A good question! On at least one plausible reading, the Taoist claim is that our distinctions and judgements - e.g. of things as good/evil, beautiful/ugly etc. - belong to human judgment rather than to the nature of reality: so these moral distinctions are pragmatic conventions for organising our life, but don't, in themselves, reflect any real features of the world. If so, it's not that good and evil are real and interdependent, but rather than they only appear through a certain perspective on the world, in this case, that of human beings living in societies. But the Taoists do still offer moral guidance in that they do praise certain virtues and argue that certain ways of life are aligned with or responsive to 'tao' - virtues like spontaneity and humility and therefore ways of life that include and are guided by these virtues rather than their opposing vices. A clear and accessible introduction is David E. Cooper, 'Convergence with Nature' (Green Books, 2012).

This is a really nice question, and one with a long pedgree: the British philosopher Mary Midgley once said that, if you really want to understand a philosopher, you need to ask what they are afraid of, what they loathe, what they love - of what goes deep with that philosopher, of what 'bone they are compelled to gnaw on', as Hamann once put it, or of what the philosopher wants to 'confess', for Nietzsche. Since this question might invite autobiographical answers, mine - for what it's worth - I find most pleasure in ideas that help to understand and articulate my hostility towards attitudes like arrogance, dogmatism, narrow-mindedness, and so on (what people nowadays call 'intellectual vices'), and, conversely, in ideas that present justice and openness and tolerance. I find beauty in that.

Hi! the question you raise points to a very large set of historical and philosophical issues, and one that, so far, has sustained an equally large mass of scholarship! I'd offer three thoughts on this. 1. The characteristics often proposed for one of these two camps often apply equally as well to the other - for instance, enthusiasm for science, predilection for abstract theorising, careful attention to rational argumentation can be found on both sides of the divide (if there is one!) There is a nice discussion of this in Steven Burwood et al, 'Metaphilosophy: An Introduction' (Cambridge 2013). 2. The norms and forms of philosophical argumentation are not fixed - they are historically and culturally variable, even if, in many cases, they can survive 'de-contextualisation' to a high degree. So the Buddha, Socrates, Aquinas, Boyle, Nagarjuna, Dilthey, Quine, and Heidegger all argue , but the forms, presuppositions, presuppositions, etc., that inform and shape those arguments are very different - so...

This is a very interesting question! The social practices of complimenting and criticising are both extremely important - and of course philosophically rich (for instance, they invite both ethical and epistemological reflection). There is - in my view - no simple answer to the question of whether we ought to accept every compliment offered to us, for three reasons. First, sometimes the compliment will be false - one in fact lacks the virtue that the compliment attributes to one - and sometimes the compliment will be unacceptably exaggerated - "I'm good, yes, but not that good!" - and sometimes the compliment will entail insulting or demeaning other people - " Wow, you're way smarter than these other people!" Second, sometimes one might want to resist a compliment because one has worries about or objections to the complimenter. For instance, a friend of mine was recently praised by a member of a nationalistic political party for their tenacity and conviction - this was during a debate about...

Much depends on how one construes freedom of speech. Often one finds it defined very poorly as being the right to say (or display) whatever one likes - whether it is offensive, ill-informed, false, and so on - an "anything goes" attitude towards speech: you're free to say (or display) whatever you like! But that definition is indeed a poor one, and one way to show why is to ask why we value freedom of speech. A good argument to value freedom of speech is so that we can hear the considered and articulate views and arguments of others and then assess them - views worth hearing, worth taking seriously, worth changing one's life in response to - and one could then ask whether the content of those hateful billboards fulfil those criteria. My two cents. [I am happy to accept Eric's criticism - and am happy to be corrected! IJK ]

People often donate money to charities because they (i) have a special concern for the focus of the charity and/or (ii) because they research the charity and choose carefully the one they want - for instance people often donate money to charities for diseases that have affected their life somehow. In these cases, it would be wrong to redirect that money to other charities because (i) one misleads the donor about the destination of the money and (ii) one ignores the donor's wishes - and their right to determine to which good cause their money goes. One can imagine, too, cases where a person donates money to honour the memory of a deceased relative - one who died from the disease that one then donates money to the research of - and that would make it much worse. But even in a case where a person donates money to a charity chosen arbitrarily or capriciously - well, that's still surely a violation of trust.

You ask a very good question! Much depends here on (first) how one defines 'objectivity' and (second) what objectivity might mean in the case of science and (third) the standing of moral beliefs. Objectivity has lots of possible senses - e.g. being free from biases and prejudices, or being impartial and 'non-subjective', and so on - and it's not clear which of these senses of objectivity are defensible, and not clear either how they feature within science (for instance, perhaps scientists only need to be objective in a particular sense at a particular point in their research, such as its practical application). There is a very good history of the concept of objectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison called 'Objectivity' - beautiful but a little pricey - which explores three of the main senses of objectivity in the recent history of science. The standing of moral beliefs - whether they are or can be 'objective' or whether they are merely belief and opinion - is both easier and harder. Easier...

This is an interesting question - and an important one, given how often one overhears offensive comments (at conferences, on trains, in coffee shops, and so on!) There might be two sets of issues to separate, though. The first set of issues concern what was said, in what context, and why, and whether one can determine the motivation and intent, and so on. In some cases, though of course by no means all cases, there are further factors - not always apparent - which might affect our judgments about the offensiveness of a given remark (though, granted, this won't apply in cases of obviously offensive remarks). Given that fact, sometimes the best response is to confront the question - to confirm the moral judgement and establish that no moderating factors apply in this case - rather than just go straight into an online exposure. Due process, one might say. The second is the question of (for wont of a better term) enforcement. There are many ways to enforce good moral and social conduct, and shaming - e...

Applied ethics is in fact in rude health! Over the last thirty or so years there has been (firstly) a revival of applied ethics as a distinct discipline in its own right and (secondly) a diversification of new areas of applied ethical theorising, such as environmental ethics, business ethics, agricultural ethics, engineering ethics, and so on - so happily applied ethics is now firmly back on the philosophical agenda and well-served by a range of established conferences, journals, and so on. Moreover there is an increasing sense of the need to connect applied ethical debate with (firstly) developments in economics, the cognitive sciences, medical research and so on and (secondly) with a variety of professional bodies and public policy-makers - for instance when philosophers of archaeology engage with archaeological professional bodies, cultural resource managers, aboriginal peoples groups, museum curators, and so on.

A good question! Or rather, two good questions - the first about whether a desire to philosophise is innate in human beings, the second about what being a philosopher in contemporary society means. Taking the first, many philosophers have argued that a desire to philosophise is inherent in all human beings - but, of course, this is different from saying that (1) everyone has the ability to philosophise (or at least, to philosophise well) and that (2) any philosophical ability that they do have has been trained and cultivated. So perhaps everyone wonders about the nature of good and evil - well, that might be the case, but perhaps not everyone has the inclination to work up those wonderings into systematic reflection, and perhaps not everybody will seek out the sorts of rigorous intellectual training that makes someone a professional philosopher. Regarding the second, much also depends on how one wants to define 'philosopher'. If by that you mean an academic philosopher, then activities like...