The more drunk a person is, the more his responsibility for what he decides to do diminishes -- and when the person is really extremely drunk, he may not be capable of decisions and not at all responsible for the movements of his body). Even if this is conceded, it does not follow that a drunk driver is not to blame. The reason is that this persons can take reasonable steps while he is sober to prevent himself from driving drunk. He can refrain from getting drunk, he can leave his car at home, he can give his car key to a dedicated driver (whom he can trust to keep her commitment not to drink), he can rent a hotel room near the place where he'll drink, and so on. By doing none of these things, the person is culpably (in a state where he is fully responsible for his decisions) causing a substantial risk to others: the risk that he will end up driving drunk in a state of diminished responsibility.

The claim that a deceased person has no use for her organs, that the integrity of her body after her death is of no importance to her, is a claim that many dispute, typically in the context of some religious beliefs or others. It seems best for the state to avoid policies that some citizens find offensive on the basis of religious beliefs which the state is in no position to refute. Fortunately, we can avoid such policies in this case: by making organ donations opt-out, as you suggest, we'd have all the organs we might need. The reason against this which you cite ("They're my organs and nobody else gets to decide what to do with them") is not a good reason against the opt-out solution. Yes, they are her organs and she alone gets to decide what to do with them -- but we still need to have a fall-back default for those cases in which a person dies without leaving clear instructions. Here any default society might settle upon is in the same boat, e.g. subject to the objection that it may not be...

Funny you should ask -- there's a doctoral dissertation now being written on exactly this question (I am marginally involved in its supervision). The student essentially argues for the conclusion you suggest, claiming that, in the world as it is, those who decide to have children at all ought to adopt rather than conceive. Adoption confers a huge benefit on a child who would otherwise grow up under conditions of institutionalization and deprivation (for example, in an ophanage in Cambodia or Niger). And adoption does not take away a benefit from anyone: the person one would have conceived will simply never exist. There's no stance of the academic community on this issue, yet. Time will tell whether the student's view will be widely accepted or rejected. It's bound to stimulate discussion if only because most affluent people believe that they have every right -- not just legally, but also morally -- to conceive if they wish. The student's thesis might be opposed on behalf of the people who, if...

If one is innocently unaware that one has a communicable medical condition, then this would be a plausible excuse (here by "innocently" I mean to exclude cases where one has recklessly ignored obvious symptoms). Another excuse might be that the communicable condition is very minor (which I believe herpes is not) -- a slight itch that disappears naturally and permanently after a few hours, for example. The fact that the other person hasn't asked might be an excuse in a social environment in which only very few are uninfected and in which everyone takes for granted that those they interact with already have the disease ("how could I possibly have known that you are one of the 0.1% of uninfected people; you should have told me this, at least if you wanted to remain uninfected!"). This is obviously not the environment we're in. Being romantically involved goes along with an expectation of love or at least care and concern for one's partner. Given this cultural context -- which may not exist...

We should distinguish the questions (i) whether someone contributes to a bad event and (ii) whether she is blameworthy on account of this contribution (that is, shares blame for the bad event). In your two analogies (supplying nuclear weapons to terrorists and wearing a "hate blacks" T-shirt) the agent contributes causally and also is blameworthy. (Note that any blame we assign to an enabler or encourager or any other kind of causal contributor need not diminish in any way the blameworthiness of the perpetrator.) But in many other cases, the two questions have different answers. Here's an example: someone threatens credibly that s/he will burn down your house unless you marry her/him; you turn down this person, and s/he does burn down your house. Here your refusal of the marriage proposal was a crucial causal contributor to the bad event, but you are not to blame. You're not morally required to marry someone to keep her/him from burning down a house. Similarly with the way women dress. Even if the...

There are some technical issues with your formula. You need to decide whether you want to understand L as a constant (80 years), thus assigning equal value to each year of human life, or whether you want to understand L as a variable that varies from person to person, thus assigning greater value to life years of persons whose lives are short. There are plausible arguments on both sides. You might also rethink your reliance on percentage increase in the goodness of a person's life/time. Do you conceive of goodness as being always a positive number? And do you assume there to be some upper bound such that goodness can vary, say, between zero and one? Assuming all this, your formula is prioritarian: you give greater weight to those who are worse off. Thus, according to your formula, getting someone from 0.01 to o.11 is 50 times more valuable than getting someone else from 0.5 to 0.6 (+1000 percent versus +20 percent). Prioritarians often use a different formula, measuring down from the top or from...

You seem to be assuming that the only bad thing about pain is that it will be remembered. But is this right? I think not. One way to argue against the assumption is by analogy: if the assumption were correct, then presumably the only bad thing about memories of pain would be that they will be remembered. And so on up. So long as all sentient beings die eventually, there would then be nothing bad (or good?) about their experiences because all memory of them would eventually disappear. Rejecting what you assume, we would say that pain itself is also distressing and therefore bad. In fact, without that distress of pain itself it's hard to understand why memories of pain should be distressing. If pain itself is distressing and bad, then it makes sense to avoid and alleviate pain. And this is in fact what we routinely do when we offer palliative care to a patient who would otherwise die in great pain. The case of the animals you describe is essentially similar. Just as it is less bad if the...

There is a difference here between what you are legally entitled to claim and the loss you have actually incurred. You believe that it is permissible to claim the former, larger amount. Your wife believes that you should claim no more than the latter, smaller amount. Suppose the difference would only affect the other policy holders through an adjustment of their future premiums. Would you then have an obligation to ask for less as your wife suggests? I think this depends on the prevailing habits and practices among those who would benefit: how are they disposed to act in a case like yours? In the urban world of the East Coast I am familiar with, nearly all those buying insurance would claim no less than they are legally entitled to claim. If this is the prevailing attitude and disposition among the policy holders in your insurance as well, then it is factored into the prices of policies. So you have all along been paying premiums priced to cover people claiming what they are legally entitled to...

I don't think there can be a general answer to this question. Despite your singular ("the person") you are talking about very large sets of decisions, and it just isn't the case that all decisions in one set are better than all decisions in the other. You are certainly right that both factors (lack of practical experience and personal interest) can lead to poor judgments. Fortunately, it is possible to avoid both simultaneously, for example by getting well acquainted with a problem, with the people who deal with it, and with the larger context in which it arises. For example, rather than trying to solve medical ethics dilemmas from your desk in a philosophy department, you can also try to address them after talking with doctors, nurses, patients and their relatives, and perhaps after understanding a lot about relevant medical technologies, treatments, and the operation of hospitals.

Just to clarify terminology. I would understand an empirical theory of ethics as one that explains the activities of a group of ethicists. An empirical theory of descriptive ethics would seek to explain the activities of those who describe ethical beliefs and practices; and an empirical theory of normative ethics would seek to explain the activities of those who justify or challenge ethical beliefs and practices. An empirical theory of normative ethics would not itself seek to justify or challenge normative-ethical propositions. Leaving terminology aside, I think what you mean to ask is whether an empirical account of how human beings behave has normative implications. In response, I would certainly agree that it does not follow from the fact that human beings tend to behave in certain ways that they ought to do so. Still, I would not think that empirical knowledge about human beings is normatively irrelevant. Two examples. If a morality is too complicated for human beings to understand or to...