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Beauty
Children
Education

dear sir/ madam i have studied aesthetic at university, but i would like to work on aesthetics for kids at elementary school and students of high school. i would really appreciate it if you could help me with this case and introduce me some books and resources, and also i would like to know if there is a specific philosopher who had worked on this case. best regards, H.

Dear H. - Let me start by pointing you towards the American Society for Aesthetics. They have a really good teaching resource page here: http://www.aesthetics-online.org/teaching/. I also can recommend the book Puzzles about Aesthetics: A Casebook , edited by Battin, Fischer, Moore, and Silvers, widely available online. I'm not sure all of the book's commentary will be suitable for high school students, let alone younger ones, because it is a sophisticated introduction to the topic. But many of the cases there would work very well in those classroom settings. Finally, I think the best way to start a lesson on aesthetics is with the students' own aesthetics experiences, perhaps by asking them to share or write about the music, tv shows, books, outdoors experiences, etc. that move them most. Good luck!
Animals
Children
Ethics

As a vegetarian, when I consider the prospect of having a child I must ask myself whether to bring her up on the same diet as mine. I have met people who resentfully continue to be vegetarians because their parents brought them up that way and they could never ingest meat properly. Is it fair for parents to treat a child in this way and would you answer that question differently if the majority of adults, but not children, had freely chosen to be vegetarians and were now asking themselves the same question?

Hello My Veggie Friend, This is a question that also puzzles me. I am not sure if fairness is the central issue. Let's deal with the resentful vegetarians who continue with the program because they 'cannot ingest meat properly.' My understanding is that born-and-raise vegetarians can adapt to a meat diet. They will encounter some initial stomach upset, but this will go away in short order. From a nutritional point of view, someone raised vegetarian could make the switch. From a moral and psychological point of view, the change will be much more difficult. I don't know why you personally are a vegetarian. For me, I eventually became convinced when I read the classic article "Eating Meat and Eating People," by the fabulously smart Cora Diamond. I won't try to recount her views here precisely, but what I took away from the article was simply that people become committed to vegetarianism when their concepts of food no longer includes animals. I suspect the resentful vegetarians you describe...
Children
Law
Punishment

What should we make of the Dickson verdict? UK prisoner Kirk Dickson and his wife Lorraine made various appeals to achieve their right to found a family. Dickson is in prison for murder and by the time he is released his wife will be too old to bear children. The couple campaigned for Dickson's right to donate sperm to be used via IVF. Their appeal was granted based upon the idea that if Dickson was not allowed to do this, it would be a violation of his basic right to found a family. I think that lots of questions can be raised from this: Do criminals sacrifice their right to found a family when committing a crime? If not, should their right be acknowledged through the use of IVF - what about alternative methods that cost less money? The biggest question for me is based upon the fact that six more prisoners have petitioned for their right to become fathers. But what happens when prisoners petition for their right to become mothers? This adds a whole new element to the debate but the state cannot deny...

I'm with you. But for me, the concern is not so much men vs. women and their respective rights, but the nature of punishment and who really ought to become a parent. The crucial problem with this case is that the murderer in question is currently incarcerated. There are certain rights which prisoners maintain, despite their crimes. The right to medical care. The right to worship. The right to have access to legal counsel. The right to live in a place that is safe while incarcerated. Putting someone in a dank hole to rot isn't justice, no matter the crime committed.One of the many social purposes of incarceration is punishment. Punishment ought to hurt, but not too much (see note on dark hole above). No doubt it is painful for prisoners not to be able to do things that free people otherwise enjoy. But this strikes us as the fair price paid for committing crimes. I think the human right to have a family is on shaky grounds, much more shaky than the right for prisoners to have health,...
Children
Ethics

There's no moral obligation on us to bring into existence lives that are good; on the other hand, if we know a life will be bad, perhaps we are under an obligation not to create it. So, perhaps, not knowing whether the lives we introduce will be good or bad, but knowing there's a significant risk they'll be bad, are we morally obliged not to risk introducing such bad lives?

Yes, I think you're right. Many will complain that this sort of thinking leads to eugenics or worse. Others will complain that all life is a gift, so there can be no bad life. Personally I think these objections can be overcome. There are major kinks that need to be straightened out, however. These kinks come in the form of ambiguities: How much risk is significant? Who decides how to weigh such risks? What constitutes a bad life? Does it mean it is a life which the live-r would be better off without? Can this really be judged ahead of time, before the individual in question is born (and thus without his or her first-hand testimony)? Will this have implications for lives that are already here and are already 'bad'? Despite these worries, I still think you're right. The abuser who cannot control his worst impulses around children, for example, ought not parent. (By the way, much of our discussion here assumes a world where teens and adults are reproductively empowered - where birth control...
Children
Ethics

Given the presence of a large (and increasing) number of orphans and a human populace that is driven (evolutionarily or otherwise) to rear children is it more ethical to adopt orphans instead of giving birth and raising one's own? Indeed, given that only a certain number of people are 'fit' to raise children, is there a categorical imperative (for the ethically aware) to explore adoption before giving birth to one's own children?

I really like this question because I have often wondered the same thing! What follows is merely an answer-in-progress. There are several related concerns touching this question. One is to consider resources at the macro level. According to Prof. Singer's book One World , the average American burns more than 5 tons of carbon a year while the average Japanese burns about 1.6 tons. The average Indian burns .3 tons a year. Assuming that burning carbon hurts our atmosphere, the planet, and thus all living creatures, the last thing the world needs is more Americans - be they adopted or biological children! Therefore, American movie stars who adopt African children are not doing the planet any favors, given the resources those Americanized children will likely consume as they grow up. But this resources analysis seems rather heartless, no? I think it is heartless because it prioritizes something abstract - important, but abstract - over the needs of particularly helpless...