There are two sorts of things that might be at issue here and they call for different answers. If I want the best ethical theory we can come up with, and the available alternatives all seem flawed, then that's a reason to keep looking and thinking—especially if the goal is to get as close as possible to the (probably unattainable) ideal theory. But if "accept an ethical theory" means something like "use it as the basis for making ethical judgments," then the issue changes. That's because it's debatable, to say the least, that the best way to make ethical judgments is to come up with an ethical theory and apply it. What's the alternative? Here's one. Assume that by and large, we're able to make reasonable ethical judgments. The job of an ethical theory on this view is to provide a coherent account of what makes those judgments right or wrong (or true or false, or whatever the appropriate contrast may be.) It could very well be that even though we have the capacity to make sound moral judgments,...

An interesting problem. To begin, I'd put the question differently: is there any reason to be polite? Adding "philosophical" in front of "reason" doesn't really help. And of course, there are many reasons to be polite. It helps avoid needlessly hurting people's feelings; it helps keep disagreements from turning into shouting matches; it provides a set of conventions that help keep us from wasting time sorting out how certain sorts of social interactions should operate; it's a way of showing respect for other people; it helps keep other people from concluding that I'm a jerk. And so on. All of these reasons are defeasible, as they say. They aren't ironclad, and there are situations that call for ignoring them. But there are also plenty of situations that don't call for ignoring them. Your worry is about truth. You say "A lot of being polite is just plain lying." Of course, a lot of being polite is not not "just plain lying." It's not polite to smack your lips at table with others....

Your suggestion that all libel laws are immoral seems to be based on the premise implicit in this rhetorical question: "Isn't the mark of a free society being able to say whatever one wants, even if it amounts to character assassination?" But why think that? As near as I can tell, more or less all of the societies that we usually think of as by and large free have libel and/or defamation laws, and so if the freedom to say anything you like about anyone, in any venue, without legal consequences, were the mark of a free society, it would follow that there are no free societies. But that conclusion would rely on using the phrase "free society" in a way that very few people would find plausible. Turning to the substance, it's not easy to com up with good reasons why a society should do without libel laws. Your suggestion is that the "court of public opinion" is the alternative. But what if someone libels you and it costs your your job? What if it not only costs you the job you had, but marks you as a...

Someone might say that punishment should fit the crime and therefore that raping rapists is a just punishment. Someone might also say that torturing torturers is a just punishment. My reaction is that examples like this show the unacceptability of a strict "eye for an eye" notion of justice. Torturing someone as a form of punishment strikes me as depraved; so does raping a rapist. Torture and rape are crimes that show an utter and complete lack of respect for the victim's humanity. That's something that an acceptable judicial system should avoid, in my opinion. As for your hypothetical about rape in the case of near-extinction, I don't feel the force. Why is the continued existence of humanity so important that it would justify raping an unwilling woman and forcing her to carry a baby? Is the sort of "civilization" that would stoop to such things work preserving? What's so hot about humanity from the point of view of the cosmos? Are there any circumstances that would justify a different...

I agree with my co-panelist that it's hard to peg this as abuse. But I'd like to focus on a somewhat different issue: the word "indoctrination" is being used to mean an illegitimate way of inculcating beliefs. That's fine, and isn't my issue. But the notion of "religious indoctrination" is left unexamined. And so I want to know what counts. In particular, suppose someone brings their children up in a religious tradition: introduces them to the texts and doctrines, participates in the rituals, makes clear that s/he is an adherent, and so on. If indoctrination counts as something bad, is this automatically a case of indoctrination? Surely it depends on the details. Suppose that the religious tradition has admirable moral precepts. Suppose it encourages thoughtful reflection. Suppose it doesn't threaten non-adherents with hellfire and brimstone. There really are such traditions; I know many people who belong to them. The tradition may well include metaphysical claims that you think are just wrong. But is...

Philosophical accounts of ethics (e.g., utilitarianism) are theoretical proposals. They are attempts to sum up right and wrong in tidy formulations. It might be that utilitarianism captures right and wrong perfectly, but this is controversial. It might be that the Categorical Imperative does the job. But this is controversial. And virtue ethics isn't an attempt to give a formula for summing up right and wrong, but rather discourages us from looking for rules of that sort. But whether we can understand morality fully in term of the virtues is controversial. My own guess is that each of these approaches (and by the way: there are others) provides genuine but incomplete insight. But this is controversial. Whether there are moral truths, however, is NOT the same question as whether any of these approaches to accounting for morality are correct. Thoughtful, intelligent human beings were making moral judgments long before philosophers cooked up their theories. Indeed, most...

It's hard to see why it would be morally wrong. No doubt it would upset a few people for a while, but it's not clear that they'd be entitled to be upset. Beyond that. it's not clear what else might make it wrong. If both families are mortally opposed, then I suppose someone might say that one's obligation to one's family demands that you stay "just friends." But it's not obvious that we owe that sort of deference to our families' wishes, and it's certainly not obvious that our family members are entitled to make such demands on us. Of course, I don't know the details of the story. Perhaps if I did, things would look different. But this brings me to what is the actual philosophical issue here. You say that you want the matter settled by reference to some "objective moral standard." But this makes me wonder: are you looking for some sort of derivation of the right answer from a maxim or two? There's not much reason to believe that moral wisdom works that way. The right thing to do is usually a matter of...

Let's ask a simpler question: is it a good thing to help the poor? By and large, the answer seems to be yes. And it seem even more clearly to be yes when you think particular cases. If someone is poor because they're the child of poor parents, or because they're disabled, or elderly, or unemployed in spite of serious efforts to find a job, or employed and hard-working but not making enough money to make ends meet, then the answer seems even more clearly to be yes. Now maybe there are some people who are poor entirely because of their own bad choices and who don't deserve our help. I'd guess that if so, there aren't nearly as many of them as is widely believed. But even if I'm wrong about that, there are many poor people whose poverty isn't their fault. Seems pretty clear that it would be good to help those people. Why? Because being poor is bad for your health. Because being poor can hurt your prospects for a better life. Because if you're poor, people look down on you. Because if you're poor...

I think part of the problem is that there isn't just one sense of "proud." Sometimes when we say we're proud of something, we mean that it's an accomplishment that we deserve credit for. One mark of this kind of pride is that it would make sense for someone else to be proud of us on this account. If someone wins a prestigious academic prize, for example, she might be proud of herself, but it would also make sense for her friends and family to be proud of her. On the other hand, if someone says he is (for example) proud to have been born in Cuyahoga County, it makes no sense for someone else to say "Benji, I'm proud of you for having been born in Cuyahoga County." There's not much mystery here, but there are some distinctions. Think about Gay Pride. If someone says "I'm gay and I'm proud," at least part of what they're saying is "I'm gay and I'm not at all ashamed." There's more to it than that. It's also a way of claiming an identity. Interestingly, in that sense there can actually be an...

Let's stipulate: adultery isn't always immoral. You're pitching the idea that it's usually not immoral ("mostly moral," as you put it.) Your argument, however, doesn't seem to me to be strong enough for that conclusion. Start with something obvious: when people get married, they make promises to one another. Typically, one of those promises is a promise of faithfulness. Not all promises are binding in all circumstances, but in general promise-breaking isn't morally trivial. And encouraging people to break promises isn't trivial either. But set that aside. Let's suppose that adultery is the result of a biological urge, as you say. Since morality often calls for us not to act on our urges, that doesn't tell us much. Your legal/sociological analysis strikes me as a bit thin, but I'm more worried about this: "Making it with a married woman can be very thrilling and the same woman would not be equally exciting if she were single; the supposedly unavailable is always more desirable than the easily...