In a hypothetical situation that could possibly have real-life implications, how should one decide between helping a small group of extremely sick individuals with only a small possibility of benefits (e.g., caring for AIDS patients without knowledge of whether or not your treatment will allow them to live) or helping many who have a greater chance of surviving (e.g., spending more time with individuals with proven treatable illnesses)? With either choice, it seems that there is a serious quandary. Should one elect to help the many, neglecting to care for those who are most likely to perish anyways? If so, is this justifiable by helping cure more while leaving those few sick individuals to fend for themselves?

Some actions aren't regarded as morally wrong if their supposed "victim" consented to them. My question concerns whether the important thing is consent itself or, on the contrary, the desire (or the will) for the action. If someone does not consent but we know "beyond any reasonable doubt" that that person wants our action, wouldn't that be the same as if he or she consented? Certainly, if someone wants our action, in most situations he or she will ask for it or accept it, but in some cases this may be impossible (e.g., if that person is unconscious or for some other reason is not able to speak).

If a moral agent (a person) commits an act that he/she believes to be a morally right act, but it turns out the act is morally wrong, is that person blameworthy for committing it?

I think that moralistic judgements and punishments are insidious: they make people do things out of shame, guilt and for the wrong reasons. It seems to me that they can hinder people from empathetically connecting with their own needs and the needs of others, that is moral judgements are metaphorical defensive walls that we erect as part of our outer shell. Allow me to illustrate what I mean. Suppose one child hits another. If the perpetrator's parent interferes and scolds their child using the moralistic language and punishments that is pervasive in society, e.g. 'you are a bad boy', or 'that was a wrong thing to do' and then banning from watching T.V. Now the usual response this will get is either: a) defensiveness, e.g. 'he started it' and/or b) if the perpetrator does refrain from similar behaviour in the future it will probably be because they want to avoid being punished. This could be contrasted to a parent attempting to empathise with why the child hit in the first place and drawing the child's...

I strongly believe in non-violence and I try to teach this to my 4-year-old son. Nevertheless the result is that I reprove my son whenever he uses violence and at the same time their classmates hit him, probably because he is an “easy target”. Do I have the right to impose a “moral law” to my son, even though this law is not followed by most of the children and causes unhappiness to my son?

Many people find it natural to think that we cannot always apply modern moral standards to our judgment of people who lived far in the past. There is something counter-intuitive, for instance, about saying that a misogynist from 300BCE and a misogynist from 2008 are equally culpable. And this is seen in the fact that we don't often make much of such moral shortcomings in historical persons; we say that they were, in this respect, just a product of their times. Is this a tenable view? Is the ancient misogynist less guilty than the modern? If so, does this imply that morality is somehow relativistic?

Research in anthropology and related disciplines reveals that there is no strong evidence of any universal morals; there are no set of moral beliefs that are found uniformly across all existing countries or cultures. This has often been interpreted to mean that morality is unrelated to the existence of a deity. Some, however, believe that while the lack of universal morals is true it does seem that there is a universal sense of “oughtness”, or a universal tendency to justify what we do, or to place value judgments like “right” and “wrong” on behavior. From a philosophical perspective is this universal tendency toward morality better explained by a need to “get along” to increase fitness in our world (roughly a sociobiological explanation of morality), or is it perhaps better explained by our possessing an intrinsically moral nature, i.e. one that may exist because of the existence of a deity or deities (or even because life may continue after physical death without the existence of a deity). Sociobiology,...

Is it wrong to discriminate against people that are racist, homophobic or sexist, etc.?

If 1) we are morally responsible for the foreseeable results of my actions and inactions and if 2) all human beings will eventually die can I derive that 3) biological parents are morally responsible for the death of their children? I would expect most people to agree with (1) and (2), and to be shocked by (3). In addition, life can be worth living (the beauty and the richness of its experience hopefully offset the pain and suffering that come with it), but this seems to be a personal opinion that I have no right to impose on others. So, what right do biological parents have to impose their views (on such important matters) on future human beings that don't yet exist? Thanks.

If animals have rights, shouldn't they have responsibilities? For example, dolphins have been known to kill porpoises, or even other dolphins, for fun. Do not the dolphins deserve the death penalty for these heinous actions? You might argue that dolphins are not developed enough to have moral responsibility. But dolphins are not developed enough to have morality, why should they be developed enough to have rights? Most animals rights activists (call them ARA's) assert that a humans right to life and well-being comes not simply from being human (that would be speciesist.) Instead, they assert that our rights come from from our functionality or development. Part of our development includes a moral dimension. So by the standards of ARA's, any agent with rights also has responsibilities. I doubt the PETA would approve of me stabbing a porpoise to death. Why aren't dolphins held to the same standard?