What is Ethics? - a fresh, new approach

Greetings, Ecmandu

Apology accepted! :sunglasses:

Yes, I can go along with what you were trying to say … though it does reveal your current view of humans.

It’s a good suggestion! :slight_smile:
Let’s ask everyone here: How would you explain Ethics to a 5-year-old in the span of a paragraph or two?

Any ideas :question:

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Children as young as four can begin to see things from other people’s perspectives. I am not sure I would explain ethics to a five year old - or to anyone for that matter - but I would work in questions related to how other people might feel about X - ‘How do you think Timmy felt when you pushed him off the pier?’ and then statements about my own perspective and then also the five year olds. Role modeling perspective insights and shifts, and also demonstrating my skills (hopefully) at describing the five year olds and how I take that into account in relation to him or her. Ethical rules and guidelines, in a sense, presume we cannot work with empathy and perception, that we have to have rules. I think it actually honors the integrity of the child to enhance the skill set, so to speak, and also to share with and confront them with the inner experiences you have. Rather than coming up with 10 commandments, say, or even much subtler versions.

What you write above sounds less like an ethical theory, but rather predictions that technology will make us get along in various ways or eliminate troubling conflicting goods (as old iambiguous might phrase it). I realize you do have a whole system via links, but I just wanted to point out that those portions of this post are not really ethical positions or systems. I think some of these predictions are not correct, but that’s a different sort of issue from your final question.

I haven’t seen the phrases before with Enhancement, but I think this is more or less a liberal view of ethics. What do you think is unique about his or your views?

It’s certainly true that ethics involves the ability to value something other than oneself, to relate to it in its own terms plus your own terms in that relating. Also that ethics involves “selfishness”. You don’t do things because you’re selfish, you’re selfish because you… do things.

But those are just aspects. Ethics is largely about right and wrong which means true and false. What kind of ice cream you like isn’t an ethical question. If your issue can be boiled down to an “opinion” then it’s not an ethical issue. Ethics comes from reason, which is the ability to and desire to engage this thing called reality.

Given that there are no new ideas under the Sun, I suggest that you read the book - the first one mentioned in the links below in the signature, and then judge for yourself whether there is anything “unique.”

I would venture that the way I define the concept “morality” is rather unique, but I may be wrong.

If you feel like summarizing what you consider unique, I can read that and respond to that. I like reading physical books, where I turn the pages. What’s unique about how you define the concept morality?

The chapter on morality is 17 pages in length for good reason.

To summarize it would not do it justice.

You have permission though to republiish it as a hardcover book; then you will be able to turn the pages. :bulb: { KT: Why not print it out, staple the pages, or bind them in some fashion, and then flip pages.}

The explanation entails being true to yourself, appreciating the various moral principles - of which I give a specific list - committing oneself to living up to those principles, and doing so, more and more, through the years (and with more of the principles): growing and developing morally, thus becoming more morally-healthy.

Hence kindness alone is not enough.

readers: Your views, and your reviews of the essay titled THE STRUCTURE OF ETHICS, are welcomed! [Click on first link below to learn about this new paradigm, and to judge its merit.]

For those who never got around to reading THE BREAKTHROUGH, here is a passage from that paper:

“Morality" to the Ethicist is a technical term which connotes authenticity as well as the opposite of hypocrisy and phoniness’. It denotes that you practice what you preach: your observable self corresponds to your ideal self-image. As you gain in ethical insight your behavior (conduct) corresponds to your continuously-improving self-identity.

As a result of understanding the moral sense, we may conclude that everyone is to be regarded as if they are of limitless value! Try to imagine what implications follow from that understanding. One such deduction is to do no harm.

Furthermore, if one holds a moral perspective, one will strive to have good manners, and to be courteous. One will avoid using words that hurt. Instead we will use words that heal, words that serve to boost people up. When we enter a room people will feel like a plant that has just been watered.

Your response? Comments? Questions?

Karpal T: Did I reply to your question adequately?

Of course. And the lengths of the books of the various philosophers and others which are referenced and discussed in other threads were likely written in their lengths for good reasons. But then it is a discussion forum. So people summarize, work with specific ideas and then perhaps hope that from these discussions people will be inspired to go read books they haven’t…or, perhaps interesting discussions can happen via the presentations of ideas taken from longer works.

