Your question actually seems to be several rolled into one. In general, I think you're asking about what sorts of claims are being made when the UN Declaration states that there are rights to housing, education, etc. Your remark that you yourself only have to not interfere with others seeking housing seems reasonable (though I wonder whether you would agree that you have no obligation to provide housing if (say) your community is struck by a natural disaster that renders large numbers of people homeless). However, I gather that the UN Declaration is asserting that such rights are rights against one's state or society rather than against the members of states or societies. To say that individuals have a right to housing is not to say that particular individuals are obligated to house them. Instead, this right is one held against a collective: society, or the state as its representative. Secondly, the rights to which you refer appear to be positive rather than negative rights. To have a negative right...

I don't know where you're writing from, but in almost every part of the world, the law does not protect speech that is insulting or expresses ridicule. This kind of speech is typically classified as defamation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation: When written, it's known as libel, and when spoken, slander. There are some differences in how different nations understand defamation, but in general terms, it's understood as the expression of a false statement, known or believed by the speaker to be false, aimed at harming the reputation of a person or group. This definition suggests that the philosophical rationale for defamation not being legally protected is along the lines you suggest, namely, that it's not "constructive." Generally speaking, we do not much benefit by believing what is false, so the audience for defamatory speech does not benefit from it. Moreover, defamatory speech does not contribute to public discourse and is not even intended to advance our knowledge of the truth. Hence,...

Modern legal systems and practices are probably shaped by a number of different factors, as you note. Criminal sentencing, for example, is likely to reflect concerns about rehabilitation, deterrence, consistency — and revenge. You rightfully ask: Should revenge have a place in how wrongdoers are treated -- is there something morally suspect about revenge? First, it's key to recognize that revenge does not simply aim at making a wrongdoer worse off. Revenge is instead partly a matter of motive: Whenever we punish someone, we aim to make them worse off in some way. What distinguishes revenge from deterrence and other motives is that in acting so as to avenge, we aim to make the wrongdoer worse off for no other apparent reason than that the wrongdoer should be made to suffer. We aren't attempting to discourage the wrongdoer (or others) from acting wrongly, nor are we attempting to use the suffering as a way to improve the wrongdoer's character, etc. Revenge is fundamentally vindictive . To punish a...

First, let me offer a gloss on your question: By 'life' here I take take you to mean something like an individual person's being alive or continuing to live, as opposed to all of human life, or biological life in general. I must admit that I cannot think of any compelling reasons to believe that life has intrinsic value, that is, value in its own right or for its own sake. When we reflect on our reasons for wanting to continue to live, we might say 'it's great to be alive!' or 'ain't life grand?' But appearances notwithstanding, such remarks don't seem to amount to saying that merely being alive, apart from the quality or worth of that life, is valuable for its own sake. Rather, we seem to have in mind that there's something about life that is great and grand, apart from simply being alive. If we try to imagine just being alive, is that a good state to be in? As soon as we are tempted to say 'yes,' we are likely to start referring to facts that would make life good but not for its own sake: the...

Im going to set aside the last part of your question, whether it matters to the morality of looking at the images in question that those depicted are (sometimes) dead. That raises a collection of issues that it would take some time to address (a number of responses on this site under the topic 'Death' may be helpful to you: http://askphilosophers.org/topic/economics?topic=239). So is there anything morally objectionable at looking at the images of Abu Ghraib or of nude celebrities? My sense is that they raise rather different sets of moral issues. The Abu Ghraib images, for one, depict actions undertaken by government representatives (soldiers) in the course of a military conflict. Their release to the public seems to promote a good (knowing what our military is doing) that clearly doesn't apply to nude celebrities. To use a legal idiom, there is no compelling public interest at stake in disseminating nude celebrity photos. So if there is a moral case against looking at the Abu Ghraib images, it seems...

As you suggest, the 'you haven't done anything wrong, so why should you be worried about surveillance?' stance doesn't seem to capture the privacy-based objections to being watched, observed, etc. That stance appears to assume that the only reason we might care about privacy is that it affords us some ability to prevent our illegal, immoral, or embarrassing behavior from being found out. I'm skeptical that privacy has any value "in itself," as you mention. Instead, privacy seems closely related to many other things we may value. Among the values philosophers have suggested privacy serves: - Privacy may protect our right to control the dissemination of information about ourselves and to protect our capacity to craft a public persona distinct from our innermost thoughts or feelings. - Privacy may be essential to intimacy with others or to the development of meaningful relationships with others. - Privacy might serve to enable us to control others' access to us and so limit their ability to manipulate or...

I must admit to some confusion about the assumptions behind your question: I'm not a medical doctor, but except in rare cases, having the genetic predisposition to the cancer doesn't guarantee you'll develop it. So getting the test and (potentially) learning you have the predisposition doesn't require that you "accept whatever is going to happen," i.e., resigning yourself to the cancer. The question of whether you should seek out this knowledge is distinct from what you might do with (or without!) that knowledge. In fact, it may make more sense to try to minimize your risk of developing the cancer through your lifestyle choices if you did find out you have the predisposition. Then you're dealing with a known risk instead of merely a hypothetical one. But knowing your situation and how you respond to that knowledge (or lack thereof) present different issues. On the other side, why will you siblings be unhappy if you opt not to get the test?I'm skeptical that they have a moral right that you get the test....

You ask a whole bundle of questions at once -- more than can be tackled in my response. Let's focus on two interrelated strands of your question: the badness of death and the wrongness of killing. Suppose we could use chemical measures to make people (as you say) completely happy. You say such people would not have "instincts" and would not fear death. Both claims strike me as very implausible. A happy life seems rather to require instincts: instincts to pursue and engage in various activities that make us happy. Furthermore, I see no basis for thinking that a 'completely happy' person would not fear death. Exactly why people fear death is hard to pin down. But one plausible explanation is that they fear because death entails losing out on the further goods of life. But a completely happy person would have more reason to fear death, since (after all) they would stand to lose more than less happy, or unhappy, people would. So I find the initial thought experiment to be, well, perhaps not impossible --...

The notion of intrinsic value is important to many debates in philosophical ethics. Very roughly, to say that something has intrinsic value (or is intrinsically valuable) is to say that it is good or desirable as such or for its own sake. On classical views, what has intrinsic value is worth seeking or having for reasons having to do with its own properties or nature. In your example of eating ice cream, the act of eating the ice cream does not seem to have intrinsic value. Rather, eating the ice cream is a way to attain something that has intrinsic value: pleasure, or "feeling good," as you expressed it. In this respect, ice cream itself does not have intrinsic value but has instrumental value: Its value is that it is a means to attain something else of intrinsic value. (Note that intrinsic and instrumental value are not mutually exclusive; something can be both good or desirable as such as well as being valuable as a means to other intrinsically valuable things. Good health might fit in this category:...

Here's one reason to think that not existing is neither good nor bad (this reasoning is due, roughly, to Epicurus): Non-existence is not a state of us -- it's not a state that one can be in. Moreover, it's not a state a person can experience or undergo. And if everything is good or bad for us only because of our experiencing it, non-existence can't be good or bad for us. But not everyone thinks that 'non-existence' is neutral in this way. For one, many of us fear death, suggesting that we think it would be bad for us to be in a state of non-existence. Why that should be is somewhat mysterious -- indeed, Epicurus issued the argument above in order to persuade us we shouldn't fear death. Another route to questioning the neutrality of non-existence runs like this: Some people are harmed by being brought into existence. (Imagine a person born into the worst possible life circumstances you can think of -- persistent and painful medical condition, poverty, parental neglect, etc.) If so, then it follows...