Everyday Ethics

Traveling by air has rapidly transformed from a moderately affordable activity to something that most cannot typically afford.  I am currently attempting to book a trip to Roanoke, Virginia for the Virginia Tech Philosophy Conference.  After much frustration due to not finding a reasonable flight price, I opted to contact a travel agent.  Unbeknownst to [...]

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Most people agree that it is important to do what is right.  In fact, we somewhat take for granted that it takes time to be ethical.  Morality is not always a simple task, and we need time to contemplate possible scenarios in order to figure out what we ought to do in a particular situation.  [...]

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After watching the last presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, I think its only appropriate to say something about rhetoric, and how it applies to our everyday ethical practices.  Luckily, these two candidates offer a great starting point for conversation, as they both do certain things very well, and other things very poorly.  [...]

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Not long ago I participated in a fundraiser to support the development of cancer treatments, with the stated end goal of finding a cure for cancer.  These sorts of events are quite common, and one tends to be motivated to participate by a sense of doing what is right.  However, after some philosophical reflections, I [...]

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Although this site is properly devoted to philosophical questions, it also seeks to offer the reader something with regard to how we might learn from and apply ethical principles to our daily lives.  As the presidential election quickly approaches, moral questions concerning health care, the Iraq war, economics, and a host of other relevant everyday [...]

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At the risk of alienating most of my family, I want to share a recent conflict between my sister and my father regarding the status of her cat.  This is interesting not because of its controversial and tendentious nature, but because it demonstrates the way in which definitional disputes are relevant to everyday ethical concerns.  [...]

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Although we typically offer discussion about how to interpret ethical principles embedded in our everyday activity, I want to take a moment to present something of value for my fellow PhD program hopefuls.  Specifically, I want to talk about perhaps the greatest scourge of the application process, the dreaded GRE test.
As a current graduate student [...]

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Personal confrontations are a part of life, and there is really no getting around that.  Most of us hate to confront people about issues that come up among us, and some people will avoid confrontations to the point of dysfunction.  Others are only too happy to confront people, but do so in a way that [...]

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We have already discussed the fact that striving to be ethical people is a process of training ourselves to make certain types of decisions.  It would be nice if being a more ethical and upstanding person was simply a matter of making the decision to do so.  But most of our ethical failures are rooted [...]

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