Of course, everyone knows that. But it could be a start towards instilling interest. I get it. You wrote something, you want people to read the whole thing. but if you make a claim about something then people will want to explore that. If you answer becomes, go read my book, it seems to me it’s not really what makes a discussion forum, online, work.

Because I can, for free, go to the library and take out, say, Locke Or Rawls or Spinoza and read works that have lasted through long years of critical scrutiny and are still deemed valuable. Though even these people’s ideas are summarized here as portions or starts of conversations. It’s a discussion forum.

Still haven’t seen the unique part. Not at this abstract level and then not also in the more specific examples which seemed to fit in the liberal tradition.

yeah i can’t get down like that, thinkdoc. i left the herd behind decades ago, and with that, i left their morality as well. if you ever asked me why i do what i do… i’d tell ya i do it all for the nookie.

In the post of Apr 19, 2019 above, I gave a summary [from the paper entitled THE BREAKTHROUGH] of what “morality” means in the new paradigm for Ethical Theory. [size=88]{Yet, Karpel, you write as if responding to an earlier post instead of to the most recent one on this topic. It’s hard for me to understand why. I’m not even going to venture a guess.}[/size] …Hope the following helps:

Many ethical theories confuse “morality” with “morals.” The latter refers to local cultural practices resulting from social interaction, tribalism, and tradition. Those topics are a concern of Cultural Anthropology, a sub-branch of Sociology. [Yes, its findings have relevance to Ethics, especially when they deal with negotiations as to what is harmful and what isn’t. For “Do no harm” is an early principle deduced from the Axiom of Ethics, and from the definition of “Ethics.”]
To me, morality is not a key term in Social Ethics; it is rather a personal trait. “Morality” is a key term of Individual Ethics. That is why this approach is unique. Let me explain further:

“Morality” is increasing correspondence of one’s actual behavior with an improving self-image. An ‘improving self-image’ is one which is ever more-keenly aware of principle, and is over time adding more moral principles to one’s repertoire.

Morality is a matter of degree: the self-concept has three parts. They are one’s name, one’s self-image, and one’s conduct. The more that the latter two correspond (match up), the higher degree is one’s morality. That is to say, the more moral one is. The more your conduct matches your highest self-ideals (the finest set of attributes for what constitutes an ethical character that you can imagine), the more you possess morality – as I understand it.

…As I wrote earlier, this summary does not do the topic justice. For a better comprehension of what the Hartman/Katz paradigm for Ethics is getting at, see (relatively-brief) Chapter Three in the first selection in the signature below: click on the link to THE STRUCTURE OF ETHICS. It won’t hurt for philosophers (and philosophy students) to do a little reading. :bulb: {Some kind-and-ethical person can do a service by transcribing the booklet for the visually-impaired. Send the record, the audio-book to The Library for the Blind in New York, NY.]

Comments? Questions?

I just learned today about The World Kindness Movement. Yes, I was aware of World Kindness Day,and how two local school system in the Chicago suburbss had celebrated this on the Elementary and Primary-school level, but I didn’t know there was a movement behind it.

Here is a link to their site; theworldkindnessmovement.org/#

This is an example of what I have designated in my writing ass “an Ethical technology.” It is a social invention that helps to bring an ethical world closer, helps to make such a world (of ethical individuals) more of a reality. So I am very encouraged by this. Another such development would be the advent of 5G. Another would be advances in Voice-Recognition technology, so that AI could grasp human meanings and intentions more-accurately.

The World Kindness Movement originated 22 years ago in Japan. The WKM managed to get United Nations sponsorship. Currently it invites cities and towns to sign up to get their city designated as a Kindness City. It has over a dozen nations as members and endorsers. It has all kinds of creative activities; a "Kindness Card’; etc. It got the Australian Prime Minister to praise it. It is actually ‘making a dent.’

While my research in ethics leads me to believe that kindness alone is not enough: one also needs Morality - as I have defined it in recent posts above - yet I believe that a World Kindness Movement is a ‘leap forward’ in evolving from tribalism to cosmopolitan inclusivity, from divisiveness to unity-within-diversity.

How do you feel about this development? :question:

I come back to a thread, find the first post responding to me and respond to that. That way I keep a line of back and forth on that issue. If you look at page 1 I also posted an answer to one of your questions. I don’t think you got back to that. Which is fine, it’s a lot of posts in here. I could go on and read the whole thread and see if you added more responses to my post, but for me it works to take it step by step. Regardless of what you later said, in other posts, you posted what I responded to. One can always revise a post, rather than adding others which should then be taken as the better answers.

