Recent Responses
What is ethical and right - Going for someone you love or for someone who loves you a lot? (Assuming that none are one sided relationships.) - Paenna
Alan Soble
January 5, 2006
(changed January 5, 2006)
Permalink
Would you prefer to be the one who is good but everything thinks is bad, or the one who is bad but everyone thinks is good? Would you prefer to be the one who loves (but is not loved in return as much or at all), or the one who is loved (but does not return the love as much or at all)? Both ques... Read more
Why is it considered morally wrong for a man or a woman to have a romantic or sexual relationship with someone significantly younger than themselves?
Alan Soble
January 5, 2006
(changed January 5, 2006)
Permalink
The idea -- "I would hazard a guess that most such relationships pair much older men with much younger women--while again acknowledging that there are exceptions to this generality. Given the prevalence of sexism, such relationships seem to raise reasonable suspicions that they are embodiments o... Read more
In the UK there are the 'Page 3' models (in case you are unfamiliar with them, they are topless models that appear everyday in <i>The Sun</i>, usually with snippets of text about how young they are, and suggestive speech bubbles). Because <i>The Sun</i> is such a widely read publication and because that particular page is so popular, Page 3 is readily accessible on the bus, in the tube, on the kitchen table, in the newsagents, etc., etc. A while ago the politician Clare Short tried to get Page 3 outlawed because she said that it promoted sexism. She quickly got shouted down by other politicans and by the public who mocked her for being unattractive and whining. It seems to me that Clare Short had a point. If people, especially young kids, see this type of woman everywhere they go they might believe that woman are there to be eternally young and up for it, so to speak, and that it is okay to see them purely as sexual objects. Equality between men and women could be suffering from this, surely? Or is that sexuality is an important part of human life and people are just expressing themselves, and therefore to suppress it would be artificial? Any answers you can give would be great, thanks!
Nicholas D. Smith
January 5, 2006
(changed January 5, 2006)
Permalink
Surely anything that promotes sexism is, to the degree and for that reason, a bad thing. Truth is, the popular media and advertising reinforce all kinds of biases and prejudices (against older people, against people who do not fit social standards of beauty or attractiveness, against poo... Read more
I don't know if this is correct, but assume for a moment that it's fair to say that in the last two hundred or so years, people in the Western world believe less in God than they used to, and that in fact amongst the 'intelligentsia' a belief in God is seen as a sign of ignorance. It seems to me that if this is true there is something negative about it. There must be mystical aspects of life that science or rationality can't account for, and if the general belief in God deteriorates, what can mankind use to think about it? This might be confusing so I'll put it another way... a belief in God puts humans in a greater context than just themselves. It gives them some kind of connecting factor, and also a way to explain the abstract and intangible. If that goes, what happens to us? Can science and the mysteries of DNA and evolution accurately replace it? Don't we lose some beautiful, mysterious aspect of life? Or do we replace it with popular fiction, film, urban legends, etc? I'm sorry if this question is a little unclear, but it's a little unclear in my head which is why I thought I'd ask you guys. Thank you.
Nicholas D. Smith
January 5, 2006
(changed January 5, 2006)
Permalink
You want mysteries without God? For heaven's sake (well, maybe not...) just look around you! Despite all of the advances of science (about which, no one of us is wholly expert, nor could we even possibly be), the world will be filled with things we do not know and do not understand. Mo... Read more
What is ethical and right - Going for someone you love or for someone who loves you a lot? (Assuming that none are one sided relationships.) - Paenna
Alan Soble
January 5, 2006
(changed January 5, 2006)
Permalink
Would you prefer to be the one who is good but everything thinks is bad, or the one who is bad but everyone thinks is good? Would you prefer to be the one who loves (but is not loved in return as much or at all), or the one who is loved (but does not return the love as much or at all)? Both ques... Read more
I've noticed that when people show a lot of affection towards their pets, for example claiming that the pet is their best friend or grieving for a very long period of time after the pet dies or paying for expensive veterinary care even for relatively minor injuries/illnesses, other people are quite scornful and say things like, 'It's only a dog' or think that the person is crazy. This seems unfair to me. If someone did that for another human it would be seen as honourable. Why is animal companionship seen as less valuable as human companionship, or the affection that a person can feel for a pet less important than what they can feel for a human friend? It's the same thing as that most people would often rather kill a goat than kill another person. Why do we value the lives of animals so much less than humans? Is it just natural to care more about what is like us (like an extended version of racism?) Or is it because we attribute most importance to a human degree of intelligence or emotion? Should it be like this? I understand that someone asked this in regards to religion, but I'm not sure that even religious people give animals the same importance as humans. Thank you.
Nicholas D. Smith
January 5, 2006
(changed January 5, 2006)
Permalink
You make several points here, and I may not respond to all of them. But first, there may be any number of reasons why people regard non-human animals as not meriting the same degree of moral regard as human beings. I think (given the format of this site) it is probably best here simply... Read more
a lot of the time i lie about things to people so much so that i believe them and forget they were lies. for example i make up things about my past - really little things - like that when i was 5 years old i dressed like an alien every day and collected maps of the moon - but then i forget that this was a lie and i'm sure that it happened. because i think it is true i start to behave like it's true, i start reading about space a lot, for example, as if it's always been an interest of mine. my QUESTION is: if you behave like something is true, is it as good as being true? since it would have happened in the past and the past can't change, and it's now having effects on the future, and i believe it's true, why should it really be a lie anymore except technically?
Peter Lipton
January 5, 2006
(changed January 5, 2006)
Permalink
The past can't change, but what happened in the past affects what will happen in the future. Suppose that you didn't water your plant yesterday. If you believe this, then you will water your plant today and it will be fine. But if you falsely believe that you did water your plant yesterday,... Read more
Is there a clear-cut distinction between morality and ethics, or is the distinction to be found largely in linguistic usage? For example, immoral behaviour suggests behaviour that breaks some socially accepted code, but so does unethical behaviour. However, in the latter case, the code may be less widely applicable, such as a journalistic code of ethics. Or is it that morality has, at its base, religious belief, while ethics need not necessarily have that, but is more secular? Andrew Taylor
Nicholas D. Smith
January 12, 2006
(changed January 12, 2006)
Permalink
I agree that most philosophers use the terms interchangeably, and that there is no generally agreed upon distinction. But one reasons for thinking that there is a distinction to be made is to consider whether the general approach to values is rule-based or agent-based. Virtue theorist... Read more
Do computers defy the law of conservation of mass? Because, if a computer can copy a program there is twice the amount of space taken up. But how can you just duplicate an amount of space (MB, KB, GB,etc.) if you add nothing to it?
Richard Heck
January 4, 2006
(changed January 4, 2006)
Permalink
One way to think of why this might seem puzzling is in terms of the type-token distinction. To understand that distinction, consider the question how many words there are on the next line:
The The The The
You could answer "four" or you could answer "one", and both are correct. It's just that... Read more
If it was proved tomorrow that plants can feel pain, what would happen to the arguments of vegetarians who are vegetarians because they don't believe in causing animals pain?
Peter Lipton
January 4, 2006
(changed January 4, 2006)
Permalink
The main way we cause pain to aminals is through the way we raise them in factory farms, so even if plants could feel pain (though like Richard, I bet they don't), we might be able to grow and harvest them without causing them any more pain than, say, we cause a free-range chicken. But if for... Read more