An action should be judged -- as either right or wrong -- neither by its intention nor by its result. For example, John burns down Susan's house while she is away. This action is wrong even if it is well-intentioned (John did this to help her out of her supposed financial difficulties through a large insurance pay-out). And the action is wrong even if it turns out to save Susan's life (while Susan spends the next night elsewhere, the ruins of her house are hit by a meteorite that would otherwise have killed her). We might judge actions in terms other than right and wrong. Focusing on the intention, we might judge whether an action has or lacks moral worth (Kant's phrase). Focusing on the result, we might judge whether an action is, say, valuable. The former judgment is more relevant to assessing the agent than the action. And the latter is remote from a moral judgment because results can depend on many other factors the agent cannot control.

To be able to justify a killing, we must first and foremost be able to justify it to the victim. Here is one idea for how this might work. Suppose you have a number of agreements with your neighbor: borrowing tools, babysitting, having no loud parties after midnight, and so on. If your neighbor does not live up to one of these agreements (never leaves the key to her tool shed at the agreed-to hiding place, for example), then you are justified in ending it. You may do this explicitly, if you have the opportunity. If there is no such opportunity, you may still, when she next comes to borrow a needed tool, decline her request and justify this to her by saying that, once she has broken the agreement, she has forfeited her claim on you to live up to it. The same sort of justification can work for the general duty to honor agreements one has made. If you find that your neighbor tends to break her agreements with you for the sake of any small convenience, then your duty to live up to your agreements...

Let's distinguish cases along the lines of your second sentence. Begin with the least disturbing case, where we have neither contributed to, not benefited from, severe poverty or its causes. Their severe poverty is due to a meteorite, say, and our wealth is well-earned through hard work and good planning and husbanding of resources. In this case, it would surely be immoral to do nothing to help people who are suffering greatly and struggling for the survival of themselves and their families. I do not think there is a clear-cut amount or percentage one ought to give in such a case. The reason is not just that circumstances vary among the more affluent (a millionaire should give a larger percentage than you), but also that the moral assessment is scalar here: On the scale of possible contributions, there is no sharp point demarcating "too little" from "enough" (or "immoral" from "moral"). Even someone who is giving 20 percent of her teacher's income has moral reason to give more (people are starving,...

In regard to the political organization of a society, your question has been extensively and fruitfully debated for centuries, for instance in Plato's Republic, in the Federalist Papers, and in Rawls's work. The discussion shows that social rules, practices, and institutions exert great influence on character and conduct. Ethical conduct is more likely when ethical standards are clearly formulated and discussed, when there is transparency and accountability in decision making, when counter-moral incentives are restrained or suppressed, and when ethical considerations are routinely integrated into decision making processes. In regard to the organization of a business, similar desiderata apply. So, yes, structural design is important, and you do well to pay as much attention to it as you do. Still, this does not show that prevailing attitudes about morality are wrong to put individual agents at the heart of the matter. You are such an agent, and, without your thoughtfulness, your business will not be well...

It is not quite right to say that we are all participating in the spoiling of our planet. While the 16 percent of world population residing in the high-income countries live on around $30,000 annually on average, the bottom half of humankind live on less (often very much less) than $1,300 annually at purchasing power parity (corresponding to roughly $300 at market exchange rates). The bottom half are consuming and burdening the environment, but not excessively so. Nearly all the harms the question highlights are produced by their wealthier compatriots in the poorer countries and (especially) by the populations of the high-income countries. This point heightens our responsibility. We are plundering our planet and also appropriating the spoils of this plunder so lopsidedly that half of the human population still lives in dire poverty, which exposes 850 million people to hunger and malnutrition (UNDP) and causes millions of deaths (including annually 10.6 million children under age 5) from poverty...

Much depends on whether one is profiting passively or actively (taking advantage). Passive profiting is generally alright (as when you continue to enjoy the great view from your living room because your neighbor mistakenly believes that it would be illegal to build a highrise on the adjacent property). Taking advantage is generally wrong, especially when, exploiting another's stupidity, you cause her mistake (e.g., by provoking her to agree to an unwinnable bet). Somewhat less active cases are ones where you have no role in bringing about the mistake, but nonetheless do something to exploit it. This may be wrong -- as when you pick up a chunk of money another has dropped and keep it rather than try to get it back to its owner. Or it may be alright in minor cases, as when you keep some change you find in a pay phone's coin return. The moral situation changes in competitive game contexts in which such profiting is understood to be part of the game. In such a game (e.g. chess, poker, boxing), it is...

It all depends on the mental competence of the other person. If he's not very competent (a child, perhaps, or mentally disabled), then we may interfere with him even to prevent minor harms. One should never interfere with the freedom of fully competent adults in order to improve their quality of life. Still, when a person's quality of life becomes very low, her mental competence may come into question. It is very hard to think rationally when one is in severe pain, for example. And in such cases it may be justified, then, to take care of someone against her own will. Here we still face the question of WHO is so justified. A good candidate is a family member who intimately knows the person and what she would wish if she were feeling better. A poor candidate is some stranger, driven perhaps by moral or religious values that the person does not share. So, when a normally competent adult is in such bad shape that his capacity for decision-making is impaired, then others who know him well may interfere...

You would not want to have CPR administered to yourself. And you would also not want to be treated contrary to your wishes. In order to apply the Golden Rule, we need to know which of these two desires is controlling. I would think it is the latter. If so, you should administer CPR to those who would want to have CPR administered -- thereby treating them in accordance with their wishes, just as you want to be treated in accordance with your wishes. To be sure, what a heart attack victim wants or would want is often unknown. But we can overcome this ignorance by making available some simple cards or stickers through which people can communicate their choices ("please do / do not administer CPR in the event of a heart attack"). Still, many heart attack victims have no such information on them, and this problem cannot be wholly avoided. Doctors must therefore sometimes act under uncertainty. Here, I think, the burden of decision-making should not fall upon them. Society should give clear legal...

Yes you are. Your decision to deny others access to the life-savingdrug has led to their death. But how serious is your responsibilityfrom a moral point of view? That depends on the circumstances. Perhapsthe medicine was in short supply and you needed what you had for yourown survival or that of your family. In this case, I think you didnothing wrong. Or perhaps the medicine was in short supply and youchose to give it to those who could pay you the most. This way ofrationing your supply is not beyond moral criticism, but at least yourdrugs saved as many people as possible and so your conduct did notincrease the number of deaths beyond what was unavoidable. Nowconsider drug companies in the real world. They patent their medicinesand then enjoy exclusive rights to sell them at monopoly prices, whichcan be 400 times higher than the marginal cost of production. There aregeneric producers in developing countries which produce much cheaperversions of the same drug for sale to the poor. But the...

Most would recognize such an obligation as arising simply from the fact that many of them are exposed to life-threatening poverty that we can protect them from at very small cost to ourselves. The bottom sixth of the world's population live on under $100 per person per year (under $500 purchasing power), the top sixth -- those average people in the first world -- live on ca. $30,000 per person per year. So even one percent of our income would typically suffice to double the incomes of three extremely poor people. It does not seem right to refuse to given even this one percent while 18 million people are dying each year from poverty-related causes. The obligation comes to look even more plausible, and stronger, when one inquires into the present distribution of wealth. Given the history of unjust conquest, colonialism, genocide, and slavery, it cannot be said that the great economic advantage we have been enjoying from birth (and the great economic disadvantage they have suffered from birth) has...