Topic library

Lying is never morally justified

Whether truthfulness is an exceptionless duty or one value that must sometimes give way to kindness, safety, or justice.

beginner

Good outcomes can justify morally questionable means

Whether the moral quality of an action is determined by its results or whether some acts are wrong regardless of what they achieve.

beginner

We owe as much to distant strangers as to our neighbors

Whether physical and social distance reduce our moral obligations, or whether every person's needs weigh equally regardless of relationship.

intermediate

Eating animals is morally wrong

Whether the pleasure and convenience of eating meat can justify killing and confining sentient creatures.

beginner

Moral truths exist independently of human opinion

Whether moral claims can be true or false in the way factual claims are, or whether they express attitudes, conventions, or choices.

advanced

Suffering is necessary for a meaningful life

Whether hardship is an essential ingredient of depth, growth, and meaning, or an evil to be minimized wherever possible.

intermediate

Democracy is the best form of government

Whether rule by the people is superior to rule by the wise, the strong, or the expert, and on what grounds.

beginner

Breaking an unjust law is a moral duty

Whether citizens are obligated to disobey laws they judge unjust, or whether the value of legal order requires obedience even to bad laws.

intermediate

Every citizen should receive an unconditional basic income

Whether guaranteeing everyone an income without conditions is a matter of justice and freedom, or a costly policy that undermines work and reciprocity.

intermediate

Borders should be open to anyone who wishes to migrate

Whether states have the right to exclude peaceful migrants, or whether freedom of movement is a basic human right that borders violate.

advanced

Free speech should protect even hateful expression

Whether the case for free expression extends to speech that demeans groups, or whether such speech may be restricted to protect the dignity and safety of its targets.

intermediate

The state may restrict choices to protect people from themselves

Whether governments may override individual choices for the individual's own good, or whether adults have a right to make their own mistakes.

intermediate

Sufficiently advanced AI deserves moral consideration

Whether an artificial system could have interests that matter morally, and what we would owe it if it did.

advanced

Social media does more harm than good

Whether the connection, expression, and information that social platforms provide outweigh the polarization, distraction, and mental health costs they impose.

beginner

Privacy should yield to security when the two conflict

Whether the state may monitor citizens to prevent crime and terrorism, and how much liberty a society should trade for safety.

intermediate

Parents should be allowed to genetically enhance their children

Whether parents may use genetic technology to improve their children's traits beyond preventing disease, and what that would do to parenthood, equality, and the children themselves.

advanced

A world without work would be a better world

Whether human beings would flourish if machines freed them from labor, or whether work is essential to meaning, dignity, and social order.

intermediate

Preserving a person's mind digitally would be a real continuation of that person

Whether a digital copy of a person's memories and personality would be that person, a new person, or no person at all.

advanced

Human beings have free will

Whether our choices are genuinely up to us, or whether they are determined by prior causes we did not choose.

intermediate

You are the same person you were ten years ago

Whether there is a persisting self that underlies change, or whether identity over time is a convenient fiction.

intermediate

Consciousness is nothing more than a physical process

Whether subjective experience can be fully explained by brain activity, or whether there is something about the mind that physics leaves out.

advanced

Emotions are a better guide to action than reason

Whether we should trust our feelings or our calculations when deciding how to act, and whether the two can even be separated.

beginner

The self is an illusion

Whether there is a unified subject at the center of experience, or whether the sense of being someone is constructed by processes with no one behind them.

advanced

Animals have minds in the same sense humans do

Whether the difference between human and animal mental life is one of degree or one of kind.

intermediate

There is such a thing as objective truth

Whether some claims are true regardless of who believes them, or whether truth is always relative to a perspective, culture, or framework.

intermediate

Science is the only reliable source of knowledge

Whether empirical science exhausts what can genuinely be known, or whether mathematics, ethics, introspection, testimony, and the humanities deliver knowledge of their own.

intermediate

We should defer to experts even when we disagree with them

Whether intellectual humility requires laypeople to adopt expert consensus over their own judgment, or whether such deference is a form of abdication.

beginner

We can be certain of anything at all

Whether any belief is immune to all possible doubt, or whether the most we can achieve is well-justified confidence.

advanced

Religious faith can be rational

Whether belief without conclusive evidence can be a reasonable stance, or whether faith by its nature is a failure of rationality.

intermediate

We can know moral facts the way we know scientific facts

Whether ethics has a subject matter that can be discovered and known, or whether moral claims express attitudes rather than describe facts.

advanced

Gender is a social construction rather than a natural fact

Whether the roles, expectations, and identities attached to being a man or a woman are made by societies or given by biology.

intermediate

Tradition deserves more respect than progress

Whether inherited practices carry accumulated wisdom that reformers should defer to, or whether attachment to the past is a barrier to improvement.

beginner

The purpose of education is to produce good citizens, not successful individuals

Whether schools exist to form people who can sustain a shared public life or to equip individuals to pursue their own advancement.

beginner

Adult children have a duty to care for their aging parents

Whether the relationship between parents and children generates binding obligations, or whether care must be freely given to be genuine.

beginner

Large inequalities of wealth are unjust even when acquired fairly

Whether the fairness of the process that produces a distribution is enough to justify it, or whether outcomes matter independently.

intermediate

Public shaming is a legitimate form of accountability

Whether collective condemnation of wrongdoers is a proper way for communities to enforce norms, or a form of mob punishment without limits or due process.

beginner

Life can be meaningful without God

Whether meaning requires a transcendent source that confers purpose, or whether human lives can be meaningful on their own terms.

intermediate

Happiness is the highest good

Whether the ultimate aim of a human life is to be happy, or whether other goods such as virtue, truth, or achievement matter independently of how they make us feel.

intermediate

Death is what gives life its meaning

Whether mortality is the condition that makes choices matter and lives take shape, or whether death is simply the deprivation of everything valuable.

advanced

It is better to strive for greatness than to be content

Whether the good life is one of restless striving toward excellence, or one of peace with what one has and is.

beginner

A good life requires solitude

Whether time alone is essential to self-knowledge, creativity, and depth, or whether the good life is fundamentally lived with others.

beginner

A society without art would be impoverished in a way that matters morally

Whether art is essential to the moral and human quality of a society, or a luxury that adds pleasure but not moral substance.

intermediate

The death penalty is justified for the worst crimes

Whether the state may deliberately kill a person as punishment, or whether the practice is incompatible with justice and human dignity.

beginner

Punishment should aim to rehabilitate, not to give offenders what they deserve

Whether the justification of punishment lies in transforming the offender and protecting society, or in the moral demand that wrongdoing be answered.

intermediate

One should obey the law even when it is unjust

Whether the duty to obey law holds independently of its content, or whether unjust laws release citizens from obligation and may demand resistance.

intermediate

Acts that harm no one but the actor should never be crimes

Whether the state may criminalise self-regarding conduct for the actor's own good or for public morality, or whether harm to others is the only legitimate ground for prohibition.

intermediate

Forgiveness matters more than justice

Whether releasing wrongdoers from resentment and penalty is a higher value than ensuring they receive what they deserve.

intermediate

Human rights exist by nature, not by agreement

Whether rights are discovered features of human beings that hold everywhere, or human inventions that exist only where they are recognised and enforced.

advanced