Modern Ethics
Assuming we can adequately define reason, did rational thinking make human beings more ethical in the past, perhaps in Plato's era, and is this still the case? Do questions of ethics even apply to modern civilization, or are we living in a post-ethics world? What kind of paradigm for defining human behavior philosophically would be relevant in a modern discourse? What are the currently prevailing theories in this area?
Comments (46)
Rationality is a tool, one that can be used toward many ends. Those who are trying to be ethical will be more successful if they use that tool well, but just having that tool doesn't mean that people are going to use it toward that end.
Quoting Enrique
What would a post-ethics world even be like? Ethical questions are continuously applicable to everyone everywhere all the time. Every time anybody wonders what to do, that is an ethical question. The closest thing to a post-ethics world I can conceive of would be a world wherein nobody's actions ever had any consequences whatsoever, so it didn't matter what anybody did; but even in such a world, there is still room for ethical judgement of the things that are happening, even if nobody can do anything about them.
Quoting Enrique
Aside from brute legalism ("do what the law says because the law says so and besides we'll shoot you if you don't" -- including Divine Command Theory in that category), which seems to still be the first thing that most unthinking people turn to, the prevailing approach among thinking people today appears to be utilitarianism, with Kantian deontology constantly trying to give it a run for its money. There are veins of virtue ethics still around today too but they don't seem nearly as popular as the other two.
My own view takes a kind of in-between approach between utilitarianism and deontology, and that seems to be a popular thing to attempt (see for example rule utilitarianism, or rights as deontological side-constraints on otherwise utilitarian ethics) since there are well-known problems with both ordinary views of utilitarianism and deonology.
The version of that approach I advance is basically the ethical equivalent of falsificationism. Just as falsificationism says that of course evidence is important, but evidence cannot ever confirm a theory (anti-confirmationism), it can only falsify it, so too I say that of course maximizing pleasure and flourishing and minimizing pain and suffering is important, like utilitarianism says, but those consequences cannot ever justify an action (anti-consequentialism), they can only rule it out. And then on top of that, a libertarian theory of rights grounded in the definition of property serves a role in normative decisions similar to that which logical considerations, grounded in the definitions of words, serves in factual investigation.
From my personal perspective I’ve talked about this at length especially in regards to the term ‘ethical’. I prefer to delineate between ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ where the ethical is more about communal interactions and acting upon what society at large deems ‘appropriate’. Again, in Nietzsche’s work On the Genaeology of Morals he goes quite in depth about this subject matter and brings into focus the question of how social status dictates our perspectives of ‘Good and Evil’ - if you’ve not read it I’d highly recommend it even though it’s quite bombastic, dense and often misleading due to the overt use of analogies and metaphors.
If you find his style too irksome then I’m not sure who else to suggest? Maybe someone else could offer an alternative?
Anyway, by my reckoning we’re living in an ‘ethically infused’ world today and that this is problematic. By this I mean the focus seems to be more about people saying and acting out of character in order to fall in line with what they believe to be the ‘correct’ and ‘ethical’ patterns they see espoused. By this I mean to distinguish the ‘ethical’ as something instilled to steer individual choices, yet today I think people are perhaps less ready to question the underlying ethical layout of society and follow it blindly rather than primarily use what I distinguish as ‘moral’ intention.
By this I mean to make clear I take those leaning toward the ‘ethical’ to be following norms and those taking account of the ethical yet acting primarily based ‘moral’ convictions to be leading the way.
I could off here and it may simply be the case that extended ‘moral’ convictions necessarily lead to a short term turbulence due to sections of society making ‘ethical’ shifts based on the heresay of prominent individual s with stronger moral convictions (be they for the ‘betterment’ of society at large or to the ‘detriment’).
Note: I’m not trying to mislead with the use of these terms, and I do believe such a distinction was more popular several decades ago. I’m more than willing to alter my terminology to suit I just haven’t come across a better way of stating this yet.
Unlike religious morality, atheist "ethics" revolve around a haphazard and ever-changing collection of single-issue concerns such as "climate change", workers' rights, women's rights, animal rights, and so on. It is not a cohesive system where they carefully consider tradeoffs that automatically occur in a complete system.
Either you reason within a system, or else you reason about a system, because in all other cases, you are just doing system-less bullshit.
Such as? :chin:
I love that we have ethical standards for applying surgical procedures to children's genitals within some ethical systems, and deciding whether people can drive or not on whether they have boobs, or stoning someone to death because they've been raped, or castrating them because they're gay, or selling your mother, or keeping slaves... Truly a high point of a rational approach to ethics, and not an ossification of historical codes with the normative weight of tradition at all.
