You are a single male, a highly attractive female asks you to engage in a sexual relationship with her. However, they are already in a long-term, albeit unstable relationship. Do you accept or decline the offer? I have declined on the basis that should I accept there is a likelihood that the pleasure I would gain is less than the suffering I would cause to their partner (who I do not know) and there is a possibility I am being used to hurt their partner. From canvasing the opinion of my friends I am almost unique in my decision. Am I wrong or do I just need better friends?

Are we responsible for forgetting things? It certainly doesn't seem like it, since we don't seem to have control over what we forget, but we are often held to the standard of always remembering all pertinent facts.

I'm against Designer Babies. Is there any rule in ethics that makes it wrong? We can think of many problems with it, like kids who have better genes will bully others, and the parents get to choose talents that might not be enjoyable to the kid later in life. Any other problems that you can think of? Thank You for your time! Sincerely, Bailey

What is evil, and what is good? Do you believe is changes depending on where you go? Tim Age 11

I am interested in learning more about Philosophy, both the history of the development of ideas, and its practical application (or is that an oxymoron!). I am currently enrolled in two MOOCs, one taught by Mitch Green (Know Thyself) and the other by Michael Sandel (Justice). As a Clinical Psychologist, I have been skating around the edge of philosophy in my work as a therapist, so am excited about learning more of this field in depth. My question/curiosity is in the area of maternal obligation. More specifically, under certain circumstances, is it ever justifiable that a mother kill her infant. Lest this question sound too horrible to consider, I can imagine this scenario: a child is born with massive, multiple physical deficits that would make his/her life less than that which an animal might experience and would entail untold expenses, time, and emotional costs for the parents and society. There is clearly, here, an issue of the moral obligation of a mother to her infant, but I think even that...

Are 18 year olds capable of consenting to be in pornographic productions?

A lecturer I met a few weeks ago said to me (among other things) that up to this point no-one has managed to disprove Kant's famous claim that 'we should always treat others as ends in themselves and never as mere means'. While I agree that this is a noble maxim by which to live our lives, is it true that it has not been disproved? It seems slightly hasty to claim this about anything.

Is it wrong to fall in love and have a relationship with your first cousin even if you did not grow up together and met as adults? There are many taboos about this kind of relationships and some cultures see it as a very bad thing and others don't. I am very curious to know what philosophers have to say about this.

Is it disrespectful to try and tell somebody that you know their thoughts and motivations better than they do? For example, to tell an engineer that the real reason they are passionate about engineerng is because they are unable to connect with human beings?

I have a friend who argues that hobbies and non-social passions are unethical. He claims that ethics derives from our relationships to and feelings about one another, and that all ethics is ultimately situated in the community. To pursue a passion that is non-social - such as to collect rocks, study fluid dynamics or stargaze - is to place value in non-social relationships that can therefore never be the source of ethical value. What say the philosophers?