Should we expect ethics to be easy to understand?
For instance, natural law theorists often justify their ethical beliefs based on a complex metaphysical worldview that involves teleology and God, using arguments that are not particularly accessible to someone who is not trained in philosophical reasoning. To the uninitiated, these arguments can appear to be very intimidating and the conclusions can even seem counter-intuitive.
Yet more philosophers will justify positions like consequentialism, or Kantian ethics, that can also be based on quite complex metaphysical theories. Anyone who is familiar with Parfit knows how complicated detailed consequentialist theories are. And Kant as well. Both show that aspects of these theories can lead to counter-intuitive or even absurd conclusions.
It seem to me that for the most part, people live their lives on a situation-by-situation basis, evaluating what is right and wrong based on different drives that can be contradictory. The best advocate for this view, in my opinion, is W. D. Ross with this ethics of prima facie duties. These include fidelity, beneficence, non-malevolence, self-improvement, and gratitude. It also seems to me that compassion or empathy is a fundamental aspect of ethical behavior, something that Schopenhauer argued for.
What is interesting is that both theories of Ross and Schopenhauer, while complicated in their exposition, ultimately come to a fairly simple conclusion that may easily have been arrived at without much philosophical thought at all. Putting the point more directly, it seems like philosophers can oftentimes over-complicate philosophical issues, ethical and otherwise.
Since ethics concerns itself at least in part with daily decisions and behavior, should a criteria of an ethical system be that it is simple and easy-to-understand? Should we expect an ethical system to provide not just a theoretical but also a pragmatic guide to life?
Yet more philosophers will justify positions like consequentialism, or Kantian ethics, that can also be based on quite complex metaphysical theories. Anyone who is familiar with Parfit knows how complicated detailed consequentialist theories are. And Kant as well. Both show that aspects of these theories can lead to counter-intuitive or even absurd conclusions.
It seem to me that for the most part, people live their lives on a situation-by-situation basis, evaluating what is right and wrong based on different drives that can be contradictory. The best advocate for this view, in my opinion, is W. D. Ross with this ethics of prima facie duties. These include fidelity, beneficence, non-malevolence, self-improvement, and gratitude. It also seems to me that compassion or empathy is a fundamental aspect of ethical behavior, something that Schopenhauer argued for.
What is interesting is that both theories of Ross and Schopenhauer, while complicated in their exposition, ultimately come to a fairly simple conclusion that may easily have been arrived at without much philosophical thought at all. Putting the point more directly, it seems like philosophers can oftentimes over-complicate philosophical issues, ethical and otherwise.
Since ethics concerns itself at least in part with daily decisions and behavior, should a criteria of an ethical system be that it is simple and easy-to-understand? Should we expect an ethical system to provide not just a theoretical but also a pragmatic guide to life?
Comments (25)
Isn't it as simple as personal accountability based on compassion (com + patti). Which cannot be expected from people.
~Hillel the Elder
Easy enough to understand.
Only intellectually. Hard to live by, especially by those who deny accountability.
The social arrangements based on the unethical exploitation and profiteering of the many by the few, right. The proof is in the pudding. Like the OP says, there is no need to be an intellectual idiot. One doesn’t have to look outside. A quick honest look at oneself will confirm the lip service.
Yet the antisocials and the freeriders can do extremely well in life. How do you explain that?
Ethics has always been the concern of a few (persecuted and ostracized) . Often marginalized and on the fringes of society.It has to be that way, since they won't be a a part of the unethical exploitation of each other, which is at the core of society and it''s arrangements.
Like the OP mentions, ethics is supposed to be lived, not theorized about and then forgotten.
Morality is dead easy to explain, and I have done so.
Nobody touched my theories, except complained that the first version I posted here was too long.
So I posted the shorter version.
Morality (ethics) is clear-cut, easy to explain, easy to see for what it is.
Except people of course are horrified by new ideas. There is resistance. Huge resistance.
But nobody gave critical analysis that defeats my theory. They just ignore it. I suspect that is so because there are no holes in the theory.
Anyway, here're the long and short of it:
Long, detailed version:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10744/ethics-explained-to-smooth-out-all-wrinkles-in-current-debates-neo-darwinist-approach
Short version:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10903/shortened-version-of-theory-of-morality-some-objected-to-the-conversational-style-of-my-paper
Quoting darthbarracuda
The point of ethical theories is to sift through all the incidentals and zero in on the essence and see if it's possible to build a working ethical model centered on that - happiness (consequentialism) and duty (Kantian ethics), etc. It reminds me of science - reducing even the most complex phenomena to a set of simple principles. It bears mentioning that, in line with your thoughts, ethics too, like the chaos of a pitched battle is nothing but pressure, maybe just as simple. The complexity we perceive in ethical issues is then only an illusion.
Sure, if daily decisions and behavior are simple and easy to understand. That isn't typically the case, however.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Moral development evolves within individuals and cultures. A one-size-fits-all would stifle development and lead to rigidity.