What's really important in these cases is that we can weigh the impact of modifying any of these traditions to the tradition rather than to the people they concern.
No, no, if we looked at any of these things in terms of merely systemless principles of "equal rights" and "minimise harm, maximise good" or "act to maximise human agency within our capabilities" and "personal autonomy" we'd really be doing nothing at all for anyone!
Still much better than a morality revolving around omniscient ghosts and untenable metaphysics. Religious moralities, probably plagiarized, are as pagan and heretical as their forebears. It makes little sense to reason within those systems. It’s why one must take a leap of faith.
I suspect then as it now, our customs, rituals and traditions do most of the heavy lifting.
We cannot be far away from witnessing with our own eyes how the $22 trillion of debt and $46 trillion of unfunded liabilities are going to pan out, in a system where the "normative weight of tradition" has been replaced by a ridiculous collection of haphazard, system-less, single-issue concerns.
Even the most stubborn atheist will soon discover that all of it still is a system, and that an exponentially growing burden of accumulated deficits cannot possibly remain workable. Just wait until the next economic-financial crisis which is clearly just around the corner. The bullshit is about to implode any time now. Watch that space!
Atheism precludes any good approach to ethics because of an imminent, but unspecified in timing and nature, debt based economic crisis. And the only way to solve this is with a nebulous appeal to religious tradition.
Right.
:up:
"I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity." ~F.N.
:yawn:
Quoting alcontali
What does system-less so-called "ethics" translate into? Well, obviously into: The Special-Interest effect: Increasing The Size, Scope, and Cost Of Government
But then again, on the long run it does not matter, because the next financial crisis will indeed take care of that any time soon.
Why does it seem so to you? And by ethics do you mean people's actual moral/ethical outlooks, or the study of ethics, or what?
That's an interesting question, but I suppose that the answer will depend on one's thinking about ethics. A lot, probably most people, think of ethics as a system with a more-or-less objective existence, not unlike the laws of nature. It is then up to us to discover and work out that system and its implications, similar to the way we conduct scientific research and work out logical and mathematical problems. If so, then it is reasonable to think that rationality is a sine qua non for coming to the right ethical conclusions, at least if you work them out on your own, rather than just following someone's lead or complying with established norms.
Personally, I am skeptical about ethical systems. I don't see how it would even be reasonable to suppose that ethics is anything like science or logic. I lean more towards emotivist and related views. So I would think that while rationality is important for decision-making, ethical motivations themselves do not owe much to reason.
Consider this (brief) attempt at reasoning towards ethical motivations (i.e. evaluative judgments). I submit that, whether discovered or inferred, non-subjective values (e.g. hypothetical imperatives) can, and do, function as criteria for rational decision-making, such as biological/psychological Health or ecological Sustainability, for instance. Insofar as such values, or criteria, posit intrinsic, non-instrumental, even altruistic, goals, they are "moral", no? Your thoughts?
If value is understood to be a noun:
.....under what conditions would values be non-subjective, and,
.....under what conditions would a hypothetical imperative be a value, non-subjective or otherwise?
Quick synopsis is good enough, if you’re so inclined.
In ancient Athens, a society with only a few thousand politically active citizens, the individual was viewed by Plato and Aristotle as a microcosm of the state. The individual's obligation was to be virtuous in personal relationships, basically simple manners capable of being explained as a set of guidelines a la Nicomachean Ethics, and to use politics as a means of securing an environment where virtue is possible, by education, enforcement, structural organization, and in the leadership classes, deep reflection upon one's own values, motivations and purposes, like in The Republic. If all individuals were virtuous by training and also by ethical reasoning as a kind of practical problem-solving about the consequences of actions, in essence intellectually deferential to the attitudes and experiences of fellow citizens, then the collective would be virtuous as well, upholding virtue as culture. This is probably very similar to Kant's categorical imperative: if an individual can will an action of ethical import to be a universal law, then it is moral by way of the fact that what works for the whole will work for each individual as well, and we have a duty to conform to these minimum principles, standards adequate in the vast majority of cases. This is all also similar to Christianity's golden rule, love your neighbor as yourself, the idea that everyone is obligated to act in ways of benefit to the whole community.
As far as I understand it, utilitarianism claims that what is best for the majority should be the standard, and "best" means what brings pleasure, not only to oneself but also the collective. The tacit idea I suppose is that human beings are very similar in their basic experience of pleasure as satisfied by material and social needs, and so in many domains a majority is a nearly absolute majority: food, shelter, clothing, health, security, friendship, community, etc. In this case, the individual is a microcosm of the collective to a more limited degree.
