Set up a debate

Lying is never morally justified

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

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.

Eating animals is morally wrong

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.