Quoting 180 Proof
Often that which is hateful to you defines the very essence of that which defines the thinking that goes beyond you.
Just about every innovation in social ideas was despised as immoral, dangerous, regressive , by the old guard.
Course a deeper investigation into ethics has to eventually get into other facets such as the non-ethical, the half-ethical, the infra-ethical, and the supra-ethical.
Yes, there do seem to be simple ethical principles that we tend use, like the Golden (or Platinum) rule, personal accountability, compassion, virtues (like courage or discipline), etc.
But as pragmatic as these principles can be, there are holes in them. They contradict each other. There is no one-size-fits-all. A more complicated theory may be less pragmatic, but it might also be more self-consistent. Is the question under-determined?
One thought I had was that, similar to Sellars' manifest/scientific image, there could be a manifest/"enlightened" morality. Buddhism has its bodhisattvas and buddhas, enlightened ones who have learned the middle path, for instance.
I like your point about the illusion of complexity. Very interesting.
Point out the "hole" in the golden rule below, I can't find one.
"That which is hateful to you, do not do to anyone."
~Hillel the Elder
Btw, Confucius had proposed more or less the same principle centuries earlier.
One or a few simple rule(s) [mechanics] and we have chaos [gas particles demo] :point:
Complexity (chaos) is an illusion then, no?
The rule with gas molecules is rather simple: Hey gas particles, remember how you move is determined by the angle and the force with which you're struck under the rubric of the law of conservation of momentum. All gas particles follow this rule and yet, the motion of all the particles is/seems disorderly/chaotic, almost as if there are no rules.
Something similar maybe happening in the moral universe just like in the particle universe - there could be a very simple, easy-to-understand moral rule we all, looks like unwittingly, follow but when we zoom out and look at the bigger picture as it were, it's chaos, another name for complex/complicated.
Without getting too much into it, reason points us to couple of facts: Either we are always going to live by superficial and convenient interpretations of reality/facts (ethics, in this case,) or, we may have to jump into the deeper end. The former is a comforting, compromised, conformity, that holds on to our existence, the latter is an acceptance of non-existence. In the former the person can never have what it takes to accept non-existence and will therefore always live within conformity, compromise (compromised ethics), and fear. In the latter there will be an un-compromising ethics as there is no fear of non-existence. Needless to say the ratio between the two will probably be something like like 1 Billion-to-2 people.
Quoting 180 Proof
You say here that we can only apply the golden rule as much as practically able, and that no viable ethics is a suicide-pact, but this seems to presuppose that ethics is compatible with living.
There is an Argentine philosopher I have studied on-and-off, Julio Cabrera. He is developing a "negative ethics" that keeps in mind the structural problems of life, and advocates antinatalism. He believes that ethics is normally not radical enough. Cabrera would argue that people, simply by being alive, are disqualified from nearly all real ethical behavior. The situations in which we find ourselves in, and the constitution of our bodies are such that we can only ever approximate ethical behavior.
Then there are some of the Stoics, who thought it better to commit suicide than to lose ones virtue.
Do you believe ethics and life are congruent?
I'm an aretaic-negative consequentialist myself which, I suppose, has some affinities; I understand that 'the highest good is the prevention or reduction of both harm and injustice' (but not the elimination, or suspension, of ethical praxis itself (pace Kierkegaard)). I'm also antinatalist by conscience, not normatively by policy.
Yeah, just like epistemology which describes only approximate truths and fallibilistic knowledge. Such is the relation of maps to the territory. By "radical" in this context, all Cabrera can mean is "formal" (or ideal), that is, like Kant's 'categorical imperative', inapplicable to actual, messy, living situations. His complaint is, to my mind, silly. Academic skeptics in the Hellenistic era had claimed knowledge was impossible because "knowledge is never conpletely certain" – same nonsense as Cabrera's "ethical behavior ... is normally not radical enough". So what? Ethics is sufficiently adaptive, or flexible, in many of its pragmatic expressions (i.e. moral norms) such as Hillel's / Confucius' golden rule, etc.
No doubt, for some it was better. Normatively viable? Of course not. Thus my recommendation of Nussbaum's (work on stoic) 'moral luck'. How does it make sense, ceteris paribus, for failure itself – even vice – to precipitate suicide (i.e. a permanent solution to temporary problem)? Seems nearly pathological to me, like religious martyrdom, which no doubt is one of the reasons why the Catholic Church looked favorably upon the Stoics (adapting selectively e.g. "Serenity Prayer") and simultaneously condemned Epicureans as heretics (e.g. "tetrapharmakos") as almost from its beginning.
More than that I believe Human life [natality + eusociality + fatality] is the Ur-ethical concern insofar as sentient living presupposes valuing; this ancient insight into our existential condition (re: ethos, or habitat & ethikos, or of habits – the latter for adequately sustaining the former) very much still holds true.