Is there a moral obligation upon pedophiles to voluntarily opt for castration?

There is a more general moral duty to do all one can reasonably do to ensure that one will not harm children. This duty might trigger the moral obligation you contemplate in special circumstances. But I would think that most persons disposed toward pedophilia will have other options that would reliably achieve the same objective.

This is a question about philosophy of economic theory and the concept of property. Supposedly when I buy a stock what I am doing us buying a share of a corporation. In other words I supposedly "own" a part of the corporation. I have several objections to that claim. I did not buy the stock so that I could have voting rights in that corporation nor did I buy it for the trivial dividends the stock supplies. Those things have no value to me or most investors, and with few exceptions no one buys a stock because they have a desire to have voting rights in that company. Certainly if you are going to own a part of something what you own is going to be what makes that thing valuable and profit is what makes a company valuable and thus to own a company is to own a share in it's profit and stocks don't really give you that. Is there some deeper and non-arbitrary sense of the term "ownership" that sophisticated economic theory relies or is "ownership" a loose term?

I don't find your objections compelling. The fact that you don't value something doesn't count against your owning it. For better or worse, your purchase of the stock gives you a say in the company's affairs and, no matter how little you may care about this entitlement, you still have it. Second, by virtue of the stock you own, you're also entitled to a share of what you do care about: the company's profit. Many companies pay out part of their profits as dividends, and your stock entitles you to receive you fair share of all such dividends. If you own one millionth of the company, you get one millionth of any dividend distribution. Finally, your interest in profit gives you reason to care also about voting rights. Those who run a company will do a much better job if they are supervised by vigilant owners and know that they may well be voted out or reduced in salary if they do poorly. Not all owners need to pay attention, of course, but if none do, the executives are likely to run the company...

Dear philosophers, I have a question about keeping secrets. Can hiding a secret from the person you love most (which is something in your mind and not in connected to your behavior) be an immoral ACT? If yes, in which ways? Thank you very much in advance.

You capitalize the word "act", so maybe what you are wondering about is whether hiding something can be classified as an act or whether it should always be classified as an omission. This question of classification could be important if you give weight (as most do) to the distinction between (actively) harming someone and (passively) failing to benefit them. I can see two ways of reaching the conclusion that, in some cases, hiding a secret is active. Sometimes a failure to act comes on the heels of an explicit or implicit undertaking to act. Here it can be natural to look at the combination of the undertaking and the failure to live up to it as one act. For example, a rich guy invites the guests on his yacht to take a swim, assuring them that he'll throw them a rope when they'll have enough so they can climb back on board. He then fails to throw that rope and they drown. In this case, failure to throw the rope (or the combination of reassurance followed by this failure) should be classified as an...

What makes me obligated to respect the supposed property of others? It looks to me like society apportion goods utilizing the purely selfish scheme of exchange. Some people have less ability to procure exchange than others but that doesn't make them more or less entitled to stuff than anyone else. If a person were to steal a line of credit in my name to finance a needed surgery what conceivable moral claim could I have against that person?

By "ability to procure exchange" you mean, I assume, money. So you are saying that the fact that some people have less money does not make them less entitled to stuff. Now this is often true, for instance in cases where those who have less have less on account of wrongs or injustices they suffered. But it's not always and certainly not necessarily true. Thus imagine two able-bodied and otherwise similar persons running a farm together. Suppose they agree to share the net proceeds (sales revenue minus expenses) in proportion to the work each puts in. And suppose one of them does 2/3 of the work and the other 1/3. So the latter has less money to spend than the former -- but isn't she also entitled to less? A similar story could be told about two otherwise similar people who do equal work and have equal income. One has spent little and thus has a lot left. The other has spent a lot and thus has little left. The latter now has less money that the former -- but isn't he also entitled to less? Perhaps you...