Then we've got Nietzsche, who claims that morality is a product of authority, in the form of prehistoric social mores and then a revolving door of oppressively self-serving upper-classes, forging populations by comparable methods of pain-infliction into having similar experiences and behavioral tendencies, with moral standards basically being criteria for submission, which over the course of millennia narrowed the human trait profile in an evolutionary process until some cultures with universal values were possible.
In the first case, the individual is a microcosm of the collective as a consequence of absolute human nature, in the second case, the individual should consent to the collective as a generally practical expedient, and in the third case the individual is coerced by social power into submitting to the collective.
It is interesting to note that this trajectory into relativism parallels the progression of Western civilization towards greater multiculturalism via colonization and conquest. Ancient Athenian citizenship was uniform culturally, John Stuart Mill's England was ethnically homogenous with some class differentiation, and Nietzsche's imperial West was extremely diverse culturally. Ethics become more complex with increases in sub-cultural heterogeneity.
The initial European solution, as was alluded to by someone in an earlier post, was the formulation of universal laws pertaining to ownership, based on the concept that the standardized economic value of material goods is under the protection of the government as personal possessions, the sum of which are an individual's property. This bypassed the thorny, still highly speculative psychological issues, defining ethics solely in terms of universally recognizable inanimate objects, but it also subjected human behavior to a poorly understood dynamic of international commerce.
This property concept, the idea that material objects are a symbolic representation of one's self, seems to be extremely appealing to the psyche. Most human beings love flashy materialism and a culture based on commercial fads. But the process by which economic conditions change is accelerating in thus far unpredictable ways, meaning that massive amounts of new material goods are constantly being innovated and mass-produced, so that human concepts of self are in perpetual upheaval and the property paradigm is growing more difficult to manage. Most financial actors and sub-cultures try to manipulate this disorganization for their exclusive, usually short-term advantage, making technological and institutional development minimally ethical and efficient. Can an attempt to induce even further conformity by force remedy this situation? I doubt it. Educated citizens only conform while they're at war, war sucks though the occupation of soldier has so far probably been the most important job in world history, and an uneducated population has become an economic and thus a political disadvantage.
You guys have any insights about this?
I think I am roughly in line with one of Nietzsche's points where ‘character’ isn’t necessarily ‘Good or Evil’, but ‘character’ can be ‘good or bad’: meaning someone with murderous intent acting out in a murderous manner is ‘good character’ as they are ‘true’ (they act as they think not in opposition to how they think due to what ‘others’ - the ‘ethical’ - deem as ‘Good or Evil’). If anyone thinks that’s wholly opposed to Nietzsche’s words I’m happy to claim it for my own and defend it. ;)
Maybe Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons will interest you. As the wiki summary indicates, Parts 3 & 4 concern postive & negative effects different conceptions of 'personal identity' (i.e. self) have on making moral judgments as Parfit sees it.
The post about Nietzsche was addressed to your inflammatory controversy-inducing atrocity lol
A person intending to harm might consider themselves good, but it contradicts the conventional meaning of the word itself excepting maybe in cases of self-defense. That's the way it seems to me, we can refine these ideas of course.
You may say it’s better not to kill anyone, but if all but a few follow your view strictly then the few can kill without any fear of resistance accept from each other. It is ‘immoral’ to follow the law without question and more moral to act against the law regardless of repercussions to self. The hero kills the child killer and happily goes to prison as a murderer. The coward follows the law and watches the children die.
I’m not saying anything strange here am I?
I can't disagree that it all depends on context. Its unbelievable how many bizarre scenarios are possible, and that's why the law is so complex. But the whole point of law is to protect the innocent, because the instigator usually has the initial advantage, to an extent that the level of crime would be astronomical without at least minimally enforcing the "innocent is good", common sense tradition. Its either that or unceasing feuds. Without the wussy definition every sober citizen would be in lifelong misery. Comparing this ideal to actual historical and present conditions yields some interesting insights into human nature if one wants to venture that way. I think Nietzsche's concept of resentiment explains a lot, how even legal systems that have been refined for centuries can still get co-opted to cruel, corruptive, unjust ends. Is there really good and evil anymore? Maybe we've transitioned to resentiment and nihilism, with millions of commendable "good and bad" dissentions. Getting all wild and crazy tonight.
