What Everyone Should Know About Ethics

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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If one wants to present the case for Ethics to the average person, maybe the content here in this post may help supply one with material to do an adequate job. In a sense, it continues to make the case begun in earlier threads. Some of the principles listed later come from the Unified Theory of Ethics, and some come from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I would appreciate your impressions as to how this can be improved - and still remain secular and persuasive:

If one is ethical one will NOT cheat: one will not enter into gain/loss relationships where one party gains at the expense of another - by dishonesty, cutting corners, deliberately engaging in bait-and-switch, falsification, con artistry, etc. - because it results in hurting someone. Cheating does harm (to the cheated.) If you cheat someone you are diminishing value. You thereby dishonor yourself. Robbery, for example, subtracts value. In contrast, love adds value.

Now you might ask: Why not harm? Because a human life has value, that’s why. Every individual is unique because each person has a distinct set of features or qualities. …and the more you look the more you will find.

{As you know, the more qualities someone or something is perceived to have, the more meaningful it is; and to be meaningful is to have value. }

If we can agree that a conscious human life has value --[size=85] [and that happens to be the case by the very definition of Ethics, as explained in some detail in the monograph, BASIC ETHICS - myqol.com/wadeharvey/PDFs/BASIC%20ETHICS.pdf] – [/size] then science can indicate which are the policies that minimize suffering and maximize value for the enhancement of life.

We can turn to science to learn best practices to help conscious individuals thrive - not merely survive. Many individuals, all over the planet, have come to a realization that they want more than bare survival.

As explained earlier, in the o.p. of the thread entitled “The Case for Ethics - best presentation yet” once you know your Ethics, you are more likely to embrace the values: caring. sharing, and cooperating. You will value fair dealing, reciprocity, mutual gain.

We need to be able to trust others not to hurt us, and they need to trust us; it’s the only sane way to live. That’s another reason why we need ethics. By definition, what is ethical is what leads to the affirmation of human rights, individual freedom and justice.

Let us define “obligation” in context, as follows: Human beings have an obligation to follow moral laws. Laws are moral when they comply with ethical principles. Here are some ethical principles :

• Principle of Consistency: Do not have double standards, one for yourself, and others for other people.
• Principle of Inclusivity: Include as many as possible into your in-group – widen your moral compass – be inclusive.
• Principle of benevolence: help those in need.
• Principle of Non-harming: do not harm others.
• Principle of honesty: do not deceive others.
• Principle of lawfulness: do not violate the law.
• Principle of autonomy: acknowledge a person’s freedom over his/her actions or physical body.
• Principle of justice: acknowledge a person’s right to due process, fair compensation for harm done, and fair distribution of benefits.
• Rights: acknowledge a person’s rights to life, information, privacy, free expression, and safety. Etc.

With regard to the Principle of lawfulness this upgrade needs to be added: Do not violate the law unless it is an unjust law, a law that can be shown to violate one or more principles of Ethics. The Moral Law is to be the foundation of statute law …and will be, once legislators understand their ethics.

The Principle of Justice within Individual Ethics directs individuals to lead a balanced life; within Social Ethics it directs folks to uphold social justice and to elect for public office only those who will work for social justice and for the common good.

The Principle of Honesty allows for some rare exceptions: one may deceive to save a life, or if one is a magician, an illusionist doing it for purposes of entertainment, or bluffing in a game such as poker is morally permissible.

It is important to keep in mind that Ethics is about maximizing value for one and all. So let’s figure out how, at every opportunity, to create value, how to be constructive, how to upgrade, improve, build on, uplift, boost individuals and groups of individuals. When we get our priorities straight we will aim for social justice, happiness, practical wisdom, a quality life, a state of optimum well-being. So if you form the habit of creating positive value, you then will want to avoid personal corruption and you will choose long-term well-being over short-term temptation. You’ll see things from an Ethical perspective.

Let everyone enjoy their own values as long as they avoid oppressing anyone else. Projects are are values, so let everyone devise and pursue their own projects as long as this does not in any way result in the oppression of others, thus interfering with the pursuit of their own projects.

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Okay — using that same logic, a piece of feces has value, too. Every individual piece of fecal matter is unique, because each piece of feces has distinct features or qualities and the more you look, the more you will find. They are great for fertilizer, too.

Just because something is unique, individual or whatever, that doesn’t mean it necessary has value or that one OUGHT to value it. Value is associated with rarity and desirability/functionality. If something is unique, but can’t benefit me in some way, then it’s valueless to me.

3

So the only human life you value is that which benefits you?

4

Yes, in one way or another. I know it sounds crude, but it’s the truth. And this is the case, dare I say, for everyone. We can sugar-coat our selfishness all we want, but the reality is that this is how value works.

5

No, it isn’t. Values are more complex than that. I’m sure you’ve heard about compassion and empathy before. I value my own life, so I can imagine that most others value their own lives for much the same reasons. I’m not saying we aren’t selfish; I’m saying we aren’t only selfish.

