What is Ethics?
This is actually embarrassing to ask because I feel I understand exactly how to go about being ethical. Its a rather simple formula: do nothing to sabotage that which is preceived as the highest common interest of all sentient beings.
Examples: the majority of sentient beings( as far as we precive) wants to avoid misery, fear, pain, suffering, and enslavement.
Then their are sub categories such as "human ethics" which only pertain to the majority of human beings highest common interest.
Is this an accurate understanding?
Examples: the majority of sentient beings( as far as we precive) wants to avoid misery, fear, pain, suffering, and enslavement.
Then their are sub categories such as "human ethics" which only pertain to the majority of human beings highest common interest.
Is this an accurate understanding?
Comments (46)
So ethics is not defined by the majorities common interests?
Or is it? And you must theorize and or prove what that common intetest is, or present something that you theorize or prove most closely meets that common interest?
Quoting Cuthbert
I don't see acting ethically, if that's the right word for what I try to do, as the supporting "the highest common interest of all sentient beings." To me it's much more personal. I like people in general and individually. I think that's hardwired into all of us. I haven't met many people I don't like, or at least recognize. I try to see them as they are and I try to treat them with good will and compassion. I often fail.
Cuthbert is right. That's different from studying ethics. I don't get the point of that, or if I do, I think everything that needs to be said about it can be summarized as "Try to see people as they are and try to treat them with good will and compassion."
Thats entirely to vague for me, even if its merely a suggestion, and not an attempt to define ethics.
I insist that killing can be as much of an act of compassion as keeping someone alive can be. It all depends on how much they suffer, what they would rather suffer, ect. Others will insist otherwise.
Good will can be defined as leaving someone in a difficult situation so that they can gain more from the trail and error proccess than they would from your assistance. Others will disagree.
All of those things are better off left self defined, but the common interest of humanity could be established with enough communication. It's likely that we all wan't the option of life or death, misery or happiness, pain or suffering.
Perhaps, but now you have identified the "good" with "highest common interest of all sentient beings". And like Moore, we can ask, is this really good? In the sense that:
"The highest common interest of all sentient beings is good"
is equivalent to
"The highest common interest of all sentient beings is the highest common interest of all sentient beings."
The latter is a tautology, but the former seems like a synthetic statement. They don't seem to be equivalent.
There isn't one single definition of "ethics", just as there isn't a single definition of "good". Roughly, I would say that ethics is the study of how we ought to act, which includes what things are good, what determines right/obligatory/permissible/wrong acts to be this way, as well as related issues about ethics (meta-ethics).
In a nutshell, then, the goal of ethics is to ascertain how we ought to live. Life throws us into ambiguous situations in which the course of action is not clearly defined, and we need advice for what to do in these situations. Life is also a continual process of growth and decay, and those interested in ethics want to know what makes this process go best, i.e. what it takes to be a good person and to lead a good life.
I don't think it's vague at all. As I said in my post, it is completely personal - it's based on what I personally mean by "Try to see people as they are and try to treat them with good will and compassion." At the same time, I propose it as universal - Everyone should try to see people as they are and try to treat them with good will and compassion - using their own standards to determine what that means.
Can you define it for yourself? If so, no problem. If not, I think your goal should be to learn how to define how to, rather than come up with some formal system.
I'm not concerned with whats good or bad, I'm concerned with desire. Also allow me to correct that part if my passage; the highest "agreed upon" common interest of the "perceived majority" of sentient beings "by the perceived majority of sentient beings"
And I haven't defined the "good" with that statement, I have defined the "desired".(hypothetically)
That could be used to justify slavery. I think my standard is much less vague than yours is.
The greatest precived number, forget good or bad, I'm not trying to find good or bad, I'm trying to "identify" the "desire".
So the greatest desire then? Well, that dosen't matter to me, only my desire matters to me. My hypothesis is that my desire is in line with the majority of humanities; which gives me a chance to make the world the way I "prefer" it to be vs. the way it is now. Taking into account the fact that we must think in order to determine our greatest personal desire.
Both our approaches use the same method to determine whether an ethical goal has been met - an appeal to personal preference. The difference is in the goals.
Quoting XanderTheGrey
As I said previously, this can be used to justify slavery. You say "forget good or bad." So, ethical behavior can be morally wrong? I've heard people say that before. I don't understand how that could be.
Define what exactly for myself?
I've made an attempt to define ethics, and "identify" my "desire" in comparison with "the greastest common interest of the precived majority of humanity" but defining "good" is pointless, there is no such thing, there is only desire.
So what I'd like to see in the worlds modern day community is an attempt to establish "an agreed apon greatest common interest of the precived majority of humanity "by" the precived majority of humanity(not just me)" and then see if it is inline with mine, if so, I will know wether or not its worth it for me to be focused and involved with the changing of the future.
