If I was in a situation that impose me to choose between an animal or a human to save their life, which one should I choose ? and why ?

Should I expect a reward when doing a good deed? Like I pick up a wallet containing a big amount of money. Shoud I expect a reward from the owner when returning it to him.

Is one who spreads a contagious disease unconciously held responsible for the victimes? Or under what circumtances should he be held responsible?

Is it morally wrong to eat my pet dog? Why is it right to eat beef and pork, but our pets?

Should I save bad people? For example, if a murderer is drowning and I have the ability to help him, do I do it? I do not have the right to judge whether he/she is worthy or unworthy so what should my reaction be? Sure, he/she could go through the trial process but why should I risk my life for someone who might not be worthy of saving?

Where in philosophy does the question of "cost" arise, if at all? If someone presents us with a "moral imperative," is it even permissible to ask "what does it cost?" or do we simply abdicate that answer to economists and psychologists?

The responses to questions on this site regarding the ethics of eating animals seem to indicate that many of you endorse vegetarianism (in some form or another) but have not made a commitment to actually becoming a vegetarian. Though I understand the difficulty of truly living in accordance with certain philosophies that one might, in theory, endorse, the only major challenge faced by vegetarians in today's America is self control. If philosophers themselves find it so difficult to simply not put a piece of flesh in their mouths, how can we hope for considerable progress on this issue? One would think that the people who think so much about the minutiae of the arguments for and against eating meat would be the most likely to make a shift in their behavior. I can't help but worry.

There is a classic dilemma about a careening streetcar threatening to kill five people, but where you by operating a switch can force the streetcar onto a different track, saving the five, but killing one other person. The dilemma intends to illustrate the different positions taken by a consequentialist and a cathegorical kantian. How would a virtue ethicist act in this situation? It seems like utilitarians and deonthologists neatly split the moral world in true dichotomies, leaving little room for virtue ethics. But put in a situation like the dilemma, even the virtue ethicist has to act either way, and how does he argue then? Relying on a set of ever so noble virtues wouldn't help very much.

In one famous trolley case, it seems clear that the driver should divert the trolley to the spur, killing one while saving five. In another, it seems clear that a bystnader should not push the fat man off the bridge, again killing one to save five in the trolley's path. But what is the justification for my intuition? Do you see any relevant, principled difference between the two cases that would explain why I should divert the trolley yet refrain from pushing the fat man?

Hello. Reading a bit of Wikipedia, a bit of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and a bit of your site, I got this impression about moral theories: (1) Traditional moral realists claim that there are (universally binding) moral facts. (2) Traditinal moral anti-realists claim that there are no (universally binding) moral facts. (3) So called "moral externalists" claim that (perhaps universal) moral facts are not binding (that is, they are *morally* binding, but people may ignore morality without being irrational, and so people may ignore such "bindingness"). Did I get it right? What I mean is that sceptics about morality always assume that morality should in some way be "absolutely binding". But some philosophers are half way between realism and scepticism because they accept morality and just deny its necessary bindingness. My question is whether these philosophers are really *between* realism and anti-realism.