ask a question

recent responses

all topics

info

⚲

Ethics
Law
Race

Is racial profiling immoral because it is ineffective? For instance, would the racial profiling of blacks become increasingly justifiable if blacks increasingly became criminals?

I've argued for an affirmative answer in my response to question 2466. This appears also to be the view of Joseph Levine (response to question 2535). If these earlier responses leave you unsatisfied, then please write in again and say what these reasons are.
Ethics
Freedom
Perception

Can our social perceptions or cognition be subject to ethical judgement? I am thinking of a particular case here; let's assume, for instance, that in a certain country black people are extremely negatively portrayed by the media, in a stereotypical way. If somebody sees a perfectly innocent black person who has never done him harm, but because of widespread stereotyping sees him as dislikeable/dangerous/guilty, can we argue that he is morally responsible/guilty for such perceptions? Is the act of perceiving an innocent person as guilty immoral or, in terms of virtue ethics, unfair? What I'm wondering here especially is: since we can only be morally responsible for what is within our control, do we have enough control over our perceptions to consider them subject of moral judgement?

What's outside the agent's control is, I think, somewhat narrower than what you call "perceptions or cognition." Suppose new DNA evidence reveals that a black man on death row is actually innocent. And suppose the jurors who declared him guilty say that they couldn't help seeing him as guilty when he was brought before them. I think we should be most reluctant to accept this excuse. Perhaps they could not have avoided a certain negative emotional rection to the accused (given the racism of their society and upbringing). But perceiving a person as guilty (of some crime) involves a good bit of judgment on the basis of testimony and other evidence. And here we can examine whether the jurors weighed the evidence carefully, deliberated thoroughly, and so on. As a juror one is not bound to let one's emotional reactions prevail. One can, and one ought to, try one's utmost to put these reactions aside and to judge the case on the basis of the evidence alone. Now let's look at the narrower question whether...
Ethics
Justice
War

Why is the use of police force justifiable to stop the attempted murder of a neighbor, but military force unjustifiable when used to stop the attempted murders of civilians in other countries who peacefully advocate for human rights (speech, assembly, voting, etc.)?

There are various potentially relevant differences. First, interventions abroad are often more likely to be counterproductive. The foreign government committing or condoning the human rights violations may be so powerful that the attempt to stop it will cause much more death and destruction than is now occurring. By contrast, we can bring overwhelming force to bear domestically and thereby crush even well-armed crime gangs.Second, internationally we do not have unique authority to judge and to act. We are just one of many similarly placed agents possibly able to do something. These agents (the governments of powerful states) are likely to see things differently -- e.g. may support different factions in a country that's facing a violent power struggle. For example, some potential interveners may believe that the Sri Lankan all-out assault upon the Tamil Tigers was a crime that had to be stopped (because so many civilians were also hurt and killed). Other potential interveners may believe that the assault...
Ethics

My question has to do with why we attribute differing levels of blame for equivalent actions that produce different outcomes. For example, why does attempted murder go along with a much lesser sentence than actual murder. If I try my hardest to kill you and you get away, how is that action less punishable than if I was sucessful? Another example would be drunk driving. Consider three drivers driving home after one too many drinks: One arrives home safely. Although there is a spectrum on this issue, most will consider this a minor offense. The next driver was pulled over and arrested. He goes to jail and is considered by most to be a criminal. The last driver hits and kills a pedestrian and is charged with Vehicular Homicide. When he eventually gets out of jail, this person is a pariah. Given that these three drivers had the same number of drinks in the same amount of time, how are any of these three situations different? From a judicial standpoint I can see an argument for the differing levels...

May I refer you to earlier discussion of this issue under questions 348 and 897 ? If you don't feel satisfied with the answers there, do feel free to ask a more specific further question.
Ethics

Is it unethical to work in intelligence, as say, a spy, where one's job might involve lying to others, listening to others' conversations, and in general, misleading people?

