I'll start with 10 of my own.
1. Moral decisions should be based on empathy and empathy alone. I define empathy as being emotionally insync with another being's state of mind (ie. happy because they are happy and sad when they are sad). This view naturally leads to ethical hedonism - the belief that pleasure/happiness is the only thing that is intrinsically good and suffering is the only thing that is intrinsically bad. If an action does not cause someone to suffer or frustrate their desire to be happy, it is not morally wrong. If an action does not minimize suffering or increase happiness, it is not beneficial.
2. All third world debts should be abolished. It is wrong for Western governments to demand payment for debts accumulated by corrupt governments that were not democratically elected.
3. Pedophilia is a sexual orientation, there is nothing inherently perverse about it nor is child-adult sex inherently harmful. I'm not saying that child-adult sex should not be discouraged but it should only be discouraged on the basis that the child might come to regret the experience (especially having been raised in a culture that would condition him/her to view the act as harmful and inappropriate in retrospect despite being consensual and harmless at the time) and suffer as a result, I think that children/young teens are more emotionally vulnerable than are adults. Simulated child pornography should be legal, pedophiles should have a right to express their sexuality so long as they don't act on their desires.
4. Marriage (including civil unions) as a legal institution should be abolished. Your personal relationships are none of the government's business. There is a religious component to Western/modern marriage and there should be a separation between church and state. Until that day comes, homosexual couples and polyamorous couples should have the same legal benefits that heterosexual and monogamous couples do.
5. Non-human animals (and we should assume that every animal with a nervous system might be sentient, no matter how different or unlike our own it may be) deserve the same equal consideration that humans do, sentience is the only morally relevant criterion and there are no 'higher' or 'lower' degrees of consciousness. Factory farming, vivisection, driving non-domesticated animals from their homes through deforestation/habitat destruction etc. aren't any more acceptable than they would be if the victims were humans. The interests (all sentient beings have an interest in pursuing happiness and avoiding distress) of all sentient beings are equally important and should be given equal respect.
6. Until science comes up with a solution for global warming and genetically engineering humans who are incapable of experiencing non-trivial distress or behaving anti-socially becomes possible, it would be compassionate to avoid reproducing.
7. There is nothing wrong with being sexually promiscuous and there is nothing noble or appropriate about being monogamous. Romantic love/sexual desire is selfish and amoral. Sex is an inherently intimate act but you don't copulate or start a relationship with someone because you feel empathy for them (even if you do), you do so for your own selfish reasons, because it benefits you. You can't force yourself to be attracted to someone you respect or care about even if you could force yourself to have a sexual/romantic relationship with them for purely altruistic reasons, you're not attracted to someone because you feel they deserve your attraction or because you think they would benefit from it. Empathy has the potential to be unconditional and universal (for all sentient beings), sexual/romantic attraction is selective and shallow to the extent that it's based on physical appearance. People should stop moralizing sex. I would also argue that while there's no moral reason to have more than one partner, it would be empathetic to allow your partner the freedom to have other sex/romantic partners if doing so would make them happy.
8. Physical phenomenon is all that exists. There is no God and no such thing as a 'soul'. Since the brain is just a physical object, it behaves according to the same laws of physics that every other physical object in the (macro) universe does. People don't choose to behave the way they they do, they mindlessly react to environmental stimuli and experience the illusion of having chosen to do so after they've already 'decided' to do so (this is supported by modern neuroscience). Nobody deserves to be punished or rewarded for their behavior. Even quantum randomness would still not be 'free will' in the sense that most people use the word. Despite believing this intellectually it's difficult for me to accept it emotionally which is why I don't feel empathy for most human beings.
9. Circumcising male infants for non-medical reasons is wrong.
10. Fiction is a better vehicle for moral commentary than ethics as an academic discipline is. Philosophy is abstract, fiction shows how moral ideas and views can be applied in real life scenarios. Besides, fiction can generate empathy by forcing you to put yourself in the shoes of the characters you read about. " You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it" - Atticus from To Kill A Mockingbird.
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Originally Posted by African_Love