Some acts become morally wrong only due to the victim's knowledge of them. (For example, in an answer on Feb. 16, Charles Taliaferro says "internet stalking" is wrong because "the people you are studying so closely would not want this, should they ever know about it.") What is the moral status of such an act if the victim doesn't find out about it? In case that sounds too obscure, here are two other examples (from real life): 1. Ogling: if a man looks at a woman and feels attracted to her (but does not say or do anything), and she finds him repulsive, she would feel that she had been wronged if she knew about his attraction, but has no way to know about it. 2. Jewish law requires a group of 10 Jews to worship (defined as people whose mothers were Jewish). I know a non-Jew (Jewish father only) who tricked a group of 9 orthodox Jews by claiming to be Jewish and praying with them. If they knew he wasn't Jewish by their standards, they would have been harmed, but they had no way to find out. In the ogling...

Charles Taliaferro did not write that internet stalking is wrong only due to the victim's knowledge of it. According to you, he wrote that it's wrong due to the fact that the victim would mind if she knew. So, according to him, it can be wrong even if the victim never finds out. This is worth correcting because what interests you is, I think, different from what you're asking. You are asking what the moral status is of acts that become wrong only due to the victim's knowledge of them when the victim has no such knowledge. The answer is easy, such acts are not wrong. If the only thing that makes the act wrong is the victim's knowledge of the act, then the act cannot be wrong when the victim has no such knowledge. I think what you are really interested in is: when does the sole fact that some "victim" finds out about an act render this act wrong? To tackle this question, let's draw a distinction. One way one can harm a person is by frustrating an important, worthwhile interest or goal or desire of...

Is stealing money stolen from me more ethical than stealing money justly owned? If it is, and I believe that the government or the upper classes have unjustly appropriated money belonging to my working class family for generations, am I justified morally in giving false information to the IRS in order to avoid paying taxes?

There are two weak spots in the reasoning you sketch. First, the expression "more ethical" is a bit slippery. If one does not pause to reflect, one may be fooled into thinking that, if something is more ethical, then it's ethical or permissible or (as you say at the end) morally justified. But this is not so. It's presumably more ethical (more acceptable, morally) to snatch a woman's purse than to take it while threatening her with a knife. But this does not mean that it is morally justified to snatch her purse. All it means is that it is less wrong to do so. (Some would say that wrongness, like pregnancy, does not admit of degrees; but here I agree with you that it does.) This first weak spot can be avoided by saying instead that stealing money that was formerly stolen from you can be ethical or morally justified. And this seems correct in cases where (a) the money was justly owned by you at the time it was first stolen and (b) it was not stolen to meet some urgent needs of the thief or of others...

Is Rawls's theory of social justice reducible to rule utilitarianism? Rawls says we should adhere to rules that rational, selfish people would create if they were behind a veil of ignorance. Such people would create rules that maximize will maximize their expected utility once they are born. This means they will create rules that will maximize the total amount utility in the world, since you can expect to enjoy more utility on average in world that has more total utility. Now, rule utilitarianism says we should adhere to rules that when followed, produce the most utility. In other words, rule utilitarianism demands accordance to the exact same rules that people behind the veil of ignorance would agree to. So is Rawls effectively a rule utilitarian?

People have adduced something like the original position in support of rule utilitarianism. But Rawls believes that this is not the rational agreement to make behind the veil of ignorance. To see why, consider that an agreement to justify the society's institutional arrangements by reference to some standard of utility maximization does not guarantee that utility will actually be maximized. It is notoriously difficult to show in a publicly convincing way which proposed institutional design or which candidate piece of legislation would produce the most utility. So the agreement to make this the common public standard of justice would lead to a lot of division, and people with power would often deceive themselves or try to deceive others that what is best for their own will also maximize utility. Moreover, utilitarianism can notoriously justify very bad outcomes for small groups, who are likely then to lack allegiance to the society's justice standard and social institutions. All these things would be a...

