The fact that we take pleasure in performing good acts and even perhaps expect to take pleasure in good acts doesn't mean that we perform them in order to produce this pleasure for ourselves. To assume that we must be acting selfishly in such cases would be to confuse the consequences we intend and those we merely foresee. We foresee that doing good deeds will have pleasure as a by-product but this is not why most of us perform them.

Indeed, this is no accident. For we can ask why we take pleasure in performing good deeds, and the answer is presumably because we enjoy doing what we believe to be good or right. The pleasure is consequential on the perception of doing what's good or right. If we didn't already have a desire to be good, we wouldn't take pleasure in doing what we regard as good. But that means that the desire to do good is prior to the pleasure, not the other way around. But then the pleasure is a by-product of the desire to be good, which is doing the real explanatory work. (Similar remarks apply to those who are pained at doing bad deeds. The pain is consequential on the perception of doing wrong and the prior desire to avoid wrongdoing.)

Some people may behave morally for purely prudential reasons, as a way of avoiding legal or social sanctions. Their motivation may be selfish or otherwise morally suspect. But taking pleasure in good deeds does not show that your real motivation is selfish or taint the moral quality of your acts.

Bingo! That seems the right thing to say if we believe, as you and I do, that there is logical gap between is and ought statements.

The problem that you face (how to keep yourself (and perhaps others) safe) is very serious and calls for a kind of knowledge (i.e., of the resources available to you in your community) that philosophers don't have by training.

But certain constraints that you put on a solution to this problem (that no one get hurt, that no one else get involved) might rest on certain philosophical assumptions that I would like to challenge.

If we were assaulted and raped by a stranger, most of us would feel no moral confusion about what we are entitled to do. In such a situation, what the stranger did is very wrong and we have a right to protect ourselves (and others) against this harm, even if the consequences of this protection (e.g., getting the police involved) would be harm to the rapist (in the form of a jail sentence). But in cases in which we are victims of abuse at the hands of members of our own family, it can seem very difficult to figure out what is the right thing to do.

We feel that we have stronger obligations to members of our family than we have to mere strangers to protect them against harm. We also feel that we should not reveal to those outside of the family embarassing facts about other members of our family. And usually, these feelings are reliable.

Intimate relationships, like those between members of a family or those between close friends, are valuable precisely because they provide us with a source of protection that we could not expect from mere strangers. And they also provide us with a safe place to reveal to others aspects of ourselves that would be embarassing and perhaps dangerous to reveal to strangers. Yes, Uncle Bob drinks too much at Thanksgiving; yes, Dad had a tawdry affair last year; and yes, Mom has a weird poodle fetish. But we love them anyway. If we didn't have a place where we could reveal the less socially acceptable aspects of ourselves (and we all have many such aspects), with confidence that our foibles wouldn't be exposed to less sympathetic strangers, our lives would be much more lonely than they are.

Because of the significant value of intimate relations for all of us, we are right to be reluctant to reveal to strangers facts about family members that would be not only embarassing to them but could expose them to harm. The important thing to remember, though, is that these feelings of protectiveness and loyalty make sense only in the context in which the family is actually serving a valuable protective function for its members. When a family member is not serving this protective function, and especially when a family member is someone against whom one requires protection, then these feelings of protectiveness and loyalty are inappropriate (which is not to say that you won't continue to feel them even when they are no longer appropriate).

You have no more obligation to protect abusers who are members of your family from the embarassment and harm that might arise from your exposure of their abuse than you have to strangers. In other words, you have no obligation to the abuser, but you do have an obligation to yourself to protect yourself from being abused.

If you are of school age, I would suggest that you go to a trusted adult-- a teacher, a guidance counselor, a coach-- and seek his or her help to keep you safe. If you are older, call a local crisis hotline, where you can get information about how best to keep yourself safe in your community.

Let’s consider what it is for ethical principles to be universal. One way of understanding the claim that ethical principles are universal is to take it as the claim that the correct moral principles apply to all of us. Here’s one way to appreciate this claim. Suppose that a particular act, A, is morally obligatory for you (maybe it’s the act of not preaching to others about how they should behave). If that act is morally obligatory for you, but not morally obligatory for someone else, then there must be some relevant difference between the two of you that accounts for this difference in your obligations. There must be a reason why you have the obligation and they do not. Suppose the difference is some feature, D, which applies to you but not to them. We now have the principle: All those who have feature, D, are morally obligated to do A. Note the principle is universal. It applies to all of us, and says that all of us who have the same feature, D, that you do have the same obligation that you do.

