ask a question

recent responses

all topics

info

⚲

Ethics

Is it wrong to secretly feel that an acquaintance is acting hypocritically and making stupid decisions, but to just smile and nod when they talk, and not tell them what you really think? Or...worded differently... Is it wrong to feel internally that you just plain don't LIKE someone -- their morals, their behavior, their attitude, their actions --- but you don't tell them, and you allow them to think that you are their friend? (You do this partly because you are afraid to tell someone to "go away", and you hope over time that they will just drift away from you, without you having to do the ugly job of telling them to go away. You also do it partly because this person, although morally repugnant, is somewhat entertaining and makes fun stories to tell your spouse later on.)

Honesty about such things is essential to a friendship of any substance. However, there are different kinds or degrees of friendship. If the person is, as you say, an "acquaintance" (say, someone who you run into occasionally or you see on and off at work), where there is no assumption of openness or intimacy regarding one's thoughts, feelings, values, etc., having a polite conversation or trading stories without revealing your feelings about him is probably unobjectionable. But if he mistakenly thinks that there is more to your relationship, that you are a real friend who respects and cares for him, I think that it would be wrong to continue without being honest about the relationship and your differences. Also, insofar as you have moral disagreements with him, the seriousness of the matters at issue may be relevant to what you do. For example, if you know he exaggerates on dates about his golf handicap, it's not clear that you have to confront him about this. But if you laugh at his racist jokes and...
Ethics

Is there a clear-cut distinction between morality and ethics, or is the distinction to be found largely in linguistic usage? For example, immoral behaviour suggests behaviour that breaks some socially accepted code, but so does unethical behaviour. However, in the latter case, the code may be less widely applicable, such as a journalistic code of ethics. Or is it that morality has, at its base, religious belief, while ethics need not necessarily have that, but is more secular? Andrew Taylor

There have been philosophers who distinguish between morality and ethics in one or another way, but I don't think that there is an agreed upon distinction among philosophers today. Most use the terms interchangeably.
Ethics
Medicine

Is it actually ethical for medical science to try to develop cures for all diseases? Isn't disease helping to keep our population in check? If our population grows too much and depletes our resources, wouldn't wars over resources be the greater harm incurred?

If humans continue to reproduce at current rates, there is good reason for thinking that population growth will eventually be (if it already isn't) harmful to the well-being of humans and non-humans (though not only because of possible resource wars--there may be other harms related to unchecked population growth besides these, e.g., increased suffering due to malnutrition, crowding, pollution, habitat destruction, etc.) However, there is little reason for thinking that stopping the curing (or preventing) of diseases by medical science is the only or the most morally attractive way of limiting population growth and avoiding problems due to such growth. Many humans already limit population growth quite safely and effectively through various methods of birth control. Improvements in education, increased access to birth control and family planning services, and changes in incentives for having large families, can provide more morally attractive ways to avoid harms due to population growth.
Ethics
Suicide

I often find myself in a position where I realize that taking my own life would be very easy. Suppose I am about to cross the street, or am rock climbing; how simple and quick it would be to take one step, just one step, in front of a car or off a cliff. In all likelihood I wouldn't even feel any pain. In this way there seem many scenarios wherein the effective "barrier" to suicide seems practically nonexistent. I must stress: my contemplation of suicide in such instances has nothing to do with depression or even emotion, nor do I mean to make light of those who suffer from such grief; rather, I find the extreme ease with which I may conceptually commit catastrophic acts somewhat counter-intuitive. After all, what is there, really, to dissuade me? Suppose that I am an atheist. what rationale exists that might prevent me from killing myself? For one who is certain (1) that there exists no afterlife, and, further, (2) that there is no consciousness after death (i.e., I won't "miss" anything of life or...

Given your assumptions that there is no afterlife or consciousness after death, I can think of two kinds of reasons not to commit suicide (though these needn't decide against suicide in all cases): (1) Moral reasons: Killing yourself may result in harm to others (e.g., to one's dependents, or to the truck driver who is traumatized by killing you), and we sometimes have obligations not to impose such costs on others. The fact that you won't be around after your death doesn't mean that it wouldn't be wrong for you to impose such costs. (Similar issues arise with respect to environmental problems that we create that will affect future generations.) (2) Self-interested reasons: Even though you won't be around after your suicide, there may be a sense in which your life would be better for you if you decide not to kill yourself. If we compare the two lives (the one you live by killing yourself now versus the one you would have lived had you not killed yourself now), it could turn out that not killing yourself...
Ethics

Why is it considered unethical for a doctor to have a relationship with a patient? I was wondering this after viewing "The Sopranos" and looking at how Dr. Melfi rebuffs Tony Soprano's attempts at courtship due to their previous doctor-patient relationship.

I don't know what the details of the plot are at this point in the Sopranos,but I can't resist asking: If you were Dr. Melfi, would you want to bein a romantic relationship with Tony? In a more serious vein, what ismorally problematic about a romantic relationship between doctors andpatients (and therapists and clients, as well as various otherprofessional-client relationships) is that the doctor has professionalduties to the patient that may be inappropriately affected by aromantic relationship, and that the doctors may be in a position toinappropriately influence or manipulate the patient within theirpersonal relationship as a result of the knowledge or power they haveas the patient's doctor. Thus, there may be moral conflicts between theduties one has as doctor and as a lover. (Similar considerations mayapply regarding doctors and their family members or close friends.) Itmay be that in individual cases a romantic relationship won't in facthave undesirable consequences regarding one's duties. However,...
War

Is it better overall to have a country in which most people are firmly convinced that engaging in warfare is never morally permissible, or to have a country in which people believe that engaging in warfare can sometimes be moral? The second alternative has considerable initial plausibility to my mind and certainly seems to be the more popular one by a wide margin, but I've found that the people whom I otherwise respect most for their intellectual abilities tend to believe the former. So I wonder.

There surely are intelligent and morally thoughtful individuals who are pacifists and believe that going to war is always morally unjustified, However, I think that this view is ultimately morally unacceptable. I believe that there can be circumstances where going to war would be morally justified, for example, cases of collective self-defense. If one political community is unjustly attacked by another, people can be morally justified in defending themselves against attack by going to war against their attacker. This needn't mean that going to war whenever one is attacked would be morally justified. There may be cases where the moral costs of self-defense are too high and, thus, would not be justified. But this doesn't count against there being at least some cases of going to war in self-defense being morally justified.