Greetings, KT

You write:

I summarized above, per your request, what I wrote about Morality in the STRUCTURE treatise {which is the first essay listed below in the signature. {People may wish to click on that link to get a fuller picture on the subject.}

So tell us your response.

To Everyone: What are your thoughts now on the topic of this thread? Due to the logical arguments presented in the essay, are you inclined to adopt this new unique approach to Ethics? Can you find it to be acceptable?

Inquiring minds want to know…

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In the first post of this thread a reference was made to the existential, logical, Hierarchy of Value (the HOV).

For those who would like to be reminded of the argument for the validity, the coherence, the correspondence with daily life, and the inspired creativity of the logical Hierarchy of Value formula see this link:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194809

The formula is said to be “existential” because it affirms life. As to why it is logical, see the first few pages of BASIC ETHICS, a (safe to open) link to which is provided in the Signature below: click on the 4th reference down in the list.

Comments, questions, upgrades, etc. are most welcome…

I notice that you did not respond either to my latest post, where I explained why I responded to which particular posts in this thread, and also mentioned an early post you did not respond to where I answered a question you presented. Instead of responding to this last post or going back and responding to earlier posts I made, you reiterate that you responded to one of my posts. You did not acknowledge that I had a good reason for responding in the order I did - a choice you expressed incredulity over earlier. You did not ask about or respond to a post where I directly answered a question you posed readers of the thread.

You just repeated yourself. It seems to me that someone concerned with ethics, who makes a post implying there is something strange about someone else, might look into or concede that there wasn’t, when presented with that person’s side of things. It seems to me if someone in your thread takes time to answer one of your questions, you would respond to that and not harp on the choices I made about the order and priority of your responses I focused on - and since taking them in the order they came seems fairly rational to me, I would at least expect, once it was explained to you, why I shouldn’t take them in the order they came.

I won’t take up more space in this thread, but perhaps you can mull over if you consider you own behavior ethical here. I’ll leave the thread to others.

I didn’t know I was doing this.
Am sorry if any feelings were hurt and I apologize for my part in it.

Yet “if the shoe doesn’t fit you, why wear it??”

To Everyone: What are your thoughts now on the topic of this thread? Due to the logical arguments presented in the essay on the structure of Ethics, are you inclined to adopt this new unique approach to Ethics?

Earlier, in a book entitled Katz - SCIENCES OF MAN AND SOCIAL ETHICS (Branden Press Publishers, 1969), an attempt was made to explain the nature of human conduct utilizing Dr. Abraham Maslow’s theory of human needs. Since then my thinking has evolved, and I have come to the conclusion that Ethics is even simpler - as argued in the booklet THE STRUCTURE OF ETHICS. See the first selection below. There I explain that ethics is a perspective, a way of perceiving and experiencing a conscious individual who has a unique personality.

Your views?

Hi,

Does anyone here have an opinion on this new approach to Theoretical and Applied Ethics?

If so, tell us about it.

Has it been adequately outlined and explained in the first couple of selections below :question:
If not, tell us why.

What do you feel is missing?

Do you have any suggestions as to how ethics might be more-effectively and efficiently applied in our world today?
Is a massive project - like The Manhattan Project - required to educate the public about the basics of Ethics? If so, how would you go about implementing this? What are the steps?
Do you, or does anyone, really care if we have a more-ethical world?

If you have an opinion, please express it.

The main philosophy held by authoritarians and dictators is their belief that “The end justifies the means.” In other words, "any means to an end, as long as it’s my end-in-view.

However, the unified theory of Ethics explains that ends and means are to be harmonious, and that moral means are to be used if we want to gain maximum value.

Often, morally-questionable means are used in the name of a fine, noble end. This is not rationality; this is rationalization. Fine sounding words like “freedom,” “liberty,” “police action,” “stabilization,” “rescue,” “friendship,” “liberation,” etc. are used to cover the immoral activity: the inflicting of pain, abuse, heartache, or malign manipulation for selfish ends – even poisoning the environment, torture and murder.

What do you think? Did you ever, in the past, hold that fallacious view that the ;end justifies the means, when the means used were questionable from an ethical perspective? Do you have a better understanding of The Means-End Relationship now?

See the discussion of the topic in the chapter on Morality in THE STRUCTURE OF ETHICS, a link to which may be found in the signature below: