1、Many contend that homosexual sex is “unnatural.“ But what does that mean? Many things that people value-clothing, houses, medicine, and government, for example-are unnatural in some sense. On the other hand, many things that people detest-disease, suffering, and death, for example-are “natural“ in t
2、he sense that they occur “in nature.“ If the unnaturalness charge is to be more than an empty rhetorical flourish, those who levy it must specify what they mean. (Corvino, 68)Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out
3、 what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. (Bentham, 42)We need merely note the intricacy of the question of what matters for people other than their experiences. Until one finds a satisfactory answer, and determines that this answer does not also apply to animals, one cannot re
4、asonably claim that only the felt experiences of animals limit what we may do to them. (Nozick, 46)We now have before us the concept of an irrational desire or aversion: one that would not survive cognitive psychotherapy, at least with its present strength. And we have the concept of a rational desi
5、re or aversion: one that is not irrational. How nearly does the notion of the rationally desired approximate to the concept of the good? (Brandt, 634)Spending ones days performing a task that one rightly regards as boring arduous and useless is not something we would ordinarily consider advantageous
6、, and so we can plausibly assume that when the self-punisher carries out his plan, he is not only trying to act against his good, but he succeeds in harming himself, despite the fact that he gets precisely what he wants. It would be dogmatic and counter-intuitive to insist that he must benefit from
7、his punishment simply because he desires it. (Kraut, 41)It is admittedly true that many of the things I want, I want only on the assumption that I am going to be alive; and some people, for instance some of the old, desperately want certain things when nevertheless they would much rather that they a
8、nd their wants were dead. (Williams, 85)“Hello, my name is Josiah. I am interested in having a sexual experience with you. I can assure you that I am good at it, and that I have no communicable disease. If it sounds good to you and if you have taken the proper contraceptive precautions, we might hav
9、e a go at it. Of course, I want to make clear to you that I am interested only in the sexual experience, and that I have no intention of making any long-range commitment to you.“ If those who defend the morality of premarital sexual unions so long as they are honestly entered into, think that I have
10、 misrepresented what they mean by honesty, then they must specify what they mean by an honest premarital union. (Punzo, 280)There are two ways of conceiving global poverty as a moral challenge to us. We may be failing to fulfill our positive duty to help persons in acute distress. And we may be fail
11、ing to fulfill our more stringent negative duty not to uphold injustice, not to contribute to or profit from unjust impoverishment of others. (Pogge, 60)Of course pornography is fiction, and does not purport to be anything other than fiction. However, fiction is not supposed to be devoid of all fact
12、ual truth; indeed, fiction should contain truths about human nature, about motivation, about power, and so on. Consequently, although pornographic material may make no claim to be describing actual states of affairs, we might say that it offers a perspective on the actual nature of womankind. The pe
13、rspective offered by Victim Pornography is that, in general, women are narcissistic, masochistic, and not fully persons in the moral sense. (Hill, 118) Animals (that is, nonhuman animals, the ordinary sense of that word) lack this capacity for free moral judgment. They are not beings of a kind capab
14、le of exercising or responding to moral claims. Animals therefore have no rights, and they can have none. This is the core of the argument about the alleged rights of animals. The holders of rights must have the capacity to comprehend rules of duty, governing all including themselves. In applying such rules, the holders of rights must recognize possible conflicts between what is in their own interest and what is just. Only in a community of beings capable of self-restricting moral judgments can the concept of a right be correctly invoked. (Cohen, 486)
