Everyday Ethics

First and foremost, thanks to all of you who have waited patiently while I have put this website on hold in order to deal with some personal matters.  In the past month I have become a parent, moved from Colorado to Ohio, and started a PhD program.  Needless to say, I’ve been busy.  But as [...]

[Read more →]

Last week, an FDA advisory panel recommended a number of significant changes regarding the sale and marketing of products that contain acetaminophen, which is the active ingredient in the popular over-the-counter painkiller Tylenol.  Three of their recommendations are especially significant.
First, they advised that Vicodin and Percocet be discontinued as prescription pain-relieving drugs.  They also suggested [...]

[Read more →]

Another boisterous 4th of July has come and gone, filled with the booms and bangs of fireworks being shot off, as well as the inevitable horrific fireworks injury that always seems to accompany this holiday.  This time, it was an exploding fireworks truck in North Carolina killing three people.  These dangerous results, as well as [...]

[Read more →]

As the Obama administration settles into its role in the White House, the issue of whether “advanced interrogation techniques” used by the Bush White House has resurfaced, with many calling for a formal investigation of the former President and his subordinates.  The debate largely centers around two key disagreements:  whether certain techniques, like water boarding, [...]

[Read more →]

Last week, I wrote an article discussing the ethics of purchasing foreclosed homes.  I suggested that there is something ethically suspect about doing so, and that when we do this, we run a very real risk of using others as a means to our ends.  Several individuals replied to this article by arguing that the [...]

[Read more →]

In a previous article, I discussed the recent proposal from the Obama administration, which suggested that billions of dollars might be saved and the needs of students better served if the U.S. government took over all educational lending.  The interesting side effect of this proposal is that it brings to the forefront a social conversation [...]

[Read more →]

A recent proposal by the Obama administration suggested a bold new direction for the way that student loans are administered in the United States.  Citing a potential savings of billions of dollars, Obama suggested that the U.S.  simply eliminate the middleman, the student loan industry itself, and make educational lending an agreement between students and [...]

[Read more →]

In a world of mass media, instant communication, and a myriad of differing opinions about dozens of topics, disagreement is an unavoidable aspect of our lives.  Couple that with the innate desire of many people to “win” in cases of conflict and the widespread lack of reasoning skills that plagues our society, and the stage [...]

[Read more →]

The Miss USA pageant is certainly not something that most people interested in philosophy pay attention to.  Frankly, I’m a little shocked that they can find enough women to participate in this thing, since it’s clearly a contest that evaluates women as objects.  That aside, the recent Miss USA pageant produced an interesting sound bite [...]

[Read more →]

Most people agree, for a variety of reasons, that there is something wrong with killing another person.  There are clear cases where killing is deemed acceptable, such as wartime, but this is not because killing is not bad in those cases.  To claim that killing is sometimes acceptable is just to claim that sometimes the [...]

[Read more →]