Depending on what you hold as your morals yes.
Slavery cannot exactly be identified. It cannot be delineated at least, how do you delineate slavery from freedom, we could all be slaves to a higher power and or grater intellegnce and we wouldn't even know it. What I am confident that I can identify, is my desire.
I have seen desire fufilled more in precived slavery than in precived freedom. Just as I much more often see it the other way around in others.
I understand that I am very undereducated and not well versed in philosophy, and that this can likely be chalked up and identified into and with a number of terms and pre-established areas of philosophy; so I appreciate the willingness of so many on this site to countinue obliging me in such discussions.
I think we agree on this part.
Quoting XanderTheGrey
I don't think that's a good argument, but let's change slavery to genocide.
Why is defining "ethical" ok, but defining "moral" is pointless? It strikes me that they are at the same level of abstraction and deal with similar issues.
Very well, genocide is something I have yet to see anyone from the inside be amused with, or have a desire for ever again, and this includes those that reported 80-90% fulfillment of their desires in a rather authentic form of slavery, compared to 1-10% fulfillment in todays common preception of freedom.
[quote=XanderTheGrey;107588]the highest "agreed upon" common interest of the "perceived majority" of sentient beings "by the perceived majority of sentient beings"[/quote]
So could this attepmt of mine to define ethics as shown above; justify genocide? Ofcourse it could, poor little Saloth Sar, such a failure, but I admire what Pol Pot was trying to do, regardless of the fact that he failed, and that it was impractical.
Genocide would be a last resort I think, further reaserch is needed, it all depends how effective it can be in comparison with other methods of approach.
I agree, it could.
As I said in a previous post:
Quoting T Clark
If, as you say, it could be ethical to kill millions of innocent people, I don't think we have enough commonality to even discuss the issue.
Excellent question, I'm operating under the assumption that ethics and morals are not quite the same thing. With what's "ethical" being defined by the majority, with common values, and with what's "moral" being defined by each individual, with their personal values.
If they are the same thing, or I have failed to define ethics, then my only concern remains wether or not "the highest agreed upon common interest of the perceived majority of human beings, by the perceived majority of human beings" is in line with my highest interest for the fate of the world. I just didn't want to leave nearly a paragraph where a word could suffice.
Quoting T Clark
Maybe not ethical, given that I am failing to or even incapable of deteriming what ethics are; but as I said I am primarily only concerned with determining what the most desirable resulting future of the majority of humanity is.
What does the pecived majority of humanity desire? And how does that compare with what I desire for our fate, is it common enough with my vision for me to bother participating? Or should I simply focus on what I wan't for my own life(given that the majority would win out against my efforts). What would you call that specific area of study? Am I on the verge of needing to coin my own term?
And we should discuss what each of our visions for humanity are, and determine any form of commonality or differentiation between those, before hunting for commonality or differentiation between eachothers methods. For if our vision for the worlds future is different to beging with, why would it matter what our methods are?
I'm not sure what it means either. As I said in one of my posts, I've been told that something can be ethical and still wrong. The example used was that if it is common to cheat people in business, it may be wrong and it may be illegal, but it is ethical.
Quoting XanderTheGrey
My vision for humanity - "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [s]men[/s] people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Definitely does not mean "the pursuit of happiness through any methods yes?" Ofcourse not. The majority of human beings do not wan't sadists on the loose I think. I'll write about my prefered vision for humanities future later, time for me to move out for now.
But then what relation does this have to ethics?
None perhaps, but that wasn't my initial impression, and as T Clark explained, "it is said that whats ethical can sometimes be morally wrong"
Is there a specific dictionary thats used to authoritize any of these definitions?
I went on the web and here are some ideas about the difference:
Not very helpful. Some seem to contradict others
Regarding my vision for humanity -
I wanted to think this over a bit before offering it up, only to offer up origonal aspects, turns out that I have nothing at all to add to whats already been propoused. This being said I belive in the transition to an advaced resource based economy. This is done by creating and shaping a new world culture.
Jacque Fresco has been dead for months, but the project moves on.
I watched the first few minutes of the video and went on the web to look up Fresco. My first thought was 'Hey, XtG, do you know about 'The Whole Earth Catalogue', 'Mother Earth News?" If not, go take a look.
Maybe starting a new civilization is possible. If it is, I don't think it will come from government and it will have to be profit making. Think Elon Musk or Richard Branson.
Clark,
I liked this a lot. It's very Taoist sage of you. I think most moral/ethical programs miss this first step of observation and understanding before acting. The Sage, in Taoism, realizes that often non-action is the best action. A good portion of the worlds problems are due to well intended meddling!!
