In my live Philosophy in Action Webcast on Sunday morning, I’ll answer questions on tenacity in pursuit of goals, sex without love, the ethics of helping inept co-workers, giving back to your communities, and more. Please join us for this hour of lively discussion, where we’ll apply rational principles to the challenges of living virtuous and happy lives!

• What: Live Philosophy in Action Webcast
• Who: Diana Hsieh (Ph.D, Philosophy) and Greg Perkins
• When: Sunday, 8 January 2012 at 8 am PT / 9 am MT / 10 am CT / 11 am ET
• Where: www.PhilosophyInAction.com

Here are the questions that I’ll answer this week:

• Question 1: Tenacity in Pursuit of Goals: How can I become more tenacious in pursuit of my goals? I find that I give up too easily on some of my goals, particularly when success is far away and much effort is required now. What can I do to make myself more tenacious?
• Question 2: Sex Without Love: Is sex without love or romance irrational? Is it wrong to have sex with someone that you don’t love – or don’t love yet? (Here, assume that the person isn’t unworthy, but just that you’re not in love.) Couldn’t that be the start of romance? What if you don’t have any intentions of pursuing a romantic relationship with this person?
• Question 3: The Ethics of Helping Inept Co-Workers: Is it moral to help inept co-workers? On my team at work, we have only a very few people who use their time productively. We all get paid for 8 hours of “work”, every day, but most of my team would rather talk on their phone, hide from management, and underperform at their job. We also belong to a union, which makes it harder for management to fire the ones who don’t work despite being informed about the situation. I often find myself in the position of helping these people, or going in behind them and fixing their work. I am beginning to feel taken advantage of, and am getting fed up with most of my co-workers. Is it moral to continue helping people who do not take their own work seriously?
• Question 4: Giving Back to Your Communities: Is a person ever obliged to “give back to the community”? Businesses often speak about their charitable work as “giving back to the community.” I know that’s wrong, because they didn’t take anything from it in the first place. But when a person benefits from a certain group or organization, should he “give back” to it by volunteering his time or donating his money? Why or why not?

After that, we’ll do a round of totally impromptu “Rapid Fire Questions.”

If you can’t attend the live webcast, you can listen to these webcasts later as audio-only podcasts by subscribing to the NoodleCast RSS feed:

• Enhanced M4A Feed: Subscribe in iTunes or your RSS reader
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You can also listen to full episodes or just selected questions from any past episode in the Webcast Archive. Also, don’t forget to submit and vote on the questions that you’d most like me to answer from the ongoing Question Queue.

I hope to see you on Sunday morning!