You agree that a person should derive some benefit from their own efforts, in the form of private property. But then property constitutes a benefit only if and insofar as one can use it in ways one values. Money is worth less, for instance, the fewer and less valued are the things one can purchase with it. One thing many people value is the option to give money to others, e.g. through bequest. By taking this option away, we would be taking away a valued benefit -- not merely from those who might otherwise inherit, but also from those who might otherwise bequeath. So there is something to be said in favor of allowing inheritance. This reason must be balanced against others, though. The institution of inheritance tends to aggravate inequality, for example. In view of such competing reasons, the kind of compromise many countries have adopted -- to allow but also substantially to tax inheritance -- seems a plausible one. A complete ban on inheritance would, in any case, be very difficult to enforce...

Even if both parties benefit from the transaction (relative to the baseline where they do not interact), the transaction can still be immoral. An extreme example would be a mother in Cambodia who works as a prostitute to feed her children. She prefers serving the customer and receiving the money over not interacting with him. And he prefers the transaction over not interacting with her (it only costs him as much as he earns in 20 minutes back home). But it may still be immoral to take advantage of the woman's situation by paying her so little. Let's leave this sort of case aside and consider prostitution involving two people who are both well off and roughly equally well off -- perhaps a business person buying sex from a college student from an affluent family who is saving up to buy a flashier car. In this case, I'd agree that the transaction is not immoral, assuming free and informed consent on both sides ("informed" meaning among other things that neither has failed to disclose any infectious...

The answer to both questions depends on whether you look at "inputs" or "outputs". If you look at inputs, it is clear that A's achievement is more remarkable, more praiseworthy, and in this sense more significant and valuable. But we must also look at outputs, because an education system is, after all, preparing people for professional roles. Thus think of patients in need of an operation or passengers depending on a pilot's skills. For them, output matters: a better surgeon or pilot is better for them even if another made much greater efforts to reach a slightly lower level of skill. So the best justification for designing exams so that your students A and B do equally well appeal to the interests of the public in having positions filled by people likely to do well in them. Is it fair to distribute professional opportunities by achievement (output) rather than effort (input)? I think the examples of surgeon and pilot show that we have strong reasons to do this. An additional reason is that effort is...

I am sorry that I saw this question too late. My answer would be, in brief, that some people do indeed have a reason not to vote of the kind you describe: they can conclude on solid grounds that the remaining voters are no less committed and more competent to get it right. But judging from your question, I doubt very much that the reason applies to you. You seem more conscientious than most voters and you also seem more intelligent. So your abstention is not going to raise the quality of the pool. This would be even more true (not a phrase a philosopher should use!) if you had put your mind to questions at stake in the election -- questions that concern not merely the competent management of Britain, but also important moral issues: from access to medical care to military action in Iraq, Afghanistan, and (potentially) elsewhere. In this context it is worth stressing that the period before an election is also an especially auspicious one for raising important issues that politicians ought to...

Yes, I think it is wrong to harm a benevolent and charitable person just because of what they did in the past when they held values that are different than what they currently hold. But we cannot run a legal system so as to avoid this wrong. Just imagine that juries, to convict, would have to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused has not had a change of values since he committed the crime in question. It would not be hard for many accused (and their lawyers and jury experts) to create such doubt. Many criminals would be acquitted and many of these would then commit further crimes. Others would be emboldened to commit crimes by the confident expectation that, if caught, they would find a way to plead a subsequent change of heart. What I'm suggesting then is that our current practice of holding people responsible for their past conduct is the lesser evil. And we mitigate this evil in various ways: through statutes of limitation, through pardons, and through the occasional jury nullification ...

I agree that you do focus your efforts on tasks you are comparatively good at. One possibility here is to write a popular book or blog, building on the kind of dissemination work you're already doing for your friends. If this is difficult for some reason, then you might just financially support others who do effective work. In this context, you might check out www.givingwhatwecan.org.

Let me assume that the terms on which the company performed the work were fair and that the company actually delivered the work fully as agreed. In this case the company is really in the same position as other companies which are owed nothing by the country in question and perhaps never did business there. It would be a good thing for any well-off company or individual to make some contribution to the reconstruction of the earthquake-ravaged country. But the company that is owed the debt has no stronger moral reason to contribute. (It may have a stronger prudential reason, if the money is costly to reclaim or efforts to reclaim it would generate negative publicity. But this is a different matter.)

As happens often, also with professional philosophers, your word "then" marks the weakest spot in your argument. "Our instincts that say we should behave in certain ways are merely adaptations that increased survival. It seems then that there is no objective answer to 'What should I do?'." How does the second sentence derive support from the first? Our instincts may predispose us to get frightened by certain sights and sounds, and we may through evolutionary factors have become disposed to overestimate vertical distances and to underestimate horizontal distances over water. Does it follow that there is no objective answer to the question of whether those sights and sounds really are associated with danger -- no objective answer as to what these distances really are? I think your worry comes about as follows. You believe that what really goes on in moral philosophy is that people are "looking for a consistent framework for decision-making that best coheres with our moral intuitions (which arose...

You make two good points. On the first, re death penalty, I would agree that there are cases where it's crystal clear that the accused is guilty. But this is really beside the point. The question is whether we can design a mechanism that correctly identifies these cases. In the absence of such a mechanism, we must be especially reluctant to use the death penalty. Your other point is that perhaps we should incorporate into criminal verdicts an assessment (by the judge or jury) of the degree of certainty. But again, there is the question how accurate this assessment would be. And there is the further point that it would look quite bad to impose a severe punishment on someone with the comment that we've just barely reached the minimally required level of certainty. Better then perhaps to handle this issue unofficially: just as jurors sometimes acquit someone who very clearly did what the law proscribes when they feel the person did nothing wrong (example: the killing of a suffering and terminally ill...

There is a hidden assumption in your questions, namely that we know another, non-democratic form of government under which distant ecological threats and intergenerational injustice would be adequately tackled. In my view, this assumption is false. Any government is run by human beings, and human beings have more togain by making decisions favorable to the living than by makingdecisions favorable to future populations. But if you disagree, and know of a non-democratic form of government that would do the trick, I would like to know which this is and, more eagerly, what evidence you have for your view. For the time being, I would then look elsewhere to a solution to the very serious problems you highlight. I would think hard about reforms of the present systems of democracy to make them more likely to take the more distant future into account. How can this be done? First, we might institute an independent agency that, for any major piece of legislation, prepares a future impact assessment of it...