I imagine you must be just fine with any immoral act committed against anyone who doesn’t directly benefit you.

6

Compassion and empathy are interwoven in value judgments. What is empathy, anyway, but the projection of yourself in the position of another?

I’ll be blunt and acknowledge that, for the most part, I’m indifferent to the suffering of others, who I don’t know or relate to. To try to force myself to care would be giving into sentimentality.

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The only problem with people valuing only that which benefits them is that reality is vastly complex and people are always too stupid to know what most benefits them. Very, very often, they hate what they should be loving (for their own benefit) and love what they should be hating (for their own benefit).

So as a general philosophy for the general public, the idea of loving only ones self is extremely damaging and self-defeating. When you inspire the general public (certainly not deep thinking people) to only love themselves, guess what kind of an environment you create for yourself. They end up hating at you because you are merely in their way, using their resources, suspected of trying to do them harm. And that makes you the fool for preaching to “only value what benefits me”. Value-ontology is a self-defeating trickster.

When you become the greatest and most fully aware genius on the planet (HMIE), then it is safe for you to value only that which benefits you. Until then, it doesn’t benefit you to try.

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That’s exactly what empathy is and that’s what allows us to value the well being of others aside from selfish interests. That you restrict your sentiments to only those who benefit you is a personal issue. That’s not something I would regard as a rule about the psychology of human beings in general.

You seem to be suggesting that empathy is inherently selfish because you are imagining how you’d feel in another person’s position. But that’s just using yourself as a frame of reference, which isn’t necessarily selfish. It’s a way of relating to others.

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The cause and the reason for empathy is that the mind seeks (wisely) to support that which supports itself. And in that process, the mind identifies food, beauty, friend, family, and goodness in other things that it sees. Empathy is the process of sensing a component of something the self requires and thus the urge to support it.

The more compassion is supported, the more compassion there is to go around when one needs it.

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What I have learned is the “rules” we live by which is the ethical rules we established,
matter less than the situations that aren’t covered by the rules.
For example, we “know” murder is wrong and you can get everyone to agree to this,
the problem lies in the exceptions to the rules. We allow policemen to “murder” innocent
civilians without any punishment, we allow capital punishment, we support our troops who
“murder”, it is not in the rules, but in the exceptions to the rules that are the problem.

Kropotkin

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The exceptions are rules in themselves. That is unless you can think of an exception that is amoral. A failure to enforce those rules properly is a different issue.

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I’m not trying to claim that we don’t/can’t care for other people - far from it. What I’m saying is that our empathy, our caring for other people, has traces of selfishness in it. This is not a negative thing, though - contrary to how this term has been bastardized and laden with religio-anti-egostical connotations. And when I say that I value those, who benefit me, it’s not in some cut-throat sense, either. For example: I value my wife, on a deep bio-psychological level, because she possesses the ability to generate my children. That’s not something I, consciously, consider, but from an evolutionary-psychological perspective, that’s a significant aspect.

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statiktech: The exceptions are rules in themselves. That is unless you can think of an exception that is amoral. A failure to enforce those rules properly is a different issue."

K: rules turned into laws? Ethic rules are different than laws. You can have an ethics rule violated
with impunity and a law violation less so (depending on the law and who is doing the law violation)
You have to be clear on this ethics problem. Is it laws or ethics? And by ethics, we can mean
those long standing ideals like a man stands up to allow a women a seat on the bus. That is ethics
opposed to law. In the creation of laws, it is not the law itself that creates the issues, it is
the unintended part of the laws that create the issues, the exceptions.

Kropotkin

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Lots of laws are ethical rules. I don’t understand the distinction you’re making as the two aren’t mutually exclusive. The example you used for ethics is more like etiquette, which could have some ethical value I suppose, but not the best example. Ethics is about moral principles and conduct, as are lots of laws.

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That is the progenitor of the vulgarly corrupted third world mentality now spreading throughout the West, degrading it into subservience to those who couldn’t care less about anyone or anything but their own perceived wealth.

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The problem with the third world is that the US breeds totalitarian regimes and gives them an ultra nanny state so they can’t even learn how to farm for themselves. These are economic third world states, there are still non economic thorid world areas, I wouldn’t call them states… it’s just that nobody goes there.

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statiktech: The exceptions are rules in themselves. That is unless you can think of an exception that is amoral. A failure to enforce those rules properly is a different issue."

K: rules turned into laws? Ethic rules are different than laws. You can have an ethics rule violated
with impunity and a law violation less so (depending on the law and who is doing the law violation)
You have to be clear on this ethics problem. Is it laws or ethics? And by ethics, we can mean
those long standing ideals like a man stands up to allow a women a seat on the bus. That is ethics
opposed to law. In the creation of laws, it is not the law itself that creates the issues, it is
the unintended part of the laws that create the issues, the exceptions.

