I am not one who thinks that concentrated animal feed operations (CAFOs) and other practices of raising, killing, and eating non-human animals are justified. Where possible (and it's not for all human possible) veganism is morally preferable. Now, Jane Goodall isn't really a pain scientist, but I think most would agree with her that chimps feel pain, and as a philosopher I think sufficient pain to make it morally wrong to kill them for food (at least in painful ways) when there is no necessity in doing so. (I also resist the idea that they should be used in medical research.) I think pain a strong criterion for moral discrimination, but it does seem to become difficult to know where the experience of pain shades of into non-sentience. Insects, mollusks, single-cell or simple animals, plants, fungi. There are clear cases (like chimps) but also gray areas. Same with intelligence and also consciousness. I emphasize, again, that the existence of hard cases does nothing to undermine the clear ones. Now, if I...

In cases where the celebrity has intentionally established a false perception that was consciously used to leverage considerable benefits, especially financial benefits, the celebrity owes an apology, at least, to the public (perhaps also resigning from a position, perhaps returning goods). There's a kind of fraud in that. But the responsibility is limited for two reasons: (1) most people commonly try to present themselves in an optimal way and (2) everyone understands that. The point at which legitimate grooming shades into fraudulent deception can be difficult, but those with experienced judgment in the relevant contexts are best suited to draw the line. Neither the public nor the media have the right to examine anyone's private life, and that includes the private lives of celebrities. Except when special circumstances prohibit it (say teacher-student relationships), people do have a right to criticize others and even to expose others when the information about those matters exposed was obtained in...

Like your friend, the German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant in “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy” argued that it's categorically wrong to lie, even to a murderer at the door looking for someone inside. Like you, however, I think he's obviously mistaken. It would to my mind obviously be permissible to lie to Nazis at the door looking for Anne Frank, and similarly lying to slave catchers hunting people who had escaped enslavement. There also seem to be harmless, trivial, but nonetheless beneficial lies--call them lies of kindness and social lubrication, just the the sort you mention, for example. Similarly: "So nice to meet you"; and "I'm fine," certainly. Friedrich Nietzsche in a grander but not unrelated way describes in "The Birth of Tragedy" how one of the functions of art is to mask, even lie, to us about the horrifying truths about reality. Elsewhere he maintains that concepts are always bound up with at least poetic lies as well as lies maintaining power relations (an idea later...

Yes, a reviewer has an ethical responsibility to authors to give a fair and just review, and a similar obligation to the readers as well. The author may have money, a job, happiness, and reputation at stake in the review, and so an unfair and inaccurate review can wrongly harm the author. Readers, however, have an interest in allocating the finite time and other resources of their lives well, and there are opportunity costs to reading one book when others would serve their interests better. So, an unfair and inaccurate review can harm readers, too.

I think you're onto a profoundly important question, and I share your concern that the issue is not commonly one encounters in public discourses. I think the issue of having children is, as you say, bound up with concerns about prioritizing existing needs and also about the environmental consequences of additional pollution, consumption, habitat loss, etc. I think the issue, however, concerns both the more developed and the less developed world. The impacts from reproduction in each are different, but those impacts in both are substantial. Currently the levels of consumption in the less developed world are low, but we can't demand that populations remain impoverished. Moreover, populations in the less developed world are despite low individual levels of consumption nevertheless collectively exerting enormous pressures on non-human populations through their effects on water, habitat, and pollution. It is clearly, then, not morally unproblematic to reproduce under current circumstances for any of us. There,...

I'm inclined to think your psychological account of the response is correct, though perhaps incomplete. I also think the intensity of the fury against the leaks indicates the extent to which the government and many citizens have internalized institutional authority as normal and overriding, that both the government and many citizens have lost touch with other, competing, and sometimes more important sources of authority and obligation. The authorities have reacted hysterically because they find intolerable the idea that people might act upon other grounds and find themselves compelled by duties that the authorities don't define. They are not only upset with these leaks, but they fear that these leaks may inspire others. The policies of the state, however, are not always congruent (and are often not congruent) with the interests of the nation, or with what is morally right. So far, Wikileaks has no demonstrable blood on its hands. If it had, the specifics would be broadcast on FOX 24/7. Defense...

For myself, I doubt there are unconditional oughts. Your book seems to have been informed by a specific kind of ethics associated with the work of Immanuel Kant, among others. For Kant there are two kinds of imperatives. One kind, called "hypothetical" imperatives are the sort where what one ought to do depends on a condition being met. They usually take the form of "If you want X, then do Y." Or "If you don't want X, then don't do Y," and so on. For Kant, these are really moral "oughts" since they depend out our desires. In cases like this one acts in order to satisfy one's self, to answer one's desires, not because the action is the moral thing to do. In such cases we are slaves to our desires and acting more or less selfishly. Often, in fact, what's the morally proper thing to do, according to this line of thinking, is to oppose our desires or even do what we don't desire. If I find money, I might desire to keep it, but the morally right thing is to return the cash. So, what your book is saying is...

I agree that all other things being equal, carnivorous diets are morally inferior to vegetarian diets. Those who defend carnivorous diets, however, would cite qualifying conditions of the sort you're asking about such as the following: (a) the limited cognitive capacities of those eaten and/or their limited capacities to engage in the sort of "projects" that indicate moral standing; (b) the absence of suitable alternatives to meat; © conditions that render your second premise (that eating animals causes great suffering) false or at least weak. To elaborate: while animals like cattle and birds may have highly developed capacities to experience pain, the case is less clear with, say, oysters and squid, perhaps other fish; even plants exhibit "distress" when harvested. In short, the line is difficult to draw with regard to the experience of pain, let alone pain itself. Here empirical science is likely to improve our understanding of pain and the experience of pain. Nevertheless, the ability to suffer is...

There is, of course, the genetic issue. So, sexual relations between close relatives that lead to procreation are unwise. Incestuous relations with one's underaged children are, of course, by definition non-consensual. One also finds the same argument that is deployed against homosexual marriage used to justify incest prohibitions, namely that incest would undermine the institution of marriage, and that the institutions of heterosexual, non-incestuous family and marriage possess value that trumps the value of legitimating incestuous as well as homosexual unions. Many have come to think that it is false that homosexual marriages would undermine the institutions of marriage and family. That's an empirical question rather than a philosophical question, and I tend to think the reformers are correct an that family and marriage will in fact flourish when homosexuals are included. Some think undermining the institution of marriage may be a good thing. For myself, I think marriage has value, but I also think...

I think I see what you mean. But if I do, then the phrase "arbitrary for humans" is not exactly the way to pose your question. Humans aren't really making the choice in your scenario. So, the choice is neither arbitrary nor non-arbitrary for them. I think you might rather mean something like: Would God's arbitrarily commanding any conduct provide sufficient grounds for humans to regard that conduct as good? My sense is that the qualities of a lot of religious faith lead people to answer in the affirmative. In particular, for the faithful it's likely to be almost inconceivable to defy God's command on grounds that what's commanded seems immoral from a merely human point of view. The story of Abraham and Isaac exemplifies just this sort tendency in faith. The problem is that it seems to many at least as intolerable to accept that stealing, rape, mass murder, etc. could ever be acceptable. For example, many will find it intolerable to honor a command to torture, molest, mutilate, and kill innocent children-...