In a recent article in this journal Professor Tibor Machan defends advertising from those who find that it is ‘anything but honorable’. According to Machan advertising is not merely honorable, but also natural, a virtual paradigm of cooperative behavior, and an essential component of human well-being. ‘If human life is a value, advertising is a value. It is a positive good.’ Machan concedes that sometimes people exposed to advertising make foolish choices, but that is explained by their lack of prudence, (...) not any fault of advertisers. He also appeals to our sense of fair play: advertisers are like us – people trying to earn a living, and even issues a veritable cri de coeur: Who among us hasn't tried to promote a book we've written? (shrink)

Mark Lovas asks to what extent are we all morally blind — and morally wanton? There are other sound reasons to destroy the Social Security system. It is based upon principles that are deeply offensive to the moral values of the political leadership … Social Security is based on the idea that it is a community responsibility to ensure that the disabled widow on the other side of town has food to eat, or that the child across the street should (...) be able to go to a decent school. Such evil ideas have to be driven from the mind. … According to right thinking, it isn't my fault if the widow married the wrong person or if the child's parents made bad investment decisions, so why should I contribute a few cents to a public fund to take care of them? (shrink)

If emotions such as sympathy are to play the role Oatley envisages for them, they cannot be condescending; they must be based on some real understanding. This is an essay about the difficulty of understanding, and, consequently, the difficulty of sympathy. So, it is a challenge to any philosopher who seeks to understand morality by assigning a strong role to the emotions.

Schifferś \'meaning-intention\' problem is aimed at \'hidden-indexical\' theories of belief ascription. Without defending such theories the author raises several questions about the assumptions behind Schifferś objection. Perhaps hidden-indexical theories don\'t tell us enough about how we can refer to modes of presentation, but Schifferś skepticism about our ability to know modes of presentation is unwarranted. The author sketches an account of the role of modes of presentation in ordinary psychological talk which is designed to answer Schifferś skeptical worries.