I'm a little puzzled by this question. In what sense do victims get justice from the working of the criminal justice system? I ask this question in all sincerity. I know many people sincerely believe that it is one of the purposes of the criminal justice system to dispense justice to victims of crime, but I have never myself seen it that way, and I don't really understand why other people do. So I'm puzzled. For what it's worth, though, I don't think "vigilante action" is ever morally acceptable, so long as a functioning government is in place. It may be understandable in certain cases, but that is different. The IRA dispensed its own brand of justice in Northern Ireland for years, and we have now seen where that leads. Just ask the sisters of Robert McCartney, who were otherwise no fans of British rule.

This question could mean two different things, depending upon what's meant by "convincing him that he does". If what's meant is that one convinces the person to want the product, so that, in the end, the person really does want it, then I don't see why that should be objectionable. People change their minds about things all the time. But the tone of the question suggests a different reading, on which, even after being "convinced", the person doesn't really want the product. In that case, it seems as if what one has done is simply to manipulate the person, to arrange the situation so as to make it difficult or impossible for h'er to act on h'er considered preferences. And that, yes, seems very objectionable indeed.

See question 27 for some relevant remarks.

There is an intriguing (if not very philosophical) question here what leads otherwise sensible people, such as myself, to attach themselves so strongly to sports teams. I don't really know the answer to that question. But it doesn't seem very plausible that such attachment is in any way deserved or that past attachment creates an obligation to the team. If not, then, one might say, there can't be any moral bar to shifting attachment for any reason one wishes. Sports franchises are businesses, and one increasingly hears fans described as consumers of sports-product. If so, couldn't one argue that shifting one's allegiance is simply a matter of choosing a good product over a bad one? So Yankees versus Red Sox is like Walmart versus Target. Actually, however, I'm not very sympathetic to that line. Being a "fan" of a team isn't, I think, like being a K-mart shopper. Whatever the source of one's allegiance, I don't think it's comparable to low prices or good selection. That's just an intuition,...

Some people surely do commit the naturalistic fallacy here: Simply to say it's "unnatural" isn't an argument. Couches are unnatural. The worry that genetic enginerring might "damage the human race" is quite different, however, and I for one take it seriously. The worry, very simply, is that we don't know what we're doing and that the costs of mistakes could be horrific. I'm not sure what evolutionary theory has to do with it. Perhaps the idea is that evoution could somehow correct the mistakes over time. But (i) that could take a very long time indeed; (ii) human reproductive success isn't driven by the same kinds of things now that it used to be; and (iii) evolution isn't going to resolve the problems from which the actual people born as the products of misbegotten engineering suffer.

I'm not sure that any particular philosophical orientation would dictate a position on the use of drugs and alcohol. Philosophical theories, especially in ethics, tend to operate at a high level of abstraction, and their impications for such practical questions tend to be very difficult to determine.

I tend to be opposed to the death penalty myself, but one needs a more subtle argument. Is imprisoning someone who has kidnapped someone kidnapping them for kidnapping? If you don't think so, then you need to ask what the difference is between that case and capital punishment.

I doubt many people would consider low-level gambling unethical in itself, say, entering an office pool. There are stronger objections to state-sponsored gambling and to the extent to which states have become addicted to revenue so generated. The objection derives from the extremely regressive form of taxation such an addiction constitutes. One can then imagine an objection to participation in such a system grounded on its unfairness. There are, of course, people who do object to any form of gambling on moral grounds. I expect that objection derives from some kind of "slippery slope" concern. Larger scale gambling has been a serious problem in some communities, and so one can understand why someone might think it better simply not to go there.

This is an extremely difficult question, and I doubt there is any straightforward answer. It is true that treating the symptoms can make the disease seem less threatening, and so sometimes one feels as if treating the symptoms is, in the long term, counter-productive. But the families you are saving from homelessness will suffer if you do not, and they may not be around to see the longer term benefits a different course of action might permit. So the tension is real, in principle, though there is a question here about whether your work is, in fact , making the underlying causes of homelessness harder to address. My own view, for what it's worth, is that the great majority of people in the United States, anyway, just don't much about the poor. That said, I wonder whether the choice is as "either-or" as you make it seem. One can do the sort of work you do and be politically active.

I've often wondered whether anyone actually thinks that God's authority establishes moral principles. Of course, people say so. But when one asks such people why we ought to conform our behavior with the Divine Pronouncements, the answer, if it isn't to concede a moral standard independent of God's will, is usually that, otherwise, one will be cast into darkness with wailing and gnashing of teeth. But if so, then these aren't moral principles at all. They are arbitrary rules enforced through violence and fear. To say so isn't to say that, for a believer, God need have nothing to do with morality. That God isn't the source of moral principles doesn't imply that God isn't an authority on moral truth in the sense that someone can be an authority on, say, mathematics. (Interesting ambiguity there.) It does imply, however, that if it is wrong to covet one's neighbor's ass, then there has to be a reason other than God's saying so that it's wrong to covet one's neighbor's ass.