I don’t think the law is there to protect the ‘innocent’ either way. The law is fluid so if it is in place to protect some ‘innocent’ group/s then who is ‘innocent’ is always shifting with the times too - as the law does change.
Being ‘innocent’ is effectively ‘not knowing better’ about a situation. It is being ‘naive’ without any understanding of what ‘naivety’ is. If we’re instead saying ‘innocent’ means not having the ‘power’/‘capacity’ to protect yourself then is it ‘good’ to encourage this by offering protection. Much like raising children do we lock them in a room to ‘protect’ them. In this sense the ‘law’ is about freedom of choice befitting each person - the pursuit of an optimal set of rules that furnishes society with an overall, and gradual, increase in personal freedom. For me the crux of the issue is more about creating rules that allow the progressives to increase overall freedoms whilst reducing freedoms for those that lack a capacity to handle uninhibited freedom. The masses and the individual necessarily suffer for mutual benefit - basically I’m talking about the social contract here.
All that said the law is there to ‘protect the innocent’ only in the sense that we’re all ‘innocent’ to some degree and that ‘protecting innocence’ isn’t akin to encouraging people to be innocent - which is a difficult problem.
What is more every extension of my freedom necessarily inhibits someone else’s somewhere in some way. None of us are ‘innocent’ so for this reason I am against ‘protecting the innocent’ because I don’t believe they actually exist. I am for protecting the ‘naive’ though but only if it is combined with action to decrease ‘naivety’ rather than foster a culture of juvenile attitudes that have no mature attitudes to balance them. It is here that I would say education is the key factor. Generally we’re taught to be ‘more mature’ yet when we get older the quest is to return to our more ‘juvenile’ youth in order to reap the benefits of both (to explain further I mean systematic and structured thought is the general attitude of modern education - structure is undoubtedly important - yet once we progress further in education we’re asked to resort to a more freewheeling mindset and to rekindle that ‘juvenile’ flame and be creative).
The ‘law’ is merely a institionalised means of indoctrinating the public rather than creating greater over all freedom. I certainly don’t live my life in accordance with the law. I regard people who do as monsters in the making, yet I can’t honestly say I have a better alternative that is easy/possible to implement. The law is an expression of governmental power and of public attitudes - both concern me but I don’t adhere to either with anything like a dogmatic grip. When push comes to shove my sense of morality is tested by the extent of the punishments dished out by the law I am willing to suffer for what I inherently feel to be ‘good’. The extreme end of such an attitude does lead us to another dark place too as if one is under the impression that their own beliefs are better than the law then they’ll be willing to suffer a great deal and no doubt cause great suffering under the ‘delusion’ of arrogance.
As I believe in humanity at large, and generally like being human, I side with increased freedom at the cost of a loss of innocence because I think humans are ‘good’. I guess if you think humans are ‘bad’ then you would be inclined to say the ‘innocent’ need protection at all costs. I prefer more freedom than more innocence, and I cannot see how one doesn’t necessarily counter the other.
We should, and can, do as we please. As it turns out what we do do is create laws that express our ‘average’ attitudes, but no one is ‘average’. Given that we all mostly agree than under most circumstances ‘killing’ is ‘bad’, and we’re constantly discussing under what circumstances ‘killing’ is sometimes necessary, then we’re pointing roughly in the right direction as this has happened alongside more and more people possessing more and more freedom.
If we push to ‘protect the innocent’ with more vigor then freedoms will be inhibited and the idea of ‘evil’/‘bad’ assumed by ‘innocent minds’ will inevitably cause more ‘lawful killing’, ‘lawful imprisonments’ and such based on naive assumptions about who should and shouldn’t have freedom. This would give the most opposed members of society the impetus to bring a greater extent of tyranny into the human social sphere.
Either way I’m not too bothered. There are dangers, but I don’t think we’re heading toward a dark age. Those days are done as far as I can figure out.
I don't think we're in very good shape as a society, but it really depends on your background. Some people are doing well, I'm in a torture chamber. Whether you get tortured or not depends on your willingness or inclination to conform, not whether you abide by the social contract, not infringing on anyone's freedoms. The modicum of freedom humans ever had is being revoked in very deliberate ways, but a delusional veneer inhibits most citizens from acknowledging it. Citizens seem to be satisfied saying, whether they actually believe it or not, "I'm not doing anything unusual, I'm simply living a life like everyone else, so why would I get in any sort of trouble?" That's the pernicious sort of innocence you were talking about, not the respecting freedom sort of innocence. We have to determine whether current freedoms are being curtailed for the sake of future increases in freedom, or whether freedom is under attack, and the truth is manifestly evident because we don't have enough freedom to even talk about the issue without getting tortured, I can personally vouch for that. As far as I can tell, freedom is illegal or at least becoming so.