Such work is surely often unethical or downright wrong -- for the reasons you suggest and also for the additional reason that such work may well be used by others to commit great crimes (e.g., to single out for torturous interrogation French citizens suspected of having ties to the Résistance). But your question, I think, is whether such work is unethical, or wrong in itself. To this my answer is no , for two separate reasons. One reason derives from what I call the "sucker exemption": in some cases, ordinary moral constraints on one's conduct toward others are weakened or canceled by how these others are behaving or have behaved. If you have various agreements with another person, for instance, and he turns out routinely to violate these agreements whenever it suits him, then you are not morally required to honour your agreements with him when it does not suit you. Similarly here, it may not be wrong to spy on spies or, more generally on people who themselves flout serious moral constraints. I...
Ethics
Science

I'm a scientist. The results of my research may generate technologies that could potentially be used in both and offensive and defensive military applications. These same technologies could potentially help people as well. Here are two examples: (1) My work could potentially create odor-sensing devices to target "enemies" and blow them up, but the same work could aid land-mine detection and removal. (2) My work could help build warrior robots, but it could also help build better prosthetics for amputees. For any given project, I have to decide which agency(ies) my lab will take money from. I do not want to decide based on the name of the agency alone: DARPA has funded projects that helped amputees and killed no one, while I would bet (but do not know for sure) that some work sponsored by the NSF has ultimately been used in military operations. So I'd like to base my decision on something more than the agency acronym. How can I start to get my head around this? What sorts of questions should I...

Adding to Professor Solomon's good points: One question that you seem not to be raising, but should, is whether research is alright when it does more good than harm. This cannot be universally correct. Think of the Tuskegee experiments. Or think of the horrific experiments German and Japanese doctors conducted on prisoners. The latter experiements apparently yielded very useful results -- so useful that the US offered immunity to doctors willing to share their knowledge and know-how. Still, participation in such experiments is generally wrong even if, in the long run, the benefits outweigh the harms. Philosophers have discussed these issues -- often in the context of criticizing or defending utilitarianism (or, more broadly, consequentialism) -- under two headings (which will enable you to retrieve relevant literature). They have debated whether negative duties (not to harm) have greater weight than positive duties (to help or benefit). And they have debated whether harms that are intended ...
Death
Ethics
Sex

Is, say, necrophilia ethically wrong? Arguably the ultimate societal taboo, necrophilia is something which the vast majority of people -- myself included -- consider disturbing and repulsive. It seems, however, that if we deem it morally objectionable we are left in a precarious situation, as we are forced to acknowledge that certain sexual behaviors without victims are wrong in and of themselves. If we accept this fact, what's to stop a person from deeming gay marriage wrong on the same grounds? Where could we possibly draw the line? Having read some of the responses posted on this site, I have recently accepted the position that a person can be harmed even after their death. So, when I am speaking of necrophilia here, let's assume the person gave their consent before dying.

We might think of this on three levels. First, is it permissible for a liberal state to outlaw necrophilia? The argument for an affirmative answer could appeal to various public health reasons as well as to the fact that this practice may give considerable offense to others even while the cost of abstention is relatively small and borne only by a few. This argument might run roughly parallel to that justifying the permissibility of outlawing nudity or defecation in public places. The case of gay relationships is substantially different for two reasons: the cost to gay people of not having the opportunity of a romantically fulfilling and socially recognized relationship is enormous and, with roughly three percent of all people being gay, the number of people who would be (and have been) bearing this cost is substantial. Second, is there something ethically wrong with practicing necrophelia? Taking ethics in the broad sense, its concern is the good life for human beings. A good life centrally...
Ethics

If someone who has been a high achiever, who has earned respect for work done in, say, a creative field, most explicitly forbids the writing of a biography, is anyone entitled to ignore this stated position and write the book anyway? Assuming the subject is no longer living, should friends and associates supply what they know of the life lived and its effect on the work done? And what if someone who believes the original request should be respected, accidentally comes into possession of information which would influence ... or at least colour the finished account? Should this person, in the interest of a balanced account, divulge what has been learned? This is assuming that the second person has already argued that the biography was not wanted by its subject, which probably would anyway be well known, and had the objection waved aside.

