Well, I'm glad to hear you are not a murderer. If you were, I would argue that it is worse to kill greater numbers of people like this: 1. If act or outcome A is morally wrong, then A x n (n number of As) is more morally wrong than A. [stronger version might say A x n is n times morally worse.] 2. Murder is morally wrong. 3. So, n murders are morally worse than one murder. [Or any greater number of murders is worse than just one, perhaps n times worse.] Like most good arguments, this one just puts things in a good form for us to be able to consider the premises. It sounds as if you (like me) accept premise 2. So, what justifies premise 1? The easiest way to justify it is if one is a utilitarian (or other consequentialist) who measures wrongness in terms of bad consequences or outcomes. So, if one murder causes X amount of bad consequences (e.g., suffering, loss of potential flourishing for victim, etc.), then n murders would cause (roughly) nX bad consequences. And it would be morally worse [n...

As usual, the answer will depend on your ethical theory. For instance, some forms of utilitarianism might require that you go into the Matrix if doing so would maximize happiness (e.g., because you'd be much happier, outweighing any unhappiness you might cause to people in the 'real world' by being hooked up to the machine). Indeed, Robert Nozick used his Experience Machine thought experiment (a prequel to The Matrix) to argue that there must be something wrong with utilitarianism precisely because he thought we would not (and should not) hook up to the machine, in which our happiness would not be based on real actions and accomplishments. (There's some interesting experimental work on whether and why people say they would or would not be hooked up.) For various reasons (not just utilitarian), I think everything depends on what you would be leaving behind and what you would be doing in the Matrix. I'm not sure what you meant when you wrote that we should "assume there is a moral disparity between...

No. Many vegans (and vegetarians) aim to minimize unnecessary suffering and believe that eating animals causes unnecessary suffering. A crucial premise of this argument is that animals can suffer pain, discomfort, and possibly even more complex unpleasant thoughts or emotions. What is the evidence for that premise? It's a best explanation (or abductive) argument. We have good reasons, based on a wide range of scientific evidence from psychology and neuroscience, to think that complex nervous systems are required to experience suffering, and the mammals we eat (and probably the birds and perhaps the fish) have nervous systems that support these experiences. Plus the behavior of these animals suggests that they can feel pain and discomfort. Plants do not have nervous systems (or anything analogous) and they do not show the behavior associated with experiencing pain (or anything else). So, we have no reason to think they suffer while they live or when they are harvested. (Personally, I think...

Great question, and one that is rarely discussed in the over-worked trolley problem literature, mainly because the cases are set up to illuminate a conflict between the utilitarian response that seems to suggest killing 1 to save 5 regardless of the means of doing so and the Kantian response that seems to allow switching the track to save 5 (with a mere side-effect of allowing 1 to die), while disallowing pushing 1 intentionally as a means of saving 5. But what would a virtue theorist like Aristotle, or the originator of the trolley problem Philippa Foot, say? Well, there's no simple answer since virtue theory is (intentionally) open-ended and detail-driven. It would say that right thing to do in each case is what a virtuous person would recognize as the right thing to do, given the specific details of the case. Personally, I think the virtuous person would say it is morally required to switch the track in that case and morally wrong to push someone to stop the trolley in the other case. In part,...

Some people think empathy is overrated, including psychologist Paul Bloom, who offers a nice summary of his views here: http://bostonreview.net/forum/paul-bloom-against-empathy There are some responses to him as well, including one by philosopher Jesse Prinz, who has also argued that empathy is overrated: http://cultureofempathy.com/references/Experts/Jesse-Prinz.htm Personally, I think much depends on what we mean by empathy and in what ways one thinks it can guide moral thinking and behavior. I think Hume and Smith were right that certain emotions (or sentiments) are essential to making moral judgments and motivating moral actions, but it's not clear whether they are focusing on empathy as we typically understand it today. I suspect that most slaveholders and racists that supported that horrific system (as well as those who perpetrated the Holocaust and other genocides) did not have much empathy for their victims, because they lived in and/or helped to create a culture in which their...

See here for some relevant discussion and studies by Eric Schwitzgebel: http://schwitzsplintersethicsprofs.blogspot.com/

Your view, dear reader, seems to presuppose that the only reason anyone should care about global warming (or any other problem that will affect future generations) is that one may have (biological?) descendents that might be affected. That presupposition seems false. On the one hand, it's not obvious why I should care more about my distant descendents (e.g., great-great-great-great grandchildren) more than other people who live 100+ years from now. If we care about any other people (i.e., are not egoists in the strictest sense of the term), then it seems we have good reasons to care about (and we have obligations to) lots of living people we don't know at least as much as distant descendents we don't know. If biological relatedness is supposed to support your presupposition, it would suggest that we should care less about our adopted children than biological ones, which seems false. And my relatedness to distant descendents gets cut in half each generation, so after enough generations, I'll be...

Depends on what the right view of morality is. And depends on what you plan to do with the billion dollars. On some deontological (e.g., Kantian) views, there may be no way to morally justify such a violation of another person's property. On some consequentialist (e.g., utilitarian) views, there may be lots of ways to justify this action, including buying the person a new TV (and more stuff) and then giving lots of the billion dollars to prevent terrible suffering (e.g., of victims of famine in Africa or victims of war in Syria). Personally, I think if you are allowed to pull of this stunt in a way that allows you to repay the victim of your crime and do lots of good, go for it. (And please tell me who's giving a billion bucks to break TVs.)

This is a very interesting question, one I have struggled with myself, because I feel the same way you do, and I suspect many people feel the exact opposite (they much prefer voluntary donations to coercive taxation). I can think of two explanations for why we have the view we do, one more psychological, the other perhaps more "defensible in a moral sense". First, I am weak-willed. I believe I should give much more of my disposable income to reliable organizations who will use it to relieve significant suffering. But getting myself to do so is hard and at tax time each year I find I haven't given as much as I think I should. So, I'd prefer to be forced to do it (the problem is that I do not like being forced to "donate" so much money to, e.g., defense contractors, so it is unfair to use my weakness as a reason to coerce everyone to do what only some of them think is justified). So, the second explanation for why we might hold our view is that we are justified in thinking that (a) our...

I don't think you are doing anything wrong. But I think that precisely because I think that animals suffering is a bad thing and should be avoided if possible. It sounds to me like you are avoiding it as much as possible--and I assume that when you slaughter them you will do so in a way that minimizes pain and suffering (and likely will not be any worse, and may be much better, than their natural death would be). So, I may be misunderstanding what you mean when you say that you think suffering is bad but you do NOT think "that [suffering] is a reason for people not to eat animals." My own view is that there are many reasons to try to phase out factory farming, the main two being animal suffering and environmental harm. But both of those problems might be minimized by raising animals in other ways--for instance, the way you are raising your chickens. Others may want to provide arguments for why it is wrong to eat animals no matter what. But I have not been convinced by those arguments, mainly...