Buddhism has two different models for ethics that I like. One is that we need to cultivate compassion and other virtues (becoming more our True Selves/our Buddha Nature) and moral action will occur naturally and spontaneously. I would translate that to saying that we need to seek God and His illumination and then He will instruct us and work thru us.
The second model is even better. Ahimsa or simply "Do no harm."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa
The argument is that it's great to try to do good, but we fail at that pretty often and we disagree on what "good" is. If we could just manage to do no harm we would end up being ethical and it would be a great start. This is hopefully something we can also agree on.
Geez - I quote Lao Tzu a couple of times and now I'm Taoist sagey. Actually, I see it as a rejiggering of the Golden Rule
Quoting MysticMonist
I don't disagree, but treating someone with compassion and good will and seeing them as they are is never meddling. We shouldn't be afraid to act on that because we worry too much about doing harm. On the other hand, sometimes minding our own business is the best way to act.
Some would say yes, others no. I align more with Immanuel Kant's theory of ethics. He basically says that ethics are driven by duty. You might be more utilitarian, which is Mill's theory.
Conscience. The still small voice in all is what reminds us of our social and ethical necessities. Whenever a person gets an intuitive sense that something is wrong their intuition ought to show them the way out of such and such a situation. The problem is not everyone can go on autopilot like that. For some people morality is a conscious decision. Which is just as good as intuition if not better.
Thanks. :)
Quoting bloodninja
I think the theory that morality is determined by culture is almost brain dead in a way because all you have to do is find a culture that says women are inferior and the way that a man proves his love to a woman is through rape. Now this is obviously something I just pulled out of my head, but the point stands. What if there was a culture that okay'd that? Isn't there something inside of us that just says no to that sort of thing?
At the same time society can definitely correct those kinds of things.
I think there is too. However I'm having a real hard time seeing how this inside something is separate from, or different to, cultural norms...
If you are inclined to consider the down sides as well as the up sides of the theory, then you can study ethics. Otherwise, probably not.
"What does the pecived majority of humanity desire? And how does that compare with what I desire for our fate, is it common enough with my vision for me to bother participating? Or should I simply focus on what I wan't for my own life(given that the majority would win out against my efforts). What would you call that specific area of study? Am I on the verge of needing to coin my own term?"
No need for a new term. It's an ethical theory. A theory with big holes, but still a theory. Tell us about its positive and negative points as a theory. Then you're studying ethics. Otherwise you are adhering to a theory without examining it.
That formula assumes that ''the highest common interest of all sentient beings'' will be good. Is this a good assumption?
Slavery was once thought to be morally permissible. So was infanticide in some countries.
It looks like, sometimes, ''the highest common interests of all sentient beings'' aren't good.
That's a fundamental question nobody knows the answer to.
I was just pointing out the error in supposing "the highest common interests of all sentient beings" = good.
I don't believe that cultural norms define morality, rather the opposite. Humanity is naturally desirous of virtue even if there a weakness within man.
Maybe humanity is just catching up to morality. As we (society) evolve we ascend into higher forms of morality, whereas in the ancient times certain cultures would enslave others or oppress others we can now see from history that this is wrong and advance. Truly society ( or better yet, humanity) is being "sanctified" in loose terms. Look at human civil rights in the past fifty to sixty years for example.
Quoting bloodninja
Un-evolved societies are not as moral as technologically advanced societies. With knowledge comes power and responsibility. The power to create new things advances a society, but that society should not be selfish. Instead, it should seek to advance not only itself but the world. That's the responsibility part.
Make sense?
But by whose standards is this wrong? By your contemporary culture's generic norms?
Quoting MountainDwarf
Are you xenaphobic?
Whoa whoa whoa, your mind went there. Not mine.
Although fancy me this, are you a secularist? And, define xenophobia.
How am I the one that's xenophobic when I just want to see societies advance and reform?
Quoting bloodninja
The ever increasing consciousness'. Law itself may very well be eternal meaning that it just is. We're just getting around as a species to identifying what the standard is. Therefore we realize we don't have the right standard through postmodernism.
Our discussion is about how the virtues/moralities are grounded. My view is that the virtues and vices are grounded in the way cultures function. The way cultures function changes with time, and the virtues and vices change with it. To me, there seems to be no plausible argument that the different moralities are determined/grounded by anything other than how our different cultures function.
Given that this is my view, for you to claim that other cultures are less moral because they do not share our 'advanced' value structure seems from my point of view to be prejudiced. For you to make this claim, you must be grounding the virtues in something other than the way cultures function. What is it? God? Reason?
I know that Japan is bigger than Surrey. I have no idea how I know that or whether anyone has ever previously used the sentence 'Japan is bigger than Surrey' or what size either Japan or Surrey is even to the nearest thousand hectares. But from this complete absence of grounding for my knowledge we may not deduce that Japan and Surrey are the same size.