Certainly. The fact that women have children does not mean that they are obliged to be the main carers for those children once they are born, nor does it mean that while pregnant they are in any way incapacitated. If childcare were to be shared equally, or adequately organized by the state or community, the fact that women have children would be no hindrance to any of their other putative activities.

Precisely, and we do not tend to insist that children are brought up by the best parents, only their parents, other things being equal. So it is clearly the case that some parents are pretty lousy as carers, they may even realize it themselves, and yet this is no blanket reason to take their children away from them. In the example you give it is not obvious to me that children are better brought up in nicer neighbourhoods, despite what the new prospective parents might say, but there are obvious cases where parents are pretty poor at caring. Perhaps they smoke over the children, perhaps they sit them all day in front of a TV, have no books in the house, speak little to the children, have a poor diet, yet we would not necessarily take those children away. Provided they do enough for the children to preserve their general wellbeing, that is enough, since otherwise the processes of working out who would be the best carers for which children would be horrendous. From a liberal perspective one of the...

It is up to us how we see our countries. There is no reason why a basic sense of allegiance and even love for a specific country should not be combinedc with a desire to improve the world as a whole, quite the reverse perhaps. How we perceive our relationship with our country is up to us. Some people weep wildly when they hear their national anthem played, others scoff at the whole notion of a national anthem. There is no right or wrong here.

I don't think so, but on the other hand it seems perfectly acceptable to me for a country to insist that they do. After all, it is within the rights of a country, like any other organization, to say what rules it wants following by those seeking admission. A degree of assimilation would help make the potential citizens fit in more easily and be more useful, and since the country that is conferring citizenship on them need not do so, it is entitled to demand something in return. It is a bit like visiting someone else's house. In my own house I can do more or less as I like, but in someone else's house I should follow whatever rules they want to apply, within reason. If they want me to remove my shoes it is not a good response to say that I don't in my house, since I am not in my house.

I don't see why since if time is indeed infinite the point at which that occurs may be infinitely in the future. Not a great deal to anticipate in that case, then!

It is often not precisely what someone did that is significant in the case of the law, but how it is classified. However many people saw him do it, the issue is often what it is that they saw Right now I am banging away at the keys of my computer, but I could be blackmailing someone, sending a love letter, slandering a politician, or responding to a question for askphilosophers . A thousand people may be watching, and not just my cat, but in criminal law what the court will want to know is what precisely happened, not just the actions of the individuals concerned. So we should hang on to the "allegedly" term at least if the plea is a not guilty one.

Rather a lot of questions there which have at their root the issue of whether we should take family as a relevant ethical issue. To say it is relevant is not to say that it always is stronger than any countervailing right. An adult who strikes a child may be in a morally stronger position if the child is his, but he is still not in a strong position, and others are entitled to intervene to protect the child, it seems to me. On the other hand, it would be going too far to insist that everyone is a perfect parent, whatever that might be, and to remove children from less perfect parents. There are advantages in fostering strong family links since those who are normally closest to us might well know what is our best interests, and they might be more concerned for our welfare than comparative strangers. Not that this is inevitable of course, and when families break down there should be mechanisms to intervene. It is very useful for us to persuade ourselves though that we have a special responsibility for...

I can see some justification for wishing to nuance negative results, by claiming that they might be contradicted by future more positive results and so on, but on the whole it is important that negative results are made available generally. This has nothing to do with the wishes of the participants in the experiments, it seems to me, but their general public duty to help people avoid harm. There are two pragmatic aspects to this which are significant. The public ought to realize that results go in a variety of directions and should try to be sophisticated in working out what those results mean. Secondly, companies that are frank about negative results will gain more respect than if they do not, and so might themselves benefit anyway.

Yes, and not only a friend. We could rephrase it to ask whether one ought to stop a drunken person handling a firearm, or machinery in general, and so on. Clearly where there is all likelihood of harm either to oneself and/or to others, one must intervene, however socially inept that makes one feel. This is not a slippery slope, where then one might think one has to stop someone doing anything that is potentially dangerous. Drinking and driving is so obviously dangerous that it calls out for direct action.

If we could only like people who share our views, our circle of friends would be very narrow. Most of my religous friends are convinced that in the next world we shall never meet again, since they are going to one place, and I very definitely am going somewhere rather warmer and less pleasant. I very much doubt that any of us are going anywhere after we are dead, but if we are, then given that God seems to have a sense of humour, we might all be in for a surprise.