I’m not sure though that this way of understanding what it is for a principle to be universal really gets at your question. After all, perhaps the feature D is the following: Adopting a principle that requires one to do A. So our principle is: All those who adopt a principle that requires them to do A [not preach], are morally obliged to do A [not preach]. We have a universal moral principle, but our ethical obligations doesn’t seem universal in the sense that the obligation only holds for people who adopt a principle that tells them to do it. So maybe then the real question here is this: Why is it that our moral obligations are not determined by whatever principles we adopt for ourselves, so that people who adopt different principles will have different obligations? If this is the question, the answer is the following. The view that each person’s ethical obligations are determined by whatever standards he or she adopts has some false implications. Here’s one. The view implies that we never make moral progress by changing our moral principles. So long as we honor our principles at the time, whatever they are, we are doing fine morally, so a change in our moral principles does not constitute moral improvement. Yet, someone who gives up a principle that allows him to harm others just for the sake of doing so and instead adopts one that prohibits such conduct is morally better for the change.

The view that each person’s moral obligations are determined by whatever principles he or she adopts can seem attractive because it seems to promote an attitude of tolerance. You won’t tell me how to behave and I won’t tell you how to behave. If we adopt the principle, Don’t preach, we have an obligation not to preach. Yet, someone else may adopt the principle, Convert, by the sword if necessary, in which case they have an obligation to convert by the sword if necessary. So much for tolerance.

I think that that is a very good rule of thumb. Humans often react to violence by retaliating. Hence many of the absurd feuds and wars that go on. Of course, one can think up exceptions. But they are rare.

Whether people need to examine the foundations of their moral beliefs in order to live well depends on what we mean by living well, doesn't it? Socrates said the unexamined life was not worth living, so presumably he'd answer your question with a resounding YES. I suspect many philosophers would, since examining these kinds of things is something we're drawn to...or we wouldn't be philosophers.

I'd say yes, as well; I think living well is a matter of living rightly, and living rightly is at least in part a matter of living in a rationally consistent way. So I'd take rational consistency as a kind of baseline requirement for ethical reasoning.

How might you go about sorting through the overwhelming variety of theories? Let me share a nutshell version of what I teach undergrads who are compelled to take an ethics class, and see if any of this helps.

There is no way to avoid answering the moral question, "What ought I to do?" The answer to this question (let's call it "Q" for short) will derive from a morality, or set of specific directives that suggest an answer to particular instances of Q. You are right that many people have never considered the foundations of their moral beliefs and rely on "gut feeling" or ad hoc considerations to answer Q. I call this the "Seat-of-the-Pants" ethical framework, and the problems are that it leaves one prone to inconsistency, which is generally considered to be an undesirable trait in a rational being, and that it can be cumbersome to reinvent the moral wheel at every new instance of Q.

Some other standard frameworks -- interpretive schemes -- for Q are egoism, which posits moral goodness as whatever is one's own long-term self-interest; utilitarianism, which posits whatever produces the greatest net good overall; deontology, which posits the performance of one's duty; and virtue ethics, which posits the development of a certain kind of character or habitual disposition. Within each framework, morality requires a further specification: what IS in one's own long-term self-interest, what IS good overall, what IS one's duty, and what KIND of character is desirable.

How -- and whether -- a person answers these questions is going to depend (if they are interested in rational consistency) on what s/he takes to be the nature of truth and goodness. If one believes that moral statements ("X is wrong") are capable of being true or false -- which is the belief reflected by the way most people talk, and especially debate, about moral issues -- then presumably there is a way to determine which framework and which specification are correct. If one believes that moral statements are not capable of being true or false, or that their truth or falsity is not capable of being known, or that their truth or falsity is relative to some other consideration, then a separate argument is needed to show why, in the absence of correctness, a given framework and specification should be chosen over the others. (Some very good philosophers, such as Richard Rorty, have argued along these lines.) In any case, what morality one chooses is going to depend, ultimately, on one's metaphysical commitments. (There being no such thing as metaphysics is itself a kind of metaphysical commitment.)

