Set up a debate

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Forgiveness matters more than justice

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