I express concern for all involved: the owners, looters, bi-standers.... I have experienced times of scarcity and turmoil, but I am keenly aware that I am reading and responding to you in a coffee shop where conditions seem peaceful and I worry about being presumptuous in addressing someone in the midst of great turmoil. I suggest that a good number of philosophers may well be right in thinking that there is little difference between looting and stealing, but some such as Hobbes, among others have held that in a state of nature when there is a collapse of government and no sovereign power to impose limits which all subjects might agree to, it is "every person for him or her self." I suggest that such a reliance on government or contracts to provide a foundation for obligations and rights is implausible --that is, it cannot actually provide a moral duty for each person or citizen to comply with what is contracted or agreed upon and it also cannot do justice to a basic, intuitive sense we have of...

You have raised a question that goes to the heart of one of the most serious relationships: what is the moral role of fidelity and respect in terms of sexual relationships? For many of us in 'the west' the 'cheating' would be equally wrong for a male or female. Just as it would be equally wrong for a male or female to cheat in other areas of life to steal money from innocent children it would seem to be equally wrong for either to cheat on each other. But there are different social, cultural expectations that come into play in some places today that reflect an old, patriarchal bias that tends to look more strictly at cases of adultery or infidelity involving females rather than males. I suggest that there is no viable ethical or religious or evolutionary ground for this imbalance or unfairness today. So, while I suspect that any justification that gives greater allowance to the male is a reflection of distorted values, a perversion of a mature religion or simply bad anthropology, it should probably...

Dear Luca from Italy- When the topic of a principle of falsifiability came into philosophy in the 20th century it was used principally in reference to empirical experiences or observations that involved the senses or were derived from the senses. So, the question of whether a moral theory was shown to be false or might be shown to be false was a question about whether we might be able to make the kinds of observations that would expose the falsehood of an empirical claim about the radioactivity of some material. In that sense, I suppose it needs to be appreciated that moral theories are in a different category, and yet there might be and I suggest that there are different kinds of observations and experiences that can expose problems with moral theories. Some, but not all, philosophers believe that we have experiences of what is truly valuable intrinsically valuable as opposed to experiencing what may be valuable but only with respect to passing interests and desires. Arguably, my enjoying a pasta...

Fascinating question! Perhaps you are right that if we were paid for our responses, there would probably be more responses, but this might not mean that the responses would be better in quality. I have not seen a response yet keeping in mind I have not read all the responses that seemed to me to be done in a cursory manner, or in a way that would be less in quality if the question - response format was conducted professionally. I suggest that there may be no greater value as a rule for the superiority of value when persons act voluntarily or for free or for a promised reward money. Someone might volunteer to help the poor and do so because they have inherited great wealth, whereas another person who does not have such wealth and wants to help the poor may need to be paid if she is going to afford to do the work. Both persons might be equally compassionate and courageous Still, there are cases when it seems that a voluntary act may have greater merit: if someone refuses to be nice unless...

Your questions and observations are fascinating. On the first matter about money and capitalism, the answer seems to be that the bare use of money in a society would not (by itself) make it capitalist, but when you add the qualifier "in some degree" I think one must admit that the boundary between capitalist or free-market economies and those that are not can be vague. So, perhaps a more subtle response should be that insofar as citizens have money (whether this is earned or conferred on the basis of need or some other condition) that they can use to acquire different goods at their discretion (having alternatives they can select) without state coercion then that society has ("in some degree") a free market (or, if you like, it is a society in which capital can or does exchange owners in non-coercive or free trade). But, as long as we are not being too committed to such nuances, a non-captialist society (such as a socialist society) might still be thought of as non-capitalist even if it did allow for...

"Philosophy" is derived from the Greek for "love" and "wisdom" and it is often rendered as "the love of wisdom." So one reply to your question is that the proper object of philosophical inquiry is whatever is a fitting object of study in the practice of loving wisdom. So, historically, those recognized as "philosophers" have investigated the nature of reality (Ancient Greek philosophy included theories that anticipated the atomic theory of matter and evolution...), human nature, values (including ethics, accounts of beauty and ugliness good and evil), our capacities to know ourselves and the world, reflection on logic, perception, memory, the sacred (is there a God or divine or sacred reality such as the Tao), questions of social values, matters of governance (political philosophy), and so on. Arguably, the quest to live wisely (or in light of loving wisdom) involves seeking insights into a very broad array of topics that are difficult to limit. Sometimes historical events can shape the way...

I wish you all the best in your research and thinking about art and ethics. Here are some contemporary thinkers you would find engaging: Noel Carroll --his "Moderate Moralism" (originally published in the British Journal of Aesthetics in 1996 is not the "latest" but Carroll is a clear, engaging writer and he references some of the contributors to the issues at hand. Jerrold Levinson has an excellent anthology on aesthetics and ethics, Berys Gaut is another philosopher of interest, and Martha Nussbaum has probably been the most well published contributor seeking to tie moral education together with literature. In terms of early modern work, the "sentimentalists" (those who sought to understand both beauty and goodness) such as Hutchison would be good to investigate. I have a short book "Aesthetics: A Beginner's Guide" that addresses the relationship of ethics, beauty and excellence or the value of art. One reason for thinking that ethics trumps our concept of the autonomy of art (that is,...

The topic of trust is very, very important on all sorts of levels, from everyday exchanges, to contributing to this website, to ordering food at a restaurant, signing a loan to buy a car....In fact, it may be that TRUST of some kind, even if it is the minimal sense of having to trust your own thinking, may play an important role in virtually all our waking hours. I will put to one side whether there is trust in dreams! First consider a few observations about what is trust... At least in English, the word trust may be used widely; I might trust my computer to work, trust that it will not rain when I have to work with the homeless this afternoon as part of a charity project, and so on, but I suggest that its principle use is in terms of persons. In this sense, when you trust someone or something someone has made, you are doing something more than RELYING on the person to be predictable or EXPECTING a persons work to function as it has in the past. Trusting my students or them...

Fascinating inquiry! I do not recall articles or books explicitly on when it is good to commit fallacies, but you might find of interest the literature on the ethics of lying. There is a great deal of philosophical work on when, if ever, it is permissible to lie, and this probably would include work on when it is permissible to deliberately engage in fallacious resigning. One primary candidate for justified deception involves paternalism in extreme cases, e.g. in a medical crisis when a parent has only five minutes to live and she asks you whether her children survived an accident, and you know that her five children were killed, is it permissible to lie by claiming, for example, you are not sure? Or, to make the case more in line with your question, would it be permissible for you to not disclose the truth about her children if it could only be done by you equivocating or begging the question or committing the fallacy of the undistributed middle? For terrific work on the ethics of lying with...

I think you raise a great point. This is an area that is much debated, so my response should not be considered the official philosophical position. I think the direction of your thinking is sound. If we are to limit ourselves to the world as described and explained in an ideal physics, there is quite a lot of reality that seems to go missing. Actually, the very practice of physics seems to involve a great deal of phenomena (scientists making observations, constructing theories, exercising reason, and so on) that may not fit in very well with the picture of nature produced by physics (or a philosophy that gives primacy or exclusive authority to physics). Anyway, back to your point, I think you are right that to address living creatures and plants requires the life sciences (minimally). And we will need more to describe and explain events such as you and I writing and reading, and so on (psychological descriptions and explanations...). Of special interest to some, perhaps many philosophers is...