Everyday Ethics

A close friend of mine recently had a sudden and unexpected death occur in his family.  He was not close to his brother, whose drug-abusing lifestyle made his death somewhat less shocking than it otherwise might have been.  In spite of all this, my friend instantly recognized an obligation to help with funeral arrangements, attend [...]

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It is a commonly held belief that scientific inquiry is a value-free endeavor.  This ideology of science states that because ethical claims, concepts, and ideas cannot be verified empirically, they are not real in a sense that is relevant to science.  This position has recently been widely challenged, and this ideology continues to erode under [...]

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Freedom is one of the most challenging and important questions in metaphysics.  In our own freedom-loving society, it is often taken for granted that we are free to do what we want, at least for the most part.  But there is an important distinction between political and metaphysical freedom, and how we address the second [...]

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Philosophy is constantly in a state of having to defend its legitimacy to both the rest of the academic community, and to the world at large. This is evidenced by the common reply of people finding out that I study philosophy, “what are you going to do with that?” Our society assumes, with [...]

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     In an era when the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese has agreed to a settlement of $660 million dollars with the numerous victims of sexual abuse at the hands of their clergy members, it only seems fitting to discuss the relationship between religion, ethics, and behavior.  There is a simple yet significant point to be [...]

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     It’s always fun to go back and read your own work.  I often look back at articles that I have written and wonder “why did I say that?” or “that doesn’t even make sense.”  Occasionally, I impress myself, which is fun.  And sometimes, I am forced to admit a deficiency in my own writing, [...]

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It is inevitable that as certain scientific claims are brought to light, corresponding ethical questions follow.  For example, if it were suddenly discovered that all mammals are without question highly sentient creatures that have complex emotional response systems as well as traits that could only be called “consciousness”, the moral debate over the appropriate treatment [...]

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Ethics typically involves trying to make difficult choices under less than ideal conditions. However, there is a language error that often takes place when we talk about ethics, and it creates the illusion that ethics is far more complicated than it truly is. Most ethical questions revolve around the resolution of some sort [...]

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