Why do we say that we should consider the moral values of a time when we evaluate people from the past? If were honest with ourselves the average American slave holder is actually much more morally reprehensible than a rapist. And if we consider that the average America supported slavery it follows that America was a very evil place before slavery was abolished.

Is it morally wrong to stop being freinds with someone because he/she is a homophobe? I'm gay but have many straight friends. One of them is Muslim, and she maintains that as part of her religious beliefs it is mandatory for her to consider homosexuality a sin, that is punishable by an afterlife in "hell". She also does not oppose persecutions of gays in Islamic countries saying that it is their sovereignty that can not be infringed in the name of Human Rights. (She thinks the Koran is more important than any human rights declaration.) That said, she's been a very kind, helpful and longtime friend, but her attitude towards homosexuality is unacceptable for me. Is it morally tenable for her to be a friend to a gay man, and a homophobe at the same time? Is it immoral/unethical for me to dump her because of her religious beliefs?

Robert Nozick compared taxes to forced labor, on the grounds that taking money away from people forces them to work for more money. Is forced labor always objectionable? Suppose my city holds one day a year where everyone (with obvious exceptions for extenuating circumstances) is required to pick up litter. Would this be unethical? Is there an important difference between slavery and compulsory labor?

Upon learning that Osama bin Laden has died, many people decided to take to the streets and celebrate. This is the celebration of a person's killing, something which is extremely rarely celebrated. On the one hand, his death represents the putative end to a threat (though the jury is out on whether that's true); on the other hand, he was a living human being and, though a criminal, deserved a legal process rather than a killing. Should we be rejoicing that bin Laden was killed, or should we let it pass as an evil lesser than it would have been to let him run free?

What reasons do atheists have for caring about other people or for being socially responsible? Is there any difference other than semantics that differentiates those reasons from reasons derived from religious beliefs? (in other words, reasons to care about others or for being socially responsible seem only to derive from one of two sources: (a) "enlightened expanded selfishness" (if we all do it the world is a better place), or (b) because somehow it is the "right" thing to do, and the only issue in this case is the source that makes it "right"). Whenever I discuss this question with self-professed atheists, their arguments come across as sounding like "I don't like the term 'god'" or "I don't like the bad things that have been done in the name of organized religion". In other words, they also believe in something greater than the individual and are arguing over what to call it or how to describe it or where its justification comes from, yet underneath it all, they spring from a belief that something important that is greater than the individual is the reason. In other words, are atheists and theists both believers in the same fundamental concept and merely are arguing over how to describe it? Thanks! Joe.

I told my friend that I didn't pursue a second date with a woman I met through an Internet dating site because she wasn't physically attractive enough. My friend said it was wrong to "judge" a person by their looks. I said that I wouldn't date my friend Travis either based on his looks and you wouldn't disagree with that. My friend said that the reason that I wouldnt date Travis was that Travis is a man and I'm a heterosexual. Yes but what is a man I asked other than someone who "looks" different than a woman? So isn't heterosexuality about discriminating against a person based on their looks? And if that's the case and if we as a society are okay with diacriminating against a person just because they don't look like a certain gender then why is it often considered wrong to not date someone based on looks that go beyond gender? It might sound like I am resorting to a kind of logical trickery but I think I have a good point. People often speak of a romantic relationship as if it were an elevated friendship where looks should not matter but then the very fact that a romantic relationship involves people of different sexes in heterosexual relationships seems to imply to my way of thinking that such a way of thinking is not actually correct. Of course I don't think that means that a relationship should be based on looks but certainly their must be something that people desire in the opposite gender that transcends the (physical attraction=lust/platonic friendship=love)dichotomy or else we are just talking about something platonic aren't we?

Suppose that once a year, Alice donates $25,000 to a children's hospital, and that this sum allows them to hire a part-time employee to take care of the children. Bob, on the other hand, volunteers for twenty hours a week at an identical children's hospital, which saves them from having to hire a part-time employee that would cost them $25,000 a year. Some people might say that what Bob is doing is more ethically admirable than what Alice is doing, because Bob is dedicating time he can't get back, whereas Alice is "merely" throwing money at the hospital. Is Bob's behavior really more admirable than Alice's? If so, why? Why might we assume such a thing?

Ethics and Roofing My spouse and I live in a house whose roof who has been in place for 15-20 years of a purported life expectancy of 25 years. Recently we had large hail stones and strong winds that accompanied a nearby tornado. We have homeowner’s insurance that covers storm damage—a particular type that provides “full replacement value” for legitimate claims (which we pay for by an increased cost). The insurance company told me that damage caused by a storm is a legitimate claim, and that I should get an estimate and call them back. A roofer who looked at the roof estimates that the entire roof would need to be replaced at a cost of $7,000-10,000 (minus the deductible) It turns out that my spouse and I have different views of this situation. My position is that insurance represents an investment you make to protect yourself against major setbacks. The fact that the storm happened towards the end of the roof’s life-cycle is irrelevant My spouse, however, considers it unethical and even “sleazy”, since we would have to replace the roof at some point through its natural wearing out, and the current situation was just a way to get a new roof for little money. We probably would never have taken any action had not the roofer himself informed us about that insurance would cover storm damage (this might very well be true.) My spouse feels that the situation would be different if we had just recently installed a new roof, since its value would be higher and thus more worthy of a claim. What is your opinion of the ethics of this situation?

On the ethics of hypocritical compliments: Every person has people in his life that exhibit a special and interesting form of "two-facedness." Say, for example, that you're a teenager and your parent is always telling you to stop reading on the couch and mow the lawn, wash the dishes, do manual work outside, do more community service, play more sports, etc. Then you get a reward from a teacher or a high grade, and that parent is the first one to compliment you for it. However, you well know that the reward is the product of all of those moments reading on the couch, and had you spent that time instead on a sports field, you would not have received the award. In this case, is it more ethical for the strict parent in such a situation to stick to her guns and not compliment her son, acknowledging that she still would have preferred him do the manual labor in place of all that time studying (honest consistency in message), or for the parent to heartily compliment the student and act hypocritically?

Most people seem to assume that animals cannot commit immoral acts - if a person murders another person, this is immoral, but when two alley cats fight and one dies, we generally don't say the surviving cat is a murderer, at least not in a sense that implies moral guilt on the part of the cat (though of course the cat is the causal source of the other cat's death). The immorality of the act does not lie in the act itself, else the surviving alley cat is a murderer. Yet the act and its context (why, where, why, etc.) are the only objective (i.e. human-independant) features relating to the act. So where does moral objectivity come from, then? Why don't moral objectivists accuse animals of behaving immorally? The difference can't be as simple as "The animals didn't know they were acting immorally", because if morality was found in the act itself, the action would be immoral. Thus the morality of an action must lie in the cognition concerning that action, rather than the action itself, yet why should we expect all cognitions about acts to come to the same conclusions? And even if they did, it would only be a fact - Hume's Is-Ought problem still holds, doesn't it?