For an exhaustive study of what we know on independent grounds about the characters who appear in Plato's dialogues, I would recommend Debra Nails' The People of Plato . In many cases, we have independent evidence that the positions that are held by the characters in Plato's dialogues corresponds to views held by the historical figures with the same names. At the same time, though, it is simply not clear how faithful Plato was to the details of their positions. For this reason, when speaking of the position that is articulated by the character Callicles in Plato's Republic , it is best to attribute the view not to the historical Callicles, not to Plato (since, such an attribution would suggest that Plato endorses this argument), but to the character Callicles in Plato's Republic .

You might also look at the answers to Question 906 .

Let me add just one small point to Thomas’ very helpful discussion of the role of generalization in moral argument. Why is it that people engage in this odd behavior of challenging your actions by asking you whether you would accept the generalization that all people of type T are entitled to engage in actions of type A? Presumably, it’s because, if true, such generalizations are supposed to reveal some explanatory relationship between certain facts—namely, that it’s in virtue of being of type T that you are entitled to engage in actions of type A. So when a person challenges you with such a generalization, she is really asking you in a roundabout way whether your action has the properties that make it true that it is morally permissible. To respond to the challenge, you must either accept that the properties she picks out really are sufficient to justify the action (such that all actions of that type are morally justified), or pick out other properties of your action that...

In Plato’s Phaedo , Socrates explains to his friends why, in the face of his imminent execution, he is in a good mood. His whole life, he reports, has been a preparation for death (64a-b): after he dies, his soul will be separated from his body, and he will finally be able to attain the only thing of genuine value– knowledge of the forms (65b-e, 66b-67b, 69a-b). If Socrates is right, Cebes rightly asks, why shouldn’t we all commit suicide? (61b) Because, Socrates rather lamely responds, we are the property of the gods, and they should decide when we die (62b-c). Without such a view about the property rights of the gods, Cebes’ question is difficult for a person like the Socrates of the Phaedo to answer. We might think that suicide would be wrong because in death we are unable to meet our responsibilities to others, but what sense can one make of these responsibilities, if they, too, would be better off dead? Despite what Socrates suggests about the extraordinary virtues of...

Of course, murder is not a victimless crime! But how can that be, Alex asks, if the victim no longer exists in order to suffer the harm that has been done to him? If you must exist in order to have interests, then how can a dead person’s interests suffer as a result of his death? To see the harm that is suffered by a murder victim, let’s think first about what it means to be harmed. If I were to harm Harry, what sort of thing would I have to do him? Intuitively, when I harm Harry, my actions make him worse off than he would have been had I not acted as I did. So when I spread vicious gossip about Harry, I have harmed him because, had I not spread the vicious gossip, his reputation would have been intact, and he would have been well-respected in his community, loved by his family, and able to complete more easily certain projects about which he cares deeply, projects that require the good will and cooperation of others. Because of my vicious gossip, Harry is now a social outcast, unloved and unaided...

And it is not only non-cognitivists who would believe that it would make a moral difference if humans did not experience certain emotions. For example, suppose that I were a cognitivist hedonist, act Utilitarian. I believe that one ought always to perform the act that produces the greatest balance of pleasure over pain, and I believe that that moral principle is true independently of my or anyone else’s commitment to it. For me, it would make a great deal of difference what sorts of emotions human beings experienced in different circumstances, since the amount of pain or pleasure that anyone feels as a result of my actions will depend, at least in part, on their emotional attachments. Or suppose that I am a cognitivist virtue theorist of the following variety: I believe that I ought to live my life in such a way that I live a good and meaningful life, and I believe that a corresponding normative principle applies to everyone else. They too ought to live their lives in such a way...

It seems to me that, in order to count as making a choice between multiple options, I must consciously consider these options and I must decide to pursue one of the options rather than the others. My choice is determined, it seems to me, by what, among the options I consider, I most want to do. To this extent, then, I think that your professor is correct. However, I do not think that it follows from this view that, when you daydreamed and left the store after forgetting your intention to buy milk, you chose not to buy milk and therefore that you didn’t really want to buy milk. In any given instance, I have, as a matter of fact, an indefinite number of options. But unless I am conscious of these options, I can’t be said to have chosen not to pursue them. My dear friend, whom I haven’t seen in ten years, is in the next aisle of the grocery store. If I were to go into that aisle, I would see her and talk to her about old and new times. My talking to her is a real option for me, in the sense that...

"Is freedom always better than a lack of freedom?" Well, doesn’t the answer to this question depend on what sort of freedom is at stake and what one might receive in compensation for losing that particular sort of freedom? No human being is free to do anything she might happen to want to do, nor should we be moved to tears by this fact. I am not free to fly like a bird, nor to travel to the Sun. In the US, I am not free to kill openly whomever I want and stay out of jail. Yet even in jail, I retain certain freedoms: to pace my cell, to think about my mother, to count to a million, to rearrange my clothing in my drawers as many times as I like, to talk or not to talk to my cell-mate. Of course, we never hold up a person in jail as a paradigm of freedom, but this is not because we believe that a person in jail has no freedoms, but because we believe that he lacks important freedoms that the rest of us on the outside thankfully possess. So what makes a particular freedom an important freedom?...

As you may know, the question that you raise has been raised in very similar terms by Peter Singer in "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972). Singer himself presents the moral challenge not merely to Utilitarians like himself, but to all of us, who he believes are deeply committed to the following moral principle: "If one can prevent something very bad from happening (like the death of an innocent child) without any significant moral sacrifice, then one is morally obligated to do so." (Singer himself believes that a much stronger moral principle is true, but he believes that all of us will concede the truth of this principle.) He argues that it is this moral principle that explains our sense that it is not merely a nice thing to save a child from drowning, but in fact is a moral obligation, even if it would be a slight inconvenience for us to do so. If true, such a moral principle entails that it would be wrong for us to refrain giving away money that we have good...

The history of philosophy is studied in philosophy departments forthe purpose of understanding whether a particular philosophical claimis true. To this end, historians of philosophy examine the particulararguments that have been offered for views held in the past, becausearguments, if they are good ones, will imply that their conclusions aretrue. This enterprise is different from the discipline often known as“the history of ideas,” because such a history need not focus on andexamine arguments that people provided for their views. Instead, thehistory of ideas often focuses on questions like— How did thisparticular idea help to legitimize the ruling class or patriarchy? Orhow was this sort of idea attractive to a person who suffered physicalabuse at a young age? Or how did Athenian Imperialism lead to anexposure to Egyptian ideas? These questions are interesting to help toexplain why certain people came to hold particular views, but answersto these questions do not take us much closer to understanding...