You suggest a morality grounded on a basic concern for the welfare of others. Certainly this would be a viable ground. But you'd have to say what a "basic concern" entails. Is it just taking into consideration that other people are affected by what you do? Do you weight the welfare of some of these (e.g., your children) over others (e.g. starving children in Africa)? Why? How much of your own interest are you obliged to sacrifice or defer in order to show basic concern for others? And what do you mean by "welfare"? Is it having a certain amount and type of goods? Is it something procedural, like being treated in a certain way? Why?

That question "why?" is a great aid to probing, and it's one that we seem to want to ask naturally. The important thing is not to become frustrated if a clear answer isn't immediately forthcoming. That's to be expected; it's why questions like yours keep being asked, instead of being resolved once and for all.

You could have your own personal code that you didn't expect others to follow. And there's even a familiar sense of the words "ethics" and "ethical" that would let us call this your "code of ethics." No problem there. But there's also a perfectly good sense of the words "ethics" and "ethical," and of related words like "moral" that says there is something else. On the view that these uses of the words aim to capture, there are some things that are wrong whether or not they happen to be part of your private code of ethics. Anyone who thinks that there are such things will say that ethical principles in this sense just are universal.

You might think that there are no such principles, or that no one can show that there are, or that people who insist on them are preachy, or arrogant or confused. And perhaps that's the correct view. But perhaps it's not. Perhaps torturing unwilling victims for your own pleasure is just wrong, period. Perhaps using other people as means to your own ends without regard to what they might think about it is something no one should do. If that's so, then it would be perfectly appropriate to say that the underlying principles are universally valid, even if not everyone recognizes this. (Compare: a certain mathematical principle might be universally valid even if some people just don't get it.)

There's a good instinct behind the worry you have: people can be very preachy about certain sorts of ethical claims, and not nearly sensitive enough to the possibility that they might be wrong. People sometimes make broad ethical claims that they can't back up and that are really quite harmful. All of that is good reason to be sensitive to the difficulties that some moral issues present. But there are other cases that seem clear, and there's not really anything surprising about anyone -- philosopher or non-philosopher -- saying that what happened was simply wrong. On the contrary, what seems surprising is that some people resist this idea.

Nothing is easy in this subject!

I think most people find the promises inherent to monogamy to be moral ones--though some philosophers have questioned whether promising to another exclusive access to one's own body is one that actually can be morally made. The tricky part lies in finding (and then explaining the morality of) the correct position between extremes that do not look correct to most people. At one extreme, most of us do not think that even an uncoerced agreement to become another's personal possession (as a slave, for example) is acceptable. At the other extreme, we do think that refusing to agree to take part in a sexually exclusive relationship with another--monogamy, in other words--on the grounds that no one has a right to expect such exclusivity from us, is also inappropriate. So the general question goes something like this: How much limitation of personal autonomy are we morally prepared to sanction by the agent's own willing forfeit of that autonomy to another's exclusive use or control? This may seem to be a very stark way of putting the issue, but it seems to me to be also an accurate way to frame the problem.

If we do understand the problem this way, then it is not clear to me why someone's forfeit of their own sexual autonomy to another must be conditioned on the other providing sexual access. People in monogamous relationships frequently deny sexual access to each other temporarily ("not tonight, dear, I have a headache!") and no one seems to think this is a moral problem! Having sex when one is unwilling--even within a committed monogamous relationship--is certainly not something we would regard as a moral duty.

But even so, the situation you may have in mind might be of at least two different sorts. In one case one might imagine, there might be a couple who negotiate their relationship in the terms you describe: A says to B, "Dear B, I will be in a monogamous relationship with you, but the conditions are these: (i) you have sex with no one else, and (ii) you also do not have sex with me." Can B not morally accept such terms? I don't see why not! Can A not morally offer such terms? Again, I don't see why not! There are even cases comparable to this that we generally regard as entirely morally acceptable--e.g. Catholic priests' vows of chastity. Why cannot a vow of chastity be a morally acceptable condition of a relationship?

