I examine the three most prominent examples of recent terrorism, and conclude that they lack any justification. In extreme instances where justification might be possible, there is no terrorism. I argue (1) that we need to confront the overwhelming force of mass illusions that lead to terrorism and its support; (2) that the belief, encouraged by the international laws of warfare, that terrorism is never justified, might be a "positive illusion"; and (3) of the dangers of the belief that we should permit terrorism in the fight by the weak against oppression.

Hard determinism is commonly thought to have grave moral consequences. Without attempting to fully deny this, I explore a previously unnoticed apparent ethical advantage of a belief in hard determinism. The lack of concern with personal desert which accompanies belief in hard determinism seems to make possible a form of purer morality' than ordinary morality. In the process I briefly consider some perplexities of Kantianism, the personal' difficulty of being a hard determinist, and the question as to whether non- utilitarian ethical considerations are possible with hard determinist premises.

People do not always really believe what they take themselves to believe. Sometimes a person may report having an attitude which conflicts with his better judgment -- his opinion. In these cases the person?s (evidential) beliefs are not apparent to the person in the normal way, and are not judgment-sensitive in a way that they are supposed to be. Beliefs of this kind can be called alien attitudes, or more narrowly, alien beliefs. They are attitudes or beliefs that fail to be sensitive to the person?s regular processes of introspection and evaluation and are known by him merely through behavioral and psychological evidence that he has noticed about himself, or learned about himself from others. When a person is aware of his beliefs in this way, he is not committed to their truth or overall acceptability; he has not endorsed them. We explore some issues that pertain to the ethics of such attitudes.

TBA

In "The Paradox of Moral Complaint" I took up the question whether a person who has wronged others in certain ways may morally complain if other people then harm him illegitimately in similar ways. I argued that there are strong grounds for saying both 'yes' and 'no' here and, therefore, that our considered moral views are paradoxical. In her reply, Talia Shaham disagrees with the no part of my position. She presents two appealing philosophical arguments, and concludes that there is no 'paradox of moral complaint', seeking in particular to defend the unconditional moral 'right' of wronged wrongdoers to complain, as against my claims. I attempt to defend my position against her arguments.

"Teflon immorality'' (or TI) is immorality that goes on unchecked -- the wrongdoing is not stopped and its perpetrators, beyond the reach of punishment or other sanction, often persist in their immoral ways. The idea that the immoral prosper has been recognized as morally (and legally) disturbing presumably for as long as humanity has been reflective, and can be found already in the Bible. The reasons behind a great deal of successful immorality are important practically, but uninteresting philosophically. Sometimes, however, we face events that are more interesting philosophically, and Teflon immorality results from oddities such as moral paradoxes and perversions. These, however, have remained largely unnoticed. I will outline a tentative survey of this topic. After showing its pervasiveness and importance, I will briefly reflect on its relevance to the way we should think about morality and about the means to further it, and confront possible objections.

TBA