Kant's transcendental idealism explains the fact that experience presents us objects in a certain spatio-temporal order about which we can have some a priori knowledge by reference to a human capacity, our sensibility, through which alone we can become aware of objects. According to this explanation, space and time are then features only of objects as they appear to us. Confronted with this explanation, we are prone to ask what these objects are like apart from our sensibility, apart from how they appear to us (as spatio-temporal). Within Kant's own account, the concept of a thing in itself answers to this reflection: a thing in itself is any ordinary object (including event) considered apart from the spatio-temporal features it has by virtue of being an object for us (i.e. for beings with our human sensibility). Things in themselves are then the familiar objects of our experience, but considered in abstraction from their spatio-temporal features. And their existence is then no more problematic (if we...

The difference many find morally significant lies in the agent's state of mind. Both bystanders -- B1 and B2 -- intend to save the five; but B2 intends to accomplish this by having the trolley hit the fat man so as to stop it. The fat man getting hit is part of B2's intention: if the fat man somehow lands off-track or hits the track only after the trolley has passed, then B2's plan has failed. By contrast, the intention of B1 does not include anyone being harmed: if B1 diverts the trolley and the single person on the side track is nonetheless saved somehow, B1's plan has still been successfully executed. Another way of putting the point is this. Harm that an agent intends as a means toward achieving the aim of her action counts more strongly against the permissibility of this action than harm that this agent merely foresees as a side-effect of achieving the aim of her action.

A person in love with you is likely to be vulnerable to you, easy prey for your abuse and exploitation. Your first responsibility toward the person you have made fall in love with you is the responsibility not to take advantage of this person's special vulnerability to you. This responsibility is all the harder to deny because it does not require much effort on your part. You can just be -- gently -- honest about your feelings and then keep your distance. If you were rather active and deliberate in making the other fall in love with you, then you may in a sense be and/or feel responsible for her unhappiness. And this may seem to be a reason to show care and concern for the other, even at some cost to your own life and ambitions. But then you must also ask yourself whether you can be confident that you (of all people!) can make a real contribution toward helping the other get over the unhappy situation. Without such confidence, it may be best just to make do with the above simpler responsibilities:...

Yes, you do have a moral responsibility toward the apparent perpetrator. This responsibility results from two factors. First, what appears to you to be a criminal act in progress may not be one: perhaps these guys a filming a movie, practicing for a play, or just horsing around. Secondly, your response should be proportional to the threat to the crime victim as modified, perhaps, by the culpability of the offender. When you surprise a large man who is vigorously assaulting another with a knife, you have strong reason to believe that the danger to the victim is imminent and substantial; so a forceful response seems appropriate to reduce this danger, even if it risks harm to the assailant. On the other hand, when you surprise a teenager snatching a $10 bill from a shopper and turning for a quick get-away, you should not risk serious physical harm to the thief when the only danger you thereby reduce is the danger that the shopper will lose the $10. You should be especially reluctant to risk harm to the...

Yes, we ought to follow rules of logic, rules of scientific method, rules of rational choice, and rules of prudence, for example. Sure, we are often not doing anything unethical by violating such rules, so we may not have a moral reason to obey. But not all good reasons are moral reasons. And we typically have good non-moral reasons to follow rules like the ones mentioned above.

Your puzzlement seems to arise from the symmetry of the situation. One of you will die, each prefers his/her own survival to that of the other, and so on. Looking at it from an impartial standpoint, you see no good reason why either one of you should be preferred. But there is a good reason: the other one -- not you -- is the cause of the problem, the cause of the need for one of you to die. You have a plausible reason for using force against the other, a reason that she lacks. While you cannot survive without using force against her, she can survive (could have survived) without using force against you. To be sure, there are exceptional cases where the other must attack you to survive. She may be coerced by a third party aiming a gun at her, for example, or she may be unable to keep herself afloat without the only available life preserver which you are wearing and need just as urgently. And there are other exceptional cases where the other firmly believes -- falsely but on good grounds -- that...

Kant's contradiction in the will test suggests what you say it suggests only on the assumption that, as a rational agent, one necessarily wills one's own existence. Most human beings are happy to be alive, but it does not follow from this that any human (let alone any rational) being must will its own existence. Indeed, some philosophers have argued that, by giving birth to them, their parents violated their rights. So I think the best way to reject the Kantian argument you are suspicious about is to reject its premise that a rational being necessarily wills its own existence. Something Kant did think rational beings necessarily will is the continued existence of rational life. Using this premise instead, we might get a moral rule against abortion when the survival of the human race hangs in the balance. Suppose rational beings found themselves in a world where, if they all took themselves to be permitted to act on the maxim to have an abortion whenever doing so promises a more pleasant life,...

This is an interesting and difficult question. One might start with the presumption that a company's hiring may be conducted in whatever way its top officers deem most advantageous. Thus imagine a company that has two positions to fill and is considering four candidates. The hiring officers rank these candidates in the following order: Alice, Ben, Celia, David. So they would like to hire Alice and Ben. But unfortunately Alice is married to David, and she will decline unless David is also made an offer. So the hiring officers discuss whether the firm is better off with Alice and David or with Ben and Celia. They determine that the Alice-David combination is more advantageous, and so they promise Alice that, if she accepts, David will also be hired. Does Ben have a complaint in this case? I don't think so. It is true that, other things equal, he would add more value to the firm than David would. But other things are not equal: if Ben is hired over David, then Alice will decline; whereas if David is...

This is an important and difficult question. If we answer in the affirmative, then suspects are likely to know that they may be lied to by law enforcement agents. Still, they may nonetheless often be fooled or tripped up (they don't know when an officer is lying and when she is being truthful), and this in turn could lead to more convictions of guilty people which in turn would reduce recidivism and increase deterrence, thereby reducing the victimization of citizens by criminals. I would think that a practice of telling lies that may be helpful for finding the truth (e.g., by eliciting a full confession) is justifiable if the reduction in crime it engenders is sufficiently large -- and this is quite large. Such a practice should be carefully circumscribed and supervised to minimize harm and to suppress abuse. And the lies should be revealed to those who end up not being charged -- and revealed also to those who will be charged, and before their trial. Circumscription is important. Lies should...

Part of what makes it wrong to hit or torture people is surely that such behavior causes pain. It follows naturally that, when such conduct is wrong, it is more wrong when it inflicts more pain. An unprovoked slap on your thigh by a stranger is a lesser wrong than a full strength blow to your nose. By the same logic, it would seem to be less wrong to hit a stranger if you ensure (perhaps by first inviting him to a good glass of Scotch or through prior local anaesthesia) that he feels little or no pain. And it would then also seem less wrong if you hit his "bad" leg (where he has lost feeling after a botched appendicitis) rather than his "good" leg (which has normal pain sensitivity). This is easily extended to saying that it is less wrong to hit one stranger's "bad" leg than another stranger's "good" leg. And this in turn pretty much is the proposition you query: other things equal, a behavior is less wrong if it causes less pain. Of course, it does not follow that a behavior is not wrong if it...