer unless you accept the blatant assumption within it viz. that global warming should be the biggest current agenda that our intellectual, moral and political efforts should focus on. I believe this because I have read from various sources that it is scientific consensus that current levels of energy consumption will lead to global environmental catastrophe within a short time period. If you accept this, then this issue really smokes out all of the other important social causes that make up the majority of political discourse. I don’t believe, for example, that democracy matters in the true sense of peoples’ interests being weighted equally and determining equally political outcomes, when – whatever can be said of the virtues of such an ideal – this isn’t the way decisions are made in realpolitik – the amount of political discourse about spreading...

I think there are three plausible candidates for the title of most urgent issue on humanity's political agenda. Global warming is is one. A substantial change in the global climate, induced by human activities, might well have catastrophic consequences. The second, somewhat related problem is that of world poverty. Today, the bottom half of humankind are still living in severe poverty, and quite avoidably so: the bottom half of the human income hierarchy have less than 2 percent of global income and even much less of global wealth. Among these people, some 850 million are reported to be chronically undernourished, 1037 million to be without access to safe water, 2600 million without access to improved sanitation, about 2000 million without access to essential drugs, some 1000 million without adequate shelter, and 2000 million without electricity. Some 18 million of them (including 10.6 million children under five) die prematurely each year from poverty-related causes, which amounts to nearly one...
Ethics

I've told some very stupid lies recently, and on reflection obviously wish I could take them back. But the prospect of going to the people I've lied to and straightening things out is not so easy to commit to. Is there some kind of moral compulsion to confess to all the lies I've told, or can I balance against it things like losing respect and hurting people?

It's very hard in a matter like this to avoid self-deception -- hard, that is, to separate the (morally irrelevant) discomfort involved in straightening things out from the (possibly morally relevant) concern of not hurting people. Here it may help to imagine yourself in the position of the other (the one you have lied to), reflecting on how important the truth would be to her and how hurtful its belated revelation. The weight of the first of these considerations depends on the (esp. expected future) importance of your relationship. If you told some tall tale to a stranger on a train, then letting these lies stand is unlikely significantly to augment the harm. So there may then be no great moral urgency to try to locate that stranger in order to set things right. You've acted wrongly, but there is no serious wrong in just letting things ride. At the other extreme, if you lied to the person you love and hope to spend your life with, then the reason for straightening things out is much stronger....
Ethics

What justifies so many people, especially nasty people who don't show us any respect, in talking about their having "human rights"? I mean, doesn't it need to be in my interest to respect bad people's rights? Ewan

Human rights are understood as very basic rights that every human being has. By virtue of having these rights, every human being enjoys some minimal moral protections against being treated in certain ways by other (individual or collective) human agents. And by virtue of having these rights, every human being also enjoys some minimal moral protections against having certain laws or social practices imposed upon him or her. For example, your human right not to be tortured imposes a stringent moral duty on all human agents that they not torture you and that they not collaborate in imposing upon you laws or social practices under which you are avoidably exposed to torture. Your human right to freedom of expression imposes a stringent moral duty on all human agents that they not prevent you from expressing yourself and that they not collaborate in imposing upon you laws or social practices under which you might well be so prevented. And your human right to basic necessities imposes a stringent moral...
Business
Ethics

I recently decided to change jobs; I had to go through a lot of interviews at various competing firms. In order to keep my job search secret from my current employer, I had to make (often false) excuses to leave work early / take long lunch breaks / take afternoons off work. Was it ethically wrong to do this?

I don't see a serious ethical problem with taking a long lunch break, assuming you worked a little longer at the end of the day as needed. Nor is it wrong to take an afternoon off, assuming you properly advised your employer to give him/her a chance to book is as a half-day of vacation. So the only plausible candidate for wrongdoing here is the dishonesty of your excuses.Such dishonesty might be justifiable in three ways. First, it might be that, in the context of your work environment, it is generally understood by employers and employees alike that such dishonesty is standard practice (much like assault is standard practice in a boxing match). Second, it might be that the particular employer you lied to had forfeited any claim to your honesty. S/he might have done this by lying to you, for instance, or by acting wrongly toward other employees who had honestly reported that they were seeking new jobs. Third, it might be that your dishonesty was necessary to achieve some greater good. For...
Ethics
Medicine

It's plausible that medical advances will mean that, probably at a huge cost, we will be able to extend our lives a lot longer than people used to expect to live. I'm thinking something like 500 years or so of quality life. Presumably limited resources and things would mean that less children would be born, or that most people on earth would be stuck with poor and shorter lives. Would it be wrong to make use of such an opportunity?

If the very expensive life extension you envisage is available to all, one might defend it as a permissible collective choice. Of course, there would be fewer births, and fewer deaths, each year -- perhaps just 20 million annually instead of 125 million on the assumption of a steady human population of 10 billion. (Currently, there are about 131 million births and 57 million deaths each year.) Such scarcity of children would change our social world considerably. But I do not see how it would be wrong for humankind to move in this direction. Serious moral problems arise when we envisage the (more likely) possibility that such expensive life extension would be available only to a minority while its great cost would contribute to most people on earth leading short and miserable lives. To a large extent, this sort of dramatic inequality in health and life expectancy is already a reality today. About one fifth of all human lives are cut short by poverty-related causes before the age of 5. One important...
Emotion
Ethics

What does philosophy have to say about the role of emotion relative to ethics? It seems clear that emotion cannot be relied upon to produce consistently accurate ethical judgments, yet it also seems that emotion is a motivator for people's actions (which must be considered in the context of ethics). Further, emotion seems to be used as an "acid test" of sorts for ethical judgments (i.e. things that are ethical should "feel" or "seem" right). These are three examples of the way emotion and ethics interact, but I'm interested in perspectives on what their relationship should be, in the interest of making optimal ethical choices.

