Logic applied to Ethics thus deriving an ethical principle

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Temptation is defined as follows: submitting to short-term desires that are incompatible with long-term well-being and harmony for all concerned.

Either we know better or we don’t know any better.

If we give into temptation and we know better, we are hypocrites.

If we give into temptation an we don’t know any better, we are ignorant.

Derived Moral Principle: One way to avoid hypocrisy or ignorance is this: Don’t give into temptations.

Don’t cheat on your exams – or on your spouse or your partner – or on your diet.

What temptations do human beings often give in to?

Can you follow up by employing logic to arrive at any other ethical principles?

Comments? Questions? Upgrades?

The seed of all sin (poor judgment) and thus the seed of all “temptation”, is Presumption. And the temptation to presume is the weakness of homosapian. He presumes to condemn, presumes to kill, presumes to lust, presumes steal, presumes to conquer, presumes to do all of those things that are presumably bad for him.

The purpose of social ethics is to create, maintain, and protect the wealth of life within a group of lives, a society. Thus in order to deduce social ethics, one must be aware of what the wealth of life is made.

Life is a process. The momentum of that process is what maintains the process against interference and thus maintains the life. And the social wealth of life is protected by protecting that momentum. Thus it is upon such understanding that social ethics must be derived.

In order to create a system of social ethics, one must be aware of the process that is life. In order to maintain that process, one must maintain the awareness of that process. And in order to protect that process, one must be aware of the process’s strengths and weaknesses, hopes and threats.

So it can be immediately deduced that social ethics must include learning. And learning requires teaching and/or discovery. Thus a system of social ethics must include learning and teaching.

Thus to be ethical one must at least participate in learning and teaching the process that life is and the ways to restore it, maintain it, and protect it. Doing anything else detracts from the momentum and reduces the wealth of life. Everything else done is unethical.

The learning and teaching causes the creating, maintaining, and protecting of the wealth of life. And the creating, maintaining, and teaching causes the learning and teaching of the wealth of life. It is a self-sustaining process, known simply as “Life”.

One might ask who is to learn and who is to teach, or who is to create, maintain, and protect. And the perhaps surprising answer is, “the entire universe itself of which you are a small participant”. The physical space that you occupy is a spot within the universe that has learned to be life, no longer merely random, chaotic affectance, but a process stored in the location in which you stand. Your physical being is the universe’s memory of what life is. The presence of life, is the memory of life.

A society is a concentration of life, more certainly remembered. And that is the purpose of a society, to further ensure the learning and teaching, the creating, maintaining, and protecting, the very same wealth that life is.

So the question becomes, “how does one create, maintain, and protect the wealth of life in a concentrated way, in a social way?

One learns by clarifying, verifying, remembering, and reinforcing the perceived hopes and threats concerning the momentum or wealth of the process of life. One teaches by clarifying, verifying, instilling, and reinforcing the perception of hopes and threats concerning the momentum of the process of life. And in so doing, life collaborates with life in order to ensure the universe’s memory of the process. In such a way, a society, a collaborating concentration of life is formed.

Anything else you do detracts from the wealth of life, allowing the universe to forget, and thus is unethical.

But there is a maximum density for the process of life. If life concentrates beyond that maximum, the universes memory becomes clouded and corrupted. Chaos returns and life is partially forgotten. Learning to form, maintain, and protect the maximum density of life, is the purpose of a good government and proper ethics. Good government is good ethics.

Feel free to clarify and verify the thought (learn). And of course, it would be good to remember and reinforce it (teach). The hope of the momentum of life, its wealth and its harmony, depends upon it. It is the only ethical thing to do.

This is otherwise known as courage, right?

And it’s not you cheating on anyone but your drives cheating on your own drives. There must be a stable hierarchy of drives, otherwise, anarchy (and consequently tyranny) reigns.

Anarchy of the instinct leads to all sorts of tyrannies, most notably, socialism, liberalism, metaphysics and Christianity – to name a few. People can’t endure their sick bodies, so they look for all sorts of narcotics that will make their bodies appear to be healthy in the short-term (instead of treating the cause they treat the symptom.)

Death is, apparently, solution for everything.

I don’t think that is actually true. Hypocrisy is pretending to believe in one thing while actually believing in its opposite. The much more prevalent psychology is repression or “self-defeatism”. People can’t stick to their own plans, such as a diet, due to inner dissonance that causes repression of their cognitive will. They don’t actually have much control over themselves because they are inwardly trying too hard to not be guilty of a perceived concern. So before the time for action, they often believe that they will do one thing, but as the time approaches, a different part of them wakes up and resists the effort from within. Their longer terms plans are defeated by their shorter term management process. In short, they lack confidence and don’t actually believe in themselves.

Such a condition is first inspired medically and then supported by regular defeats, eventually merely self-imposed defeats. It is the repression of an entire society so as to free up higher governors with their own agendas.

That is nothing but absurdity in the name of philosophy.
I just fail to understand why people become so impatient that easily!

with love,
sanjay

Either we know better or we don’t know any better

I do not think that it’s an either or situation. Maybe before absolutes ruled ethics in the form of universal categories, it was possible to derive a situation where it was possible. However such schema required the adoption of deriving the ideal absolutes, by setting them up and adapting them to similar situations. The breakdown of ethics,beginning with the age of enlightenment, was a precursor of differing situational ethics. The process lead to a different logic. This difference manifested in arguing for correct behavior by processes of elimination.

As an example, in todays world, if a woman would be censured for immoral behavior, her behavior would be judged not in vesting her within the absolute moral standard of setting her against such, but of submitting her to various situational value standards, and by process of elimination, seeking clarity, as far as her character, any factors which may modify or lessen her culpability, her state of mind or understanding of her actions, etc.

Strictly logically, there were no such things way back, where behavior could be excused on basis of any contributed redeeming factors. You were either guilty or not. There was no grey area for doubt. Doubt introduced a crack to the deductively reductive basis of ethics, and converted it to an inductively based one.

I think,it would be a comfort to be able to resurrect certain features of deduction, but the element of uncertainty, while giving people a veery feeling of uncertainty and an inability to rationalize away their desires to act instinctually, actually is a first step to build a new and stronger ethical foundation.

I agree. But the way I understood him is that giving into temptation is hypocritical, not the other way around, which is true, if by hypocrisy we understand cowardly pretension. But then, that’s not how the term is commonly understood.