It's coherent to say that your action was wrong but that you should be shown mercy and not punished. But I wonder if this is the best way to represent your view. Sometimes we might say something was wrong, meaning only that there was a moral reason against it, but not necessarily a decisive reason. However, usually we (especially moral or legal philosophers) say something is wrong if but only if we mean to say that all things considered one should not do it or that there is a decisive reason not to do it. Wrongness, we might say, is usually a final verdict. (Philosophers would distinguish between prima facie obligations and all things considered obligations and would say that something is wrong if and only if it violates an all things considered, and not merely prima facie, obligation. But that is technical vocabulary that may hinder more than help.) Consider now a distinction from the criminal law between two different sorts of defense -- justification and excuse. When one presents a...

This is a traditional solution to your problem, one resorted to more often prior to the advent of in vitro fertilization. I'm not sure that there is anything wrong, as such, with having sex with someone other than your husband for purposes of procreation when your husband is sterile and provided all three parties (you, your husband, and the other man) fully understand what you're getting into and fully consent to this arrangement. It's not clear from what you say whether your husband would know the identity of the other man, though I'm assuming he would. Having said this need not be impermissible, there might still be lots of reasons to wonder if it was such a good idea. Any one of the three of you might end up uncomfortable with the idea that you had sex with someone other than your husband, even if it was ostensibly for this limited biological purpose. Moreover, pregnancy doesn't always result from a single act of sex. Are all three of you prepared for multiple sexual episodes if this is necessary...

The fact that we take pleasure in performing good acts and even perhaps expect to take pleasure in good acts doesn't mean that we perform them in order to produce this pleasure for ourselves. To assume that we must be acting selfishly in such cases would be to confuse the consequences we intend and those we merely foresee . We foresee that doing good deeds will have pleasure as a by-product but this is not why most of us perform them. Indeed, this is no accident. For we can ask why we take pleasure in performing good deeds, and the answer is presumably because we enjoy doing what we believe to be good or right. The pleasure is consequential on the perception of doing what's good or right. If we didn't already have a desire to be good, we wouldn't take pleasure in doing what we regard as good. But that means that the desire to do good is prior to the pleasure, not the other way around. But then the pleasure is a by-product of the desire to be good, which is doing the real explanatory...

Bingo! That seems the right thing to say if we believe, as you and I do, that there is logical gap between is and ought statements.

Surely, in some cases we do know what the consequences of our actions would be. I know that if I break your arm that I harm you. In such cases, there is no excuse of ignorance. Both law and morality also assume that I can be held responsible for adverse consequences of my actions that were reasonably predictable. And many actions I might perform are reasonably likely to issue in adverse consequences. The fact that I might not have known that my action would produce such adverse consequences is not relevant if I could have reasonably predicted that such consequences would ensue. Howeover, morality and law (criminal law) do not in general recognize responsibility for adverse consequences of one's action that were not reasonably foreseeable. To think otherwise would be to embrace strict liability, which both moral responsibility and the criminal law reject. Strict liability is a feature of some forms of civil law, but even where strict liability is defensible its justification appeals more to...

This is exactly the question Plato addresses in book II of the Republic , using this and other hypotheticals to pose the question. Glaucon and Adeimantus concede that justice is good for its consequences, in particular, that it helps secure the justice of others toward oneself, but want to be shown that it is also good in itself. They note that a good reputation might secure the instrumental benefits of justice and ask Socrates to show that we have reason to value justice itself, and not just the reputation for justice. They ask that he show that someone who is just but has the reputation of injustice is better off than someone who is actually unjust but has the reputation of justice. They also ask Socrates to show why one should not commit injustice if one had the Ring of Gyges, allowing its owner to turn invisible and so practice injustice with the appearance of justice and so with impunity. Book II poses a wonderful and now classic challenge to the authority of justice and, more generally,...

Perhaps you're thinking that frustrating someone's desires harms them or makes them worse off and is, therefore, always objectionable. Even if that were true, many would think that we should care not just about people's welfare but also about how we treat them. For instance, many would claim that we have a duty to respect others and that part of respecting them is treating them as autonomous agents capable of making their own decisions on most matters. But then manipulating the way others form their preferences in ways that bypass their agency fails to treat them as autonomous and so fails to show proper respect for them. So we might think that we should care not just about other people being able to satisfy their preferences but also that their preferences were formed in the right sort of ways. Indeed, I'm not sure that preference satisfaction, per se, is important, in part because I doubt that preference satisfaction, per se, contributes to anyone's welfare. I don't think that we should be...

I'm not sure if this is a question of principle or policy. Let's start with the question of principle. Certainly, volunteer organ donors deserve moral kudos, but should they get to move ahead of others in line to receive organ transplants? That really depends on what the principles should be guiding the distribution of this scarce resourse. Should it be responding to the most urgent medical need? Maximizing life expectancy? Maximizing contribution to social happiness? Something else? If, say, it was giving priority to most urgent medical needs, then I don't see why preference should be given to volunteer donors. Perhaps the thought is that the benefits of a practice should go disproportionately to those who contribute to the practice, for, according to this principle, volunteer donors contribute more to the practice of organ doantion and transplant and so deserve priority. Perhaps being a volunteer donor could serve as a tie-breaker among transplant candidates who were otherwise equally well...

If you endorse some ideals or moral demands but nonetheless act contrary to those ideals or demands, you may open yourself up to the charge of hypocrisy. At the very least, you would seem to open yourself up to the charge of weakness of will. Exactly what the line is between mere weakness of will and hypocrisy is not entirely clear. Perhaps it is that whereas the weak willed person readily concedes that her own behavior is deficient, the hypocrite does not. I am not sure. In any case, I don't see that your failure to conform to your ideals or moral beliefs shows that those ideals or beliefs are wrong or that you don't have a right to express them. My guess is that failure to honor your moral ideals may reduce your credibility or authority as a rhetorical matter. Maybe the thought is that if you haven't managed to be faithful to your ideals, then maybe you don't really believe them yourself. But if we are talking about weakness, rather than hypocrisy, I see no reason to doubt the sincerity or...

It's hard to believe that prostitution, as such, is wrong. There would seem to be cases in which this could be an unobjectionable voluntary exchange of services in which both parties are free to make the exchange. In such cases, it's not clear why engaging (or serving as) a prostitute would be any more objectionable than engaging (or serving as) a massage therapist. If so, there could be morally permissible cases of prostitution. But, of course, many cases are not like this. In many places in the world, many prostitutes are forced into sexual slavery, against their will, at a young age. Even where prostitutes were not forced by others into prostitution, many choose prostitution out of economic necessity, as someone might choose to sell a kidney out of economic necessity. Many who choose prostitution find themslves working for pimps that are abusive and don't allow easy exit from the profession. In conditions such as these, the sellers of sex may not be acting freely or, if freely, with a fair...