People's wants are not fixed; they generally want what others in their chosen comparison class appear to be enjoying and what advertising presents to them as attainable for them and as bringing happiness.

Order can arise from chaos without anyone or anything directing the process when unstable combinations of atoms perish and others persist. In the 17th century, Descartes applied this insight to cosmology, and long before Darwin presented his more rigorous ideas about variation and selection, people began to speculate more openly about the origins of life and the species in Epicurean terms.

There are people who organise the contest, winners, losers, and people who benefit from the contest taking place.

There's nothing a priori good about equality. One person has three televisions, the other has two, so what?

There is no single test or formula for producing moral progress anymore than there is for generating scientific truths. It is a process involving theoreticians, fact-gatherers, protestors, martyrs for the cause, authors of first- person narratives who change the way we see and evaluate the distribution of harms and benefits.

We need grief as a precursor to emotional refreshment, and so consume it vicariously in somewhat titrated but powerful enough form through engagement with the arts.

A moral rule is essentially 'advantage-reducing.' It prohibits you doing something you could do that would serve your interests at someone else's expense.