Whether an argument is deductive or inductive depends on the nature of the link between its premises and its conclusion. As you say, a deductive argument is one in which the premises entail the conclusion as a matter of necessity, i.e., that its conclusion must be true if its premises are. In contrast, an inductive argument is one in which its premises putatively support, but do not entail, its conclusion. As you say, the premises are supposed to make the conclusion more probable, but the conclusion could still be false despite the premises being true. Deductive and inductive are therefore properties of arguments, not properties of their premises. What your example, the classic Socrates syllogism, highlights is that the premises of an argument can be justified in different ways. Certainly All men are mortal is a premise we would justify inductively: We observe that every man [sic] who's ever lived dies eventually, and so on the basis of inductive reasoning (person 1 died,...

Moral luck is a tricky concept. The examples you offer in your question illustrate why. Philosophers use the notion of moral luck to refer to situations where a person is subject to moral judgment for something which is (at least in part) outside of her control. A common example: Two drivers side by side speed recklessly through an intersection. A pedestrian enters the intersection from the right, and the driver on the right strikes her. The driver on the left speeds through the intersection without injuring anyone. That the driver on the right struck the pedestrian is to some extent a matter of luck (the pedestrian could just have easily having been entering from the left side). So too, that the driver on the left did not strike the pedestrian is to some extent a matter of luck (again, the pedestrian could just as easily entered from the left with the result that she is struck by the driver on the left). In his seminal article on this topic, Thomas Nagel distinguishes four different kinds of luck. (http...

Before reporting the supposed crime, I'd ask myself a lot of questions: First, how strong a piece of evidence is an admission of guilt? Increasingly, psychologists and legal scholars are discovering how remarkably common "false confessions" are: http://courses2.cit.cornell.edu/sociallaw/student_projects/FalseConfessions.html Is there any reason your relative might admit to this crime aside from having actually committed it? Second, you say that there is not enough information to lead to an indictment or trial. But of course that determination isn't yours to make, and it may be that once your relative is under suspicion, an investigation will yield more information about the crime, information that could lead to your relative's being indicted. So do you really know what you claim to know, i.e., that there's not enough evidence to indict (as opposed to your not having access to sufficient evidence to indict)? Third, you say that there aren't any "significant real world consequences" for the relative if...

I’d be interested to know exactly what’s motivating your question, but here’s a stab at the reasoning that might be behind it: Suppose that a society is (collectively) obligated to care for the disabled. Caring for the disabled imposes burdens on the rest of society. But it’s wrong for us to knowingly act so as make ourselves (more) burdensome to others. So it would be wrong for us to knowingly act so as to disable ourselves, and since it is permissible to permit others from wronging us, it is permissible to prevent people from disabling themselves. Before we address the soundness of this reasoning, I’d note that very few disabled persons have chosen to be disabled. In the vast majority of cases, disability either doesn’t stem from a person’s choice at all (the disability is traced to genetic or environmental causes) or results from a choice that carried a risk of disability (working in a dangerous profession like logging, engaging in a dangerous form of leisure). Most societies address these with...

My suspicion is that you may be holding "informed decision" to an unfairly high standard. Granted, we often do not make "informed, prudent decisions." We human beings are certainly not omniscient, and we sometimes reason badly. But plenty of decisions we make can be made rationally without being omniscient: I don't have to know all that much to (say) choose between a salad and an omelette for lunch, or to decide whether to have a summer or a winter vacation this year. Of course, some decisions are more complicated. But I'm happy to say that we have enough knowledge in many cases to make decisions that meet minimal standards of rationality. You may also be making the controversial assumption that the only factor relevant to "age of consent" is rationality. Ethically speaking, certain decisions matter a lot to us because they impinge on fundamental concerns. Whom to marry, for example, is not a decision that others should make for us. For one, even if I'm not perfectly rational about that decision, I'm...