With respect to your feeling guilty or not, my first response is that you need to find a way to evaluate the regard that you show or don't show for others in a more holistic and comprehensive way -- all things considered, and in light of whatever obligations you think you have to assist those who are less fortunate than you are, have you lived your life in a way that you believe fulfills the obligations to those who need the assistance of charity? No matter how you treat this individual purchase, if (1) you recognize that you have a substantive obligation to help others and (2) you believe that you are not living your life in a way that meets that obligation, then you will probably experience guilt or shame or other significant discord about the way you are living your life. But, of course, all this is mute on the question of whether you properly understand the obligations to those who are less fortunate -- if it turns out that your own feelings of guilt are unreliable guides, then in the worst case...

I don't know of any society where parents can teach their children whatever they want without regard to laws and social norms. With respect to laws, for example, a parent could not teach a child that it was okay to act out sexually in a way that the law would regard as involving incestuous sexual abuse. And, similarly, with respect to social norms I think that most people would say that parents have no right to teach their children a virulent racism that promoted the children to treat schoolmates horribly. Both of the examples I gave involved teaching extreme thought that led to unacceptable action, and these cases show that exist significant limitations to parents' rights to teach their children as they see fit. Are there cases where there are limits on what parents could teach their children to believe even when the children do not act on those beliefs? The incest case, I think, shows that there are strong social and perhaps legal limits on teaching "mere" thoughts -- the incest taboo is so strong...

I'm not sure exactly what sort of help you need to be able to answer yourquestion and, because your query reads like a course assignment, I'm alsounsure what kind of help I ought to give to you. Assuming you are a philosophystudent completing a course assignment, here is some general advice that mightbe useful to you. My advice comes in the form of questions that I might ask oneof my own students who felt stuck. First, which of these ethical theories interests you the most? For example,which one seems the most deeply insightful to you, which one seems the mostintellectually provocative or challenging, which ones seems the most difficultto understand (but worth the effort of working hard to do so)? Second, for the ethical theory you have selected what is the key idea orprinciple or test that determines whether or not the act of downloading youdescribe should be viewed as an ethical act? You'll need to identify thisaccurately and precisely, ideally by working with two or three "crucialquotes" from a...

I'm not sure how to answer your main question: It seems to me that to say that a statement is offensive is to say that people tend to be offended by it, and so I don't have a clear sense of how a statement could be "inherently offensive" if by that you mean assessed with no reference to individuals' dispositions to judge it offensive. A related question may be whether, as an empirical matter of fact, there are some statements that exist some statements are held to be defensive by an overhwelming majority of a given population in many contexts. Probably so, but even then I imagine that are few or no statement that offend all individuals in all communicative contexts. For example (and hopefully not to offend readers by this usage of the word), many statements using the word 'cunt' are extremely offensive and yet there are some usages of that word that many find empowering -- I have in mind, in particular, the popular monologue about "reclaiming 'cunt'" that has been included for many years in Eve...

Your question raises a number of really interesting issues. One of these is how to distinguish ethical questions from non-ethicsones. Could it be the case that your question about toplessness doesnot raise any moral issues at all and so isn't the sort of questionthat can be answered by appeal to ethics? You are right, of course,that questions of nudity strike an emotionally-charged nerve in ourculture. But does this necessarily mean that these responses are bestunderstood or assessed as ethical responses? For example, people in ourculture feel strongly about table manners but these seem to beculturally relative and more a matter of etiquette than morality. Arepeoples' positions about toplessness akin to those non-moral questionsof etiquette? If so, maybe it is wrong to seek a specifically ethicalassessment of the norms and conventions you wish to understand. Another important ethical issue arises no matter how you address theissue I just described: The ethical significance of the norms...

Parents certainly bear many moral obligations to their children, including obligations related to how the parents interact with each other. That said, I don't think that monogamy is morally required of married parents or other parents who live together in a sexual relationship. To the extent that an extramarital sexual relationship could be carried out entirely separate from the family -- and from family responsibilities -- it might be simply irrelevant to parenting. Perhaps many individuals do not have the skills or are not in a situation where to make that separation possible, but some parents may have those skills or be in that situation. Likewise, I suspect there are parents in loving relationships, and who are effective parents, have chosen to reject monogamy and who have also learned how to construct a good family life for themselves and for their children. For more on this, the discussion by the self-described "kinky" communities. So, monogamy may be a useful practice for many...

I don't have expert knowledge about the epistemic status of mathematical truths, but I can report on my intuition that it is perfectly clear that there could exist a society that genuinely believed that it was morally acceptable to torture innocents for pleasure but not at all clear that there could exist a society that genuinely believed that two plus four was equal to five. So, my sense is that the two claims you present have different statuses. Your question, however, is not about whether a society could treat that statement about the immorality of torture as false. And, likewise, your question is not about whether or not there exist specific moral beliefs or systems that endorse the truth of that statement. Instead, the heart of your question is the thought that there might exist "moral laws" that demonstrate that the statement condemning torture is necessarily true. About the notion that the universe functions according to moral laws, I would draw your attention to a recent discussion by the...

I agree with you that honesty in a relationship to preferable to deception, but I disagree with your suggestion that that chosing not to raise your disapproval of your boyfriend's actions amounts to a virtuous realism that acknowledges how hard it is for a committed couple to remain sexually faithful to each other. Louise's reflections on the complexity of human sexuality are excellent ones that should be of great use to you. I have three additional points to make: First, that you appreciate some of your boyfriend's actions (for example, his willingness to refrain from having sex with others when you are present) doesn't mean that you consent to his actions that you find problematical (for example, his willingess to have sex with others when you are absent). Second, that you cannot create an "abstract" argument objecting to your boyfriend's lack of sexual infidelity does not mean that you should not discuss with him what you expect in your relationship and how you experience his actions...

I'm not sure what you mean by "legitimate harm," but it strikes me that any failure to accord others the dignity they are due as human beings causes significant harm to oneself and to others. If you agree that racism is a failure to respect human dignity, you ought to recognize it as morally objectionable and ought work to correct that failure in your own life by, for example, striving to overcome the racist fears you describe.

I think it is extremely difficult to predict future happiness, andespecially so on the basis of expected family income -- human lives arecomplex, and that is a narrow and uncertain basis for prediction. So, Idon't have any philosophical insight about your question as it relatesto expected happiness of your future family members. Happily,however, the larger-scale question you raise is easier to answer:environmental ethicsists moved by insights from the deep ecologicalmovement have argued that humans have an ethical obligation to reducethe destructive impact of our species by limiting our populationgrowth. The destructive consequences of human existence are easier topredict than individual human happiness, and reflecting on the ethicalsignficance of that harm may give you a good reason to limit the numberof children that you create. A modest reaction would be todecide to have just one or two children; a stronger one would be todecide to adopt a child already born rather than creating a new one.Some...