I'd like to add to what Professor George has said. A year ago, I led an overseas study program from my college to East Africa, and saw first-hand how not everyone has the kinds of choices we enjoy about nutrition. But this observation also raises questions about what kinds of moral considerations "trump" others (and why, or on what ethical grounds), and whether or not those who don't have our choices are forced at best to choose between evils (and thus cannot really choose the good in their lives). The fact that animals can suffer is clearly morally relevant. But I am not at all confident that this is the only morally relevant consideration in this or any other moral judgment--plainly, the fact that they suffer does not seem to be decisive evidence for the claim that no one should ever eat them, or we would condemn even those who do so because they have to. So, at best, the fact that animals suffer is what philosophers call a prima facie ground for not willingly causing them to suffer. ...

Your reasoning is very clever, and actually enjoys a significant history in philosophy--and also has several philosophers even today persuaded. So you're in good company. Despite the cleverness, however, I am not persuaded that your reasoning is actually correct. The issue gets into some technical issues involving what is known as modal logic (the logic of possibility and necessity), but I think I might be able to explain why I am not persuaded by your argument in an intuitive way. Consider: what would show that you did not have free will regarding the cereal would be evidence that you could not do otherwise than what God knows you will do. God's knowing what you will do, however, only seems to show that you will not do otherwise--it doesn't show that you cannot or could not do otherwise. There are plenty of things that are the way they are, but could be otherwise . So similarly, from the fact that God's knowledge of the future would settle the question of how things ...

Not all philosophy begins as a search for a/the good life, though I suppose our interest in a/the good life may nonetheless play some role. As Aristotle says (in the beginning of his Metaphysics ), philosophy begins in wonder--and we can wonder about nearly anything. I certainly don't think that non-philosophers will automatically do a bad job of thinking about this subject--or even at achieving some semblance of a good life. Philosophers are smart people--but smart people can sometimes "outsmart" themselves by becoming enamored of their own thoughts to such a degree that they get devoted to their own errors. Granting this, however, philosophers who do think about this question (a central theme in ancient Greek philosophy, by the way) derive some real advantage from their learning. Part of what we do, as philosophers, is devote lots of time and energy thinking about what other smart people have said on the issues that interest us. So, we have the advantage of constant contact (through...

Your question seems to presuppose that love is the only reason to be in a marriage. It may be the main reason that one gets married, but I think that the kind of companionship and interconnection that married couples can generate, as a result of living together and sharing lives for so long, can become very important (not to mention the family relations that entangle, as well--for example, with children and in-laws). Perhaps what I am trying to say might be put another way: I think that "love" comes in many "flavors," and it is certainly conceivable that the "flavor" that led a couple to get married might fade completely, while being replaced by one or more other "flavors" that serve equally well to preserve the relationship in a valuable way. If a couple finds that there comes to be no love of any kind--or worse--then I can certainly see why it would make good sense for them to divorce. Given the social and economic realities of our world, other considerations apply here, as...

What you propose is a start, but not yet a "reliable base," as you put it. Problems lurk here: Just "furthering humanity" may in the long run actually lead our own species (and many others) into extinction--especially given our proven propensity to gooble up the earth's resources and spew out pollutants at great cost to the environment. At a certain point (and I am not sure we are not already there--indeed, I am inclined to think we are already there), I think humanity needs to consider making some fairly extensive concessions to ceasing our aggressions against other species and the environment even if doing so comes at a substantial cost to our present well-being. Moreover, many ethical problems derive from our need to make judgments that require us to provide advantages to some, but not all human beings. For example, money that I spend on my children's education could also be spent on relieving hunger or for that matter on educating others--including others whose aptitude and...

I stuck my neck out on another question like this, so I suppose I should go ahead and compound my earlier error by responding to this one, too. I really think that the ethics of having children is more complicated than your examples make it. Each example seems to give a reason not to have children--or at least not to have them as long as the reason continues to apply (for example, one would hope the alcoholic would dry up first, and then reconsider having kids). But a single such reason, it seems to me, does not necessarily rise to the point of duty . If considerations of initial conditions worked this straightforwardly, then most people would have a duty not to have children, because most people would find they have one or more failings that could (or even certainly would) have adverse effects on their ability to raise children. Consider: Are wealthy people the only ones who have the right to reproduce? Does poverty leave one with the duty not to reproduce? I think that...

That will really depend, won't it, on what you take the standards of knowledge to require. If by "knowledge" you require certainty (as what are called "infallibilists" require), I think you will find that human beings are capable of precious little in the way of knowledge. On the other hand, if you think that knowing something is compatible with fallibility (as "fallibilists" claim), then I don't see why social relations and social environments are not areas in which we can have knowledge. Even if we are fallibilists, however, I think it is reasonable to suppose that knowledge of some subjects might be difficult to achieve, might take substantial study and observation, and so on. In terms of what falls under "social relations," I think it will be easier to know that Jones is my student, for example, than that Jones is my friend. Here's something I know about this subject: It is very difficult to know that a given person is my One True Love!

Two answers come to mind: (1) If we grant that mathematics is known with certainty, I think the same can be made for the laws of logic--for example, if P, then P... or either P or not-P. (2) I can think of some reasons for supposing that even mathematical truths and the laws of logic aren't known with certainty. For one thing, axiomatized systems of reasoning (such as the logic and mathematics) are able to undergo modification, as a result of new discoveries--for example, the Euclidean axiom that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line is not an axiom in Eisteinian geometry (since gravity wells curve space). For another thing, I don't think we can automatically infer, from the fact that we find it impossible to imagine the falsity of something, that our beliefs about that subject must be true. Why couldn't we be so bad off that we are incapable of imagining what's true, and capable only of imagining some falsehood as truth? Descartes takes this issue up in his ...

I certainly do not think that our only view of reality can be via experience by our own physical senses. Human beings are magnificently complicated cognitive beings, capable of using not just our immediate senses, but also memory, interpersonal communication, abstract reasoning, and other processes by which to form beliefs. Of course, some of these are more reliable than others: wishful thinking is highly unreliable; vision is much more reliable. But the use of expert testimony--especially when corroborated by other kinds of evidence (as for example, regarding the Taj Mahal, where you can also find photographs of it, accounts of it in narratives, etc.) can also be highly reliable--otherwise, most of us wouldn't read newspapers, right? So, I think my answer to your (1) should be clear--I think you can have very reasonable beliefs about the existence of the Taj Mahal even though you have never actually visited it. Indeed, some of those very reasonable beliefs might lead you to decide to visit...

Questions like these prove to be either especially difficult...or so easy that one suspects one hasn't understood the question. On the "easy" side, plainly most of us can tell the difference most of the time, and there do seem to be fairly reliable morphological and biological indicators or sex. Similarly "easy" to notice are the differences between the sexes that are recognized within social and cultural contexts--though these plainly differ widely from culture to culture. Given the "easy" aspects of the question, one might be seduced into thinking that such obvious observations are adequate to answer the question...but I suspect they are not, and may even be misleading. I have several problems in mind here: (1) Just how much can we infer about the appropriateness or justice of social recognitions and restrictions that are based upon differences between the sexes, from observable biological differences? As a general rule, I think people have thought there was much more we could infer...