It gets a bit trickier, however, if the rule of chastity is introduced subsequent to the original agreement of a relationship, and contrary to the understandings that grounded the relationship at its inception. In a case like this, we might imagine A and B becoming involved, committing to a monogamous relationship that is sexually active, and then A decides to renege--permanently. One can certainly see why B would feel a bit put out by A's decision. But, your question remains: Can A not morally make such a decision? I don't see why not. In effect, A is telling B that chastity is henceforth a condition of their relationship continuing. It seems to me that A has every right to insist on that condition as one that must be met for the relationship to continue. It also seems to me that B has every right to reject the condition, and hence, to elect not to continue the relationship on the terms now on offer. I don't see that A can demand that B accept the new terms, all other things equal. But as the old saw goes, relationships have to be renewed every day: If A now demands new terms for the relationship, B can take it or leave it!

But there is at least one further twist. Things can happen to people that change their lives drastically, and part of what wwe take ourselves to be doing, when we agree to monogamous relationships, is to be with the other "in sickness and in health" and all the rest. What if A now demands chastity from B because A is no longer sexually functional because of some accident or disability, but despite the loss of sexual function still expects B to remain faithful to the relationship A and B established and vowed to maintain? Infidelity can be very threatening to relationships, and A may reasonably not wish for B to put their relationship at risk. When B accepted the standard vows people make in entering the relationship, is it reasonable for B to suppose that loss of sexual access for any reason at all would nullify the vows B made? It doesn't seem obvious to me why that should be the case!

There is no question that people feel these issues very deeply, and so it seems to me that the best advice to give to people considering entering into a monogamous relationship is that they do some serious thinking and talking together about the degree to which they are--and the degree to which they would not be--willing to make adjustments to their expectations. But no matter how carefully any couple does this, the unpredictability of the future can produce unexpected and unanticipated problems. Having the sort of relationship in which demands are central features is probably already a bad start. Good communication and great flexibility are far more likely to yield sustainable results. In the end, these will be more reliable than knowing that one has the moral right to make some demand on one's partner.

This is an interesting problem, very crisply stated. Variants of it occur in other life contexts as well. Thus truthful reporting of information can be counterproductive, for example, in the work of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International in situations where such information may undermine the reputation of a political party or faction that, all things considered, is better than its rivals. This case is different from yours in that the responsibility for being truthful is primarily to third parties: to those who rely on the NGO to report the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the various governments, parties, or factions and their conduct.

In your case, where the responsibility is basically to the patient, the practice you and your colleagues have developed seems entirely right to me. Maybe your slight doubts about this practice can be mitigated by a brief further thought about autonomy. Contrary to what you suggest, I do not think that respecting autonomy requires being entirely candid. Rather, respecting autonomy requires deferring to the patient's judgments about how she ought to be treated and what she should be told. If she wants health professionals to be entirely candid with her -- and many patients do want this and will tell you so -- then respecting autonomy means being entirely candid. But in the absence of such an insistence on hearing the whole truth, you can make your own judgment about what the patient would want. (Directly asking her how much honesty she wants is tricky because it deprives her of what may be for her the best option: being uncertain about how honest you are with her while trusting that you will make decisions about what to tell her in a way that you judge is best for her.) And you may well conclude -- correctly -- that the patient is scared and would rather be firmly reassured than hear the full litany of risks and disclaimers.

When a patient really presses you for the truth, then you can -- in addition to the obfuscations you mention in your last two sentences -- also say truthfully that the condition does have an important psychological component and is most likely (ambiguity intended) to remain latent if one worries about it as little as possible.

I'm not sure what you mean by "intangible" here, but no matter. It strikes me that the question is based on assimilating the existence of a right to its observance. It may well be, and I believe it is, that rights are being violated all the time. I don't see how that is evidence that one doesn't have any rights, unless of course what one means by having rights is having them respected. But why think that? Now another question one might ask is, if there is such wholesale violation of rights, what good do they do me? Here I think the answer is, sometimes very little. Still, moral obligations, to which rights give rise, hold even if people by and large don't carry them out. Also, I think we do find many domains in which people making moral arguments does serve to change behavior for the better, and it's crucial to the cogency of such arguments that there really exist the rights and duties to which they appeal.