If you’re in a torture chamber they at least allow you internet access. Sounds like you’re accepting the torture against your better judgement. Why?
No legal or community resource exists for dealing with it, no options that I know of. The more you try to advocate for yourself, the more some sectors of society rally around threatening you. What's sad is that some people have had it much worse, maybe not for as long and as all-consuming of their lives, but this country's institutions aren't working for many. A lot of citizens are in a similar situation. The wisest approach is probably to stay low profile, but that was made impossible for me and I basically got crucified psychologically. This society isn't friendly to diversity unless its turned into some kind of bizarrely amoral comedy act, and even then it can all fall apart at any moment. That's somewhat vague, not sure exactly what to say, but maybe you have some insights.
I don't know if the ancients were more ethical, though if I were to guess I would say less ethical in some areas. For example, violence was obviously popular in Gladiatorial games.
Ironically enough though, I was having a nice conversation with a lady friend/dinner date yesterday about how relevant Aristotelian ethics are, and still somewhat applicable in the 21st Century. Aristotle outlines many of these virtues that we should practice to achieve happiness, including:
•Intelligence and scientific (or certain) knowledge.
•Practical wisdom: the ability to “deliberate well about what is good and expedient for [oneself].”
•Temperance: restraint, usually with regard to pleasurable activities.
•Generosity and friendship.
•Courage: The tendency to act in order to achieve some good even when facing the risk of physical harm.
•Contemplation: reflection on eternal truths.
I think the distinctions between happiness being a static (end-goals) or dynamic activity is an interesting argument to have. Or, as an alternative, if one can be happy simply in a state of Being, it begs the questions of how that can be achieved.
One may argue that say gaining intellectual wisdom in and of itself would provide for contentment or happiness in this case. Another person may argue that achieving end-goals is a better method. While still other's would say it's the activity itself (the journey; not destination) that should bring happiness-doing things but not just thinking/talking about things.
So there seems to be at least 3 or 4 ways of Being... . And they all contribute to some level of happiness. Ultimately though, we are hardwired for doing.
I think other intriguing answers might lie in parsing boredom, anger, fear, anxiety...
What is boredom?
That's the way it is: if you hit the socioeconomic jackpot great, if you get the shaft, sucks to be you. Ethics aren't tied to any particular standard besides whatever works, and we contradict ourselves as much as ever-changing local conditions seem to require of us, with no regard for humanity as composed of human individuals with an intrinsic value that transcends their functional niche. And this highlights one of our many contradictions, because we are commonly empathetic despite our rejection of humanity as in general worthy of empathy. Why I say we may be living in a post-ethics world, all cheesy punning aside. Whatever morality humans may have been marginally capable of is transforming into "what I like" and "what works".
When corporations spend years and billions of dollars of someone else's money trying to force one guy into vomiting eight times every second meal, anger, fear and anxiety get involved with ethics real quick.
You’ll have to provide evidence for this and counter evidence. I would certainly say things may have become more turbulent due to increased communications resulting in more intimate cultural exchanges. On a global scale I don’t really see what you’re talking about.
This doesn’t see part of the discussion? What am I meant to take from that comment? Is it true for everyone or for one instance (in terms of the persecutor and the victim)?
When citizens receive aid from an institution, whether it be a hospital, clinic, government agency, or whatever it might be, the first action taken is to interrogate you: have you been married, do you have a family, what is your medical history, are you employed, how old are you, are you a citizen? This is not primarily to get to know you and help you better, this is to profile your functional niche, determining at what level you qualify for ethical behaviors. The economy does not treat citizens as human beings with intrinsic value, it treats humans as functional units in quantitatively defined demographics labelled and processed in accordance with utility, but usually with grace periods of suspended judgment and such.
The typical economy does not operate for ethical purposes, it generates and caters to superficial interests, what citizens like and what they can most easily be conditioned to like. Human behavior in many societies revolves around what citizens can be induced to spend money on, with no regard for what they should or shouldn't like or do, a minimal stimulation to integrity. Likes and dislikes are channeled and parsed in a system that is based on "whatever works". If system-builders can't figure out a way to economically pressure citizens into morality or don't care to, we won't be. Humans are growing ever more dependent on extrinsic incentives and less dependent on community cultures with self-supportive, mutualizing norms within which you value someone because you should rather than merely because your interests coincide.
That's one possible perspective, it can certainly be argued against.