A very nice classic essay on this question is "The Conscience of Huck Finn" by Jonathan Bennett. I think you'll find it congenial and responsive to your second and third questions especially. I found a version on the internet: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/jfb/huckfinn.pdf
Ethics

I believe that all human actions are born of self-interest (even 'selfless' acts are committed in order to assuage guilt or obtain approval from others). Do any great thinkers agree with this most cynical proposition? Is there any such thing as genuine altruism?

Jeremy Bentham comes to mind as someone who believed that people always seek their own happiness (pleasure minus pain). Given the great diversity of human conduct across epochs and cultures, it is easy to find plausible counter-examples. But such counter-examples can always be rebuffed by a remark such as the one you have in parentheses: The act appears to be selfless, but was really motivated by the satisfaction the agent expected to derive from assuaging his guilt or from the approval by others. Even when a person throws himself on a hand granade to save his comrades, one can say that the expected satisfaction from the anticipated approval of his comrades must have outweighed his dread of the anticipated pain and death. The problem with such rebuffs is that they lead to circularity: The fact that a person acted in a certain way is taken as sufficient to show that he must have had some selfish motive for doing so. And the proposition in question (that all human actions are born of self-interest) then...
Ethics

At what point does an immoral act, i.e. one that is in direct contrast to the ethics and laws of society, become an evil one? Both can be intentional, and with full knowledge of injury that the act will cause. Can we say that evil is an enjoyment of the injury? Is that the differentiating factor? My 17 year-old son asked me this question and we became a bit bogged down! --Laura (Australia)

A very interesting question! Ordinary language generally is not all that precise. Philosophers often try to make important terms more precise in ways that capture the essential meaning elements intended in most ordinary usage. But such precision cannot do justice to every ordinary use of the term. With this disclaimer, let me give it a try. The word "evil" is primarily applied to agents. What makes an agent evil is not so much the conduct this agent engages in or is prepared to engage in. Rather, to be evil, an agent must be pursuing immoral ends. (People who cheat to enrich themselves are usually called bad or immoral, not evil. I suppose this is because their end is permissible.) You suggest a good example of this: An agent who enjoys the suffering of others and acts to give himself this enjoyment is an evil person. When applied to actions, the word "evil" similarly refers to the action's end. An action is evil when it is performed in pursuit of an immoral end. Sometimes, the only immoral...
Ethics
Sex

Am I morally bound to tell my sex partner if I fantasize about someone else whilst making love to her? Or the subject of the fantasy for that matter? SteveB

Do you want her to feel obliged to tell you (do you even really want to know) what she is thinking of in those moments? Chances are you are both happier together as things are now. And the two of you have surely no duties to anyone else to change your ways.

My response was composed for Steve B. But, with thanks for Jyl's intervention, let me try to rephrase in a way that Alan may find more congenial. Suppose you were indeed morally obligated to tell your sex partner when you fantasize about someone else whilst making love to her. This obligation would not be one owed to any third party. So it would have to be one you owe to her. But it is questionable that you owe her such disclosures. To see this, consider that, if you owed her such disclosures, then she would owe you such disclosures as well. Now ask yourself whether such disclosures from her would really be in your interest: Would you want to know what she fantasizes about when the two of you make love? Would you be happier if she gave you this information, or do you think she would be happier if she gave it to you? If the answers to these -- yes! -- empirical questions (see Q866 and answer) are negative, then it is hard to see how she could owe you such disclosures that you would not want and...
Ethics
Sex

In an earlier question (http://www.amherst.edu/askphilosophers/question/875) the following was asked: "Am I morally bound to tell my sex partner if I fantasize about someone else whilst making love to her? Or the subject of the fantasy for that matter?" T. Pogge responded: "Now ask yourself whether such disclosures from her would really be in your interest: Would you want to know what she fantasizes about when the two of you make love? Would you be happier if she gave you this information, or do you think she would be happier if she gave it to you?" Is the duty to disclose determined by self-interest? (how many people are sufficiently aware of their self-interest to thus determine their duties? e.g. how many people enact patterns of self-destructive behavior, particularly in their sex and/or love-lives?) Can the duty to disclose be determined by the interest of the person to whom the duty is owed? (How many people know what is in the interest of another person? particularly, again, with regard to their...

You seem to think that my earlier response commits me to affirmative answers to the three questions you pose. As far as I can see, this is not the case. So, to answer the new questions in sequence: 1. No, a person's obligations are not determined by this person's self-interest. Even when performing some action is not in one's self-interest, one can still have a moral obligation to perform it. And even when an action is in one's self-interest, one can still lack a moral obligation to perform it. This holds for obligations in general, and it also holds, as you suggest, for obligations to disclose information. In my previous answer, the connection I drew was not between an obligation and interests of the same person, but between an obligation and interests of another (the person to whom the obligation is owed, here: the person's partner). This is the target of your second question. 2. Again, I would say no . The obligations one person, A, has toward another, B, are not determined by B...

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