We do have a lot in common psychologically, and all of that matters when we're trying to decide what's right and wrong. And the more we know about the psychological effects of how we treat people, the more information we'll have to feed into our ethical decisions. Psychologists have relevant things to say, as do doctors and, for that matter, economists, massage therapists, and various other specialists. Whether or not knowing everything about what makes people happy would settle all ethical questions, however, is another matter. (Not sure if you were suggesting it would.) For example: suppose that there are things that would make me happy at your expense. Most of us don't think it's just a matter of comparing the sum of my potential pleasure to the sum of your potential pain. Questions about fairness, for example, will also matter, and psychologists have no special expertise in sorting out what's fair. (Neither do most philosophers, for that matter.) There's also room to argue about...

Without discussing specific posts (though I dare say I'm one of the people who fit your bill), it might be something like this: just as some things are pretty clearly true or false, some things are pretty clearly right or wrong. And if the question posed is "first-level" -- i.e., one that asks about the rightness of wrongness of some particular act or policy, rather than raises the question of whether there's really any difference between right and wrong -- then there's not much point in pretending that something is unclear or up for grabs when it doesn't really seem to be. Suppose the question was whether it's okay for Robert Mugabe to run Zimbabwe the way he does, because after all, he has the power to do it, and perhaps might makes right. (Far as I know, no one has ever said that on this board...) I may not know what the best meta-ethical theory is, but if I have any moral knowledge at all, I know that what Mugabe is up to is wrong. So why shilly-shally? Indeed, it's tempting to to say that anyone...

Our department was having a meet-and-greet a few months ago. A man came up and said to me in a :you'd better get it right" tone of voice: "What is the difference between morality and ethics?" I told him that in my experience, philosophers don't make a sharp distinction in the way they use those words. I told him that some people seem to use the word "ethics" to talk about what we might call "descriptive morality" -- what people happen to think is right or wrong, and reserve the word "morality" for what really is right or wrong. But I reiterated that philosophers don't seem too worried about which word we use for what. He told me I was wrong. The occasion called for stifling the urge to say "Then why the h*ll did you ask if you already know the answer?" and I behaved myself. But I never did figure out what he meant. My guess about the putdown you describe is that it has to do with a curious association: in certain circles, there's a tendency to think of sex when the word "morality" comes up....

I've been mulling over your question for a while, and I'm of various minds about what to say. On the one hand, there's an interesting issue here. Sometimes we think of some people as less than fully human. We hold our usual attitudes in abeyance because we think that -- either temporarily or permanently -- they aren't fit subjects for, e.g., moral evaluation, rational criticism, or what have you. And as your remarks point out, sometimes this allows us to be more rather than less sympathetic to them. That raises some hard questions about when this sort of attitude is appropriate and about the moral costs of adopting it. That said, there's a lot more to being human than being clever, and some people of modest intellectual means have other gifts of empathy, or modesty, or perseverance or warmth... Furthermore, very clever people can have palpable character flaws. I haven't met you, and don't know you, but one might be forgiven for thinking from the tone of your remarks that you're perhaps a little...

There's clearly an enormous amount that could be said about this, but here are a few thoughts. Suppose that some person is suffering, and to avoid certain complications, suppose that there's no "cure" for their pain. Now suppose that the person actually wants us to take his life. (Imagine that he isn't in a position to do it himself.) Then it's not just obvious that it is wrong, all things considered, to kill him. That's why there's a serious debate about euthanasia. That said, there are important differences between typical human beings and most other animals: humans don't just have immediate desires and aversions; humans have self-concepts which include plans, desires and values that bear on their own futures. Most animals, or so we believe, don't have any such things. We normally think that people's views about their own futures count -- that it's wrong simply to ignore them. In particular, if someone is suffering but doesn't want to die, we think that carries tremendous weight. Most...

Right. Being wrong isn't the same thing as troubling the conscience. People can have troubled consciences when they needn't, and people can do awful things without a flicker of guilt. That said, it could be true (and seems at least somewhat plausible) that people's consciences are often reliable. We often do have pangs of conscience when we do something wrong, and sometimes bringing this reaction into awareness can be useful.

In many fields there are what some people call lumpers and splitters. Douglas has given a splendid answer that reflects a lumper/unifier/hedgehog perspective. Here's a rather different take, from a splitter/diversifier/fox point of view. It's often held that ethical obligations trump all others. If something is right from a self-interested point of view, for example, but wrong ethically, then the ethical judgment wins. Another feature of ethical judgments (though not unique to them) is that ethical "oughts" satisfy a universalizability principle: if something is right for a person in a given set of circumstances, then it's right for anyone else in those same circumstances. The mere fact that that it's me rather than you is beside the point. If we accept these points, then we've said something unifying about the ethical, but it's only formal unity. It's consistent with very different views about what is actually right or wrong in particular cases. Your question reflects a suspicion that I share: there...

While agreeing with everything in Thomas's characteristically clear-headed response, I would add just one note that may bear on your worry. There are philosophers who think that if a thought-experiment is too far from our ordinary experience, then our intuitions about what we should say about the case may be unreliable. For example, to take a case from Judith Thomson's famous paper on abortion, do we really know what our moral views would be if people seeds floated around in the air and could give rise overnight to embryos by lodging in the fabric on your couch? It's also been claimed that some of the more bizarre thought experiments in the personal identity literature suffer from this sort of flaw. We're being asked to decide what would be true if certain very strange circumstances held, when our usual range of experience may not provide us with a thick enough understanding of the relevant "possible worlds" to know what we should say. That said, as Thomas's reply points out, some apparently bizarre...

You ask: "Doesn't love, by nature irrational, transcend my duty to my wife?" I answer: "Huh?" You say you want to be an authentic person. I'd suggest that reading Fear and Trembling as a source of rationalizations for infidelity isn't a good recipe for authenticity. I'd also suggest that being a person of integrity is worth more worry than being "authentic," by which you seem to mean "doing what I most want to do." You have a wife; you tell us you never loved her. How do you feel about your child? You say that you don't know where this potential affair might lead. Is one possible answer that it will lead to some harm and pain? If so, is it worth it? Is it the best thing all things considered? That's not a rhetorical question. I don't know anything about your situation beyond what you've said. Perhaps you and your wife should divorce. Perhaps you should stay together for your child's sake. Perhaps you could even come to love your wife. (And I'd add: love isn't just an "irrational"...

Sometime you can be punished for planning a crime: if it's a case of criminal conspiracy. That's an agreement with at least one other person to commit a crime. Just what the standard of proof might be is a question that I'd have to leave to a lawyer, but conspiracy has long been illegal. If a single person plans to commit a crime, this wouldn't count as criminal conspiracy. One reason for the difference, perhaps, is that people can't be prosecuted for their thoughts, and proving that I really planned to do something wrong, rather than merely fantasized about it, would be hard. When you plan together with someone else, however, you've gone past the stage of merely thinking. The school case is complicated; schools are allowed to discipline students for conduct that isn't criminal. Best to ask someone who knows the relevant law. But I think your underlying question wasn't legal. You asked if thinking evil thoughts makes a person evil, and you asked about planning to do evil things. I'd make a...