What is most basic in Ethics? - a tentative answer...

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Ethics is about evaluating moral values and principles, and is concerned with working out a basis on which to follow these principles. These principles are not rules nor absolutes; they are rather voluntary guidelines designed to make life easier, more comfortable, more trouble-free. To comply with the moral principles, is “right.” Not to, is “wrong.”

[In the paper, *Ethics for the 21st Century: Keys to the good life, I define carefully the term “Ethics” and I offer a few moral principles. A link to it, is offered below; click on the first listing in the signature.]

Compassionate acts, such as are seen when a person gives a helping hand to another individual, something that occurs every day, are evidence of an objective moral order. Allow me to explain: Human beings want to survive. Actually they want more than mere survival. We are pre-wired to seek our personal benefit, of which survival is a minimum necessary requirement. What does it take to survive? Well, it is a fact of Biology that for a cell in our body to be healthy it helps if the cells surrounding it are healthy. In the same way, if you, or I, or any individual, gets in trouble then we need our neighbors and family to help us out. We need the people around us. Let’s call them “our support group.”

Isn’t it so that each of the people around us has people around them who could serve as their support group? This keeps them strong. If one of the people around us, if anyone our support group has an infectious disease it is going to threaten the health of others in the group and make them less strong. This is just plain common sense! So, we deduce, since you need the people around you as your suport, you also need the people around them. And where does it stop? It doesn’t. Therefore by logical reasoning we conclude that we need the entire human species as our “support group.” This is a basic fact of empirical ethics.

The human race is a support group for each human individual.

We are, in conclusion, interdependent. [Let’s be mindful of this so that we may have awareness.]

And thus it is in our personal best interest to cooperate. Hence, let us seek
harmonious cooperation; and we will be “doing the right thing.”

The essence of my theory is that “Ethics” is a perspective …a perspective on a human individual, or group of them. It arises when we view the human being as highly valuable, of indefinitely-high value. Also, the theory indicates that - if we are ethical - we will make things better, morally better. We are to add value if we want to be ethical. Lots of implications may be deduced from that definition (of the concept “Ethics”) and from that basic idea: Make things better! One of them is: [size=112] Do no harm![/size]
This in turn implies a renunciation of violence, cruelty, ruthless exploitation, greed, self-mutilation, lack of humility, etc.

Also, as part of the theory, techniques and methods are proffered which enable us to make things better. In addition, it encourages us to develop new ‘moral technologies’, that is, technologies which tend to make our lives easier, simpler, more secure and more comfortable. Such innovations are how we “get from here to there” - how we are more likely to live in a more-civilized world, in an
ethical world - one that has less incentives for trouble-making, for needless stress of an anxious sort, for crime and maliciousness.

Since syntropy (order, value) is every bit as much natural law as is entropy (dissolution, destruction) if we want to live in harmony with nature, we would encourage more syntropy: we would strive to maximize value and to minimize disvalue (chaos, misery, destitution and avoidable suffering.) We would support
practical policies that implement this.

Furthermore, research in Brain Neurology has shown that we are pre-wired to seek our own personal benefit. A question that arises is: What is that benefit and how can we attain it? Research by Dr. Post at Case Western Reserve has revealed that [size=135]if we make someone else happy we are then happy too. We come to feel our life is making a difference when we make others happy; life seems more meaningful to us; it is a good feeling! It lifts us up. If we trust others, treat them decently, they often tend to treat us the same way. It is a win/win situation, all around. [/size]

For further details, see myqol.com/wadeharvey/PDFs/ET … ENTURY.pdf

Your views, readers? Does this resonate with you? Do you have upgrades to offer? How can the Ethical model contributed in that paper Ethics for the21st Century be further improved? Does the above text improve upon the presentation of that theory?

2

In the discussion in the post above we have define “right”, “wrong”, “Ethics”, and we have included empirical facts and experimental results. The little pamphlet, Ethics for the 21st Century, to which a link has been given, also defines “compassion,” “love,” “empathy,” “altruism,” and other key concepts, relating them to each other. It also offers measuring tools (the value dimensions) and avoids utopianism by telling us just how to get closer to living in an ethical world …and it explains what that means.

Is Ethics closer to becoming a science than it was five years ago?

3

For some of us, it has been a science for a while now. And I would think that “the most basic ethic” is simply to avoid inspiring enemies (after you learn how to know an enemy).

4

[size=143]Here are some quotes to reflect upon, and perhaps learn from:

“A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world”
----Albert Camus

“In most educational institutions, there is a total lack of the concept of human development and nation-building in the education process. The emphasis instead is on moneymaking and materialism. This has resulted in the gradual erosion of values among people and the body politic. A sense of belongingness must be developed amongst every individual learner. Every individual human being is prominently significant and shas the capacity to contribute immensely to society and humanity.” — ---- Dr. Noushad Husain

"The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings " … Albert Schweitzer
[/size]

5

One can find a knowing health in cruelty to others. I spose redemption would be the proof it’s ethical?

6

Hello HisTHOUGH7

I didn’t follow what you said. I sense a compatibility between the concepts ‘health’ and ‘ethics,’ but ‘cruelty’ and ‘ethics’ seem to me to be a mismatch. Perhaps you could clarify for us what you mean by the words. That would be helpful.

I am happy to report on a constructive suggestion which occurred in a discussion on the internet:

Professors, administrators and educators - on the college level - may want to consider increasing the number of credits that ethics courses bestow, thereby encouraging more students to elect to take those ethics courses.

Assigning credits (that one may earn in a course) is a way to add value - and thus this fits as an excellent application of the Hartman/Katz Ethical Theory !!!

Can Philosophy-lovers suggest some other practical ways to add value? …ways that were not mentioned in the first two reading selections in the list below?

7

I just go by the dictionary.

8

There’s all sorts of benefits to be found in being cruel to others, but if it’s just about feeling good you can hardly call it ethical.

9

Okay, let’s do that. Here is what a good dictionary {www.dictionary.com} says:

[size=160]ethics