Legally, sure, others are entitled to write (non-libelously) about someone regardless of the latter's wishes. Morally, they ought to take these wishes into account; but how much they count for will depend on how these wishes were motivated and -- especially -- on the relationship the potential biographer had to the subject. To illustrate, potential biographers have less moral reason to respect the subject's wishes when these were motivated by the desire to conceal the subject's frequent encounters with child prostitutes in Cambodia than if they were motivated by the subject's desire to avoid the power of his or her work being diminished by simple-minded psychologizing. And potential biographers have much stronger moral reason to respect the wishes of their subjects if the deceased was a close friend (or even spouse) rather than a stranger. An exception to the responsibilities of friendship here are cases where the potential biographers made clear to their subject all along that they intended to write a...
Ethics
Logic

No matter whether one adopts a deontological or consequentialist account of ethics it is apparent that there exists a moral imperative to prevent genocide. To what extent and to what cost this imperative must motivate our actions is, I suppose, a subject of serious debate, however. But how can we define genocide? Surely we can all agree that the murder of 10,000,000 people constitutes genocide. But what if we subtract one fatality? Still genocide, of course. Minus one more? The same is still true. But at some point that logic fails; when we get down to the death of one, a few, or no people we certainly no longer have a case of genocide on our hands. It seems there is a sorites paradox here. If the number of people killed is ultimately arbitrary, how is the concept of genocide meaningful? Surely we can still find moral value in the deaths of millions (or even in the death of an individual), but it seems the label in itself is ultimately kind of subjective and meaningless.

The number of victims is not the only consideration entering into the judgments of whether a genocide is taking place. Other relevant factors are the nature and size of the victim group and the motivations and intentions of the perpetrators. Still, we can hold these other factors fixed and ask your question again, for example: hypothetically lowering the number of people killed, maimed, raped, and otherwise brutalized in the Rwanda genocide, when do we reach the point at which the genocide label would no longer be applicable? Or: at what time, in those horrible months of early 1994, did the daily decision of the world's leading governments not to intervene become a decision to ignore a genocide? You're right that there is some vagueness here. But this does not render the term meaningless. As Wittgenstein writes, there may be some unclarity about where exactly the boundary lies between two countries -- say between China and Russia -- but this does not entail that it's unclear on which side Beijing or...
Ethics

Richard Holloway, in 'Godless Morality', argues that "ritual practice" is not the same as "ethical principle." As an example, he argues that the practice of refraining from eating pork in Muslim and Jewish religious cultures is not per se an ethical action, merely the instantiation of an ethical principle which is keeping a promise to one's god. Thus, to eat pork, the ethical principle broken would be that of breaking a promise; the eating of pork itself would not be unethical, as the proscription of pork was merely a historical/sociological/anthropological/geographical accidentality. Clearly there are many ways to break a promise, but only one ethical principle for each 'set' of manifestations of it (following Holloway's theory). The above is, at any rate, the way I have tried to explain it to my grade 12 (last year of high school) Philosophy students. Does this explanation hold, and what are the problems with it? (I am presuming it is problematic because, although it appears convincing, I am still...

One distinction at work here is that between (as I would say) duties and obligations. We are subject to certain (general) duties regardless of circumstances, and we acquire (specific) obligations pursuant to such a duty in the presence of certain triggering conditions contained in this duty. To use the example you give: we have a duty to (try hard to) fulfill our promises, and therefore an obligation to (try hard to) abstain from pork if this is what we've promised. Or another example: I have a duty to rescue people from a serious emergency if I can do so safely, and therefore an obligation to save this child in danger of drowning in a shallow pond nearby. Now using this distinction, one may argue with Holloway that there is no duty to abstain from pork, only an obligation on the part of those who have made a promise to do so. But is this the correct reconstruction of what Muslims and Jews believe? If this were the correct reconstruction, then Muslims and Jews would have to believe either ...

Pages