Statiktech: Lots of laws are ethical rules. I don’t understand the distinction you’re making as the two aren’t mutually exclusive. The example you used for ethics is more like etiquette, which could have some ethical value I suppose, but not the best example. Ethics is about moral principles and conduct, as are lots of laws.
[/quote]
K: but is not standing up for a women on the bus, a moral principle and conduct? I think much of our problems
is that we don’t make some sort of distinction between ethics, moral principles, etiquette, and conduct.
Most people couldn’t even make a distinction between those 4 idea’s.

Kropotkin

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Hi, Erik

Thank you. What you say is true. My argument as to why a conscious human life has value was too abbreviated, and was thus open to your critique. I once posted a thread here arguing the case at length. I believe its title was something like “A proof as to the infinite value of human life.” It was complex and employed Dedekind Cuts and Alonzo Church’s Higher-order Logic.

Then, in another thread, “The Case for Ethics” viewtopic.php?f=1&t=185994 - without getting technical and actually using the term - I defined “Ethics” in terms of the concept ’ Intrinsic Value,’ a concept taken from Formal Axiology (value science) which serves as Meta-Ethics. [Very few, if any, systems offer a meta-system which supplies definitions of the key terms involved in the system, but this one, the Hartman/Katz system does.] [size=91]{For a detailed understanding click on the link to BASIC ETHICS in the signature below. The system offered there defines the three major traditional academic schools of ethics and it absorbs them into itself, into a toti-resultant synthesis.}[/size]

As you might have learned - from the chart in End-note 4, at bottom of p. 55, of the paper referenced in the signature below with the title: A UNIFIED THEORY OF ETHICS: With Applications to Issues" - the term “Unique” has a well-defined meaning in my theory of Ethics. It is defined as: the Intrinsic valuation of value-completeness. It takes its place on the Hierarchy of Value - the value spectrum, from least to most value - besides Perfection (which is Systemic) and Goodness (which is Extrinsic). To call something Unique - and not merely one-of-a-kind, or not merely outstanding - is to Intrinsically value it.

This implies you give it focus, and attention, and that you find uncountably-high meaning in it. You value it so much that you form a continuum, where one cannot tell where you, the valuer, the judge, leaves off …and where the subject being valued begins. Bergson referred to this as “compenetration”; Husserl dubbed this “Intentionality.”

And, yes, it is true, as you say, that “Value is associated with rarity and desirability/functionality.” In an ordinary, non-philosophical, dictionary ‘value’ would be defined as that which we desire, assess, prize, or prefer. These are synonyms for ‘value’ and thus give us no structural information. So, of course, it is “associated with desirability.” Yes we value rarity and functionality …but so much more in addition, such as morality, liberty, and fraternity. People have been known to value brass knick-knacks that they would claim have no function, but, though common and not rare, have aesthetic value to them.

Then you write: " If something is unique, but can’t benefit me in some way, then it’s valueless to me."
I believe statiktech, and especially James have adequately answered you on that. I have to give them credit for explaining how a narrow, self-centered viewpoint will eventually bring a man down by giving a stressful, unbalanced, life either to the individual holding such an unethical concept or to his culture, which he leaves to his loved ones to inherit - an environment of mistrust, selfishness, and what Hobbes describes in the Leviathan …every man to himself! Maybe you can see no immediate benefit to you in a starving child (overseas or here, close-by) - but if you do nothing toward alleviating such deprivation it will ‘come around and give you a hot-foot’ so to speak. You, or your family and/or those you do identify with will suffer as a result of living in a world with extreme misery and hardship ! Statistics show that at present one-out-of-every-four children do not know where their next meal is coming from :exclamation:

Thank you again for staying on topic and writing a response relevant to the o.p. You indeed have, as requested, shown how to improve the presentation. Incidentally, what did you think of the rest of the material offered there as a continuation of the Case for Ethics thread? Is the conjunction of those two threads worthy, in quality, for submission as an article in a journal? :wink: I note that aside from your response no one commented on it. That could mean that it was done well, or it could mean that it was beneath the dignity of anyone to comment on it. :evilfun: :laughing: O:)

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Hello thinkdr, [we crossed paths b4],
Though I do not totally agree with it, I think your presentation of Ethics is very good [i.e. extensive and has depth].
Those interested in Ethics should have a go at the various links you attached.

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Well, thank you, Prismatic. I am especially grateful for your viewpoint considering that “we have crossed paths.” That could mean we agreed to strongly disagree.

What is it in the o.p. with which you find that you do not agree? Or - better yet - how can it be improved by reconstructing it to include the positive ideas you have about how an ideal ethical theory would look?

I know my theory would be enhanced by having illustrative examples and concrete, realistic moral dilemmas as case studies; but that is not my forte. I need a collaborator for that. I respect your opinions, as well as those of all the other contributors to this thread, so I would very much appreciate hearing from you more extensively in order to understand where you’re coming from.

.