Does intelligence imply obligation? That is, if you can understand a situation better than other people, or have a generally higher aptitude for solving problems, are you obligated to use that capacity to better help society? Are you held to a higher moral standard, say where crime (or harmful behavior) is concerned, if you have a demonstrably greater grasp of the values in play; are you more responsible to consider long-term consequences because you can anticipate them better? I'd be curious to know which, if any, philosophers addressed these sorts of questions historically.

If two drunk people have sex, is it rape? Is it immoral?

I am beginning to see a trend in non-philosophical discourse to try and distinguish between Ethics and Morality. It seems as though they are used synonymously but it could be possible to distinguish between the two. Is there a difference and who is writing on the subject?

I'm interested in the issue of whether people would have moral responsibility under determinism. So if a person in a deterministic universe would happen to commit murder, some people would say that they are morally responsible for the action, and others would disagree. When I speak of "moral responsibility" here I'm thinking along the lines of whether the person would deserve blame and retributive punishment. (If it actually happened that we lived in a deterministic universe, I assume that we would have to hold people morally responsible in some sense for practical reasons. We would have to punish to protect society and to deter future crime; but some might give up on the idea of retributive punishment and see criminals rather as unfortunate victims of the blind process of nature.) I'm not expecting a solution to the question, "Would people be morally responsible under determinism?". Rather I'm going to ask: could the issue be a conflict of opposing moral principles that may just be forever unsolvable...

Are there universal principles in healthcare, or is ethics in health care relativistic?

According to consequentialism, is it less immoral to steal from a multi-billion corporation like Walmart than it is to steal from a corner grocery store?

My question involves "moral truths" or "ethical truths." I struggle to see how anyone could claim that a moral proposition is either true or false. By calling something either right or wrong are we simply expressing our feelings on the matter? Those that I've heard defend the proposition that there are moral truths seem to try a bit of "bait and switch." To claim that moral truths exist is to claim that something is true about the world. However in defense of the proposition it seems that defenders of moral truths state something similar to "the truth of this proposition is equivalent to how it works in the world" using a James style of pragmatism.

I notice that many of the people asking questions on your site are atheists. I am an agnostic; however, I can understand that many people see their religion as a guideline for moral/ethical behavior. Can we be ethical/moral without religion? If a person does not see that an ethical life leads to "heaven," what is his/her rationale for goodness?

Can reading Schopenhauer cure sex/lust addiction? If it can, do philosophers think that normative ethics ought to be therapeutic?

According to Taoist philosophy good and evil are equal and should both exist because one cannot exist without the other. However, according to traditional ethics good is better than evil and we should strive for a world with as much good and as little evil as possible. My question is: do you think that good is better than evil, as traditional ethics says, or do you think good and evil are equal as the Taoists think, and why? Should we strive for a world with as much good and as little evil as possible or should we let both good and evil exist?