Hypothesis: Marketing works by making people dissatisfied with their life, then offering them a product that will relieve their dissatisfaction (for a price). If this is true, then it would seem that marketing always reduces a consumer's quality of life, because it leaves them either dissatisfied or paying for a product they wouldn't have needed if it weren't for the marketing. Hence, marketing harms consumers. How then, can marketing ever be ethical?

There are surely cases like the one you describe. But far more frequently, I would think, marketing gets people to switch to a product that costs about the same and is about equally good. In those cases, marketing still imposes a net loss on consumers because its cost gets factored into the price: the consumers of washing powers, cereals, and cars pay for the ads. But the individual firm can often not avoid advertising because it'll then lose market share and will eventually go out of business. In such a context firms can probably not be expected to desist unilaterally, but they can be asked perhaps to reduce their advertising when their competitors are willing to do likewise (insofar as this is consistent with anti-trust/competition laws). There are also clear counter-examples to your hypothesis: marketing for really new or much improved products. Here the consumer is already dissatisfied (for example, with his sexual functioning) and the consumption of the new product, though it sets him back...

Utilitarianism takes the "good" to be that which provides pleasure, or benefit, or reduces suffering. But how does the utilitarian decide that pleasure, benefit or lack of suffering are the yardsticks for ethics? It could be coherent that there are pleasurable things (that don't simultaneously cause suffering) which are unethical, or that there are ethically necessary actions which don't provide any pleasure for anybody, and even increase suffering. I am thinking of ethical, moral or religious systems that, for example, harshly restrict sexuality, the consumption of foods, certain forms of art, etc. So how does the utilitarian view argue that pleasure and pain are indeed, indisputably (from its own point of view, anyway), the foundations of ethics? Is this just common sense, or is there something more?

Yes, the options you outline are coherent, and it's therefore not a necessary truth that the good coincides with pleasure and the avoidance of pain. This is essentially G. E. Moore's "further question" argument presented in his Principia Ethica : "whatever definition [of "good"] be offered, it may always, with significance, of the complex so defined, be asked whether it is itself good." Much of what utilitarians say in support of their view is indeed commonsensical: when we look for the good for human beings, we should look for what they naturally strive to attain and strive to avoid. Most people do strive for pleasure or at least are glad when it comes their way; and most people strive to avert pain. In the famous (but flawed and clumsy) statement of John Stuart Mill: " thesole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is thatpeople do actually desire it. ... No reason can be given why the generalhappiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he...

Hello philosophers, I have a question concerning songs. I often listen rappers songs and sometimes I find verses within songs which I suppose are kind of philosophical ones. And I would like to ask you if I could use these verses in my essays as an argument to justify a proposition? I consider that these verses are type of micro philosophy. Yet my teacher can suppose that such an argument is inappropriate or invalid. Moreover, a teacher may perceive that rapper is not an influent figure. But I proclaim that he is a person who creates art. A song is a genre of lyrics like poetry. As a result, I notice a close connection between songs and poetry. People create poetry when they do a lot of thinking. Rappers create songs when they think too. They write their verses on the paper or they think before going to record a song. And it is a big similarity of poetry. Just in a different style. In conclusion, rapper song verses could be a valid argument to justify a proposition in my essays? Or it is not a suitable...

In a philosophy paper, you are responsible for your conclusions. The quality of your paper depends on how well you can back up what you conclude. In many cases, you can back up a conclusion by citing someone else's work. But in order for that other work to support your conclusions, what it says must itself have some support and credibility. Thus, for example, if you cite a major work of Kant interpretation, which is widely acknowledged by Kant scholars to be very good, in support of your reading of a certain passage in Kant, then this would certainly support your reading. But if you support your reading by stating that your roommate agrees with it, you haven't given much support to it at all. To be sure, your roommate's opinion may be based on sound interpretation. But this basis needs to be added to your cite for it to gain the kind of credibility that the interpretation of the above author on Kant derives from her demonstrated mastery of the whole text. What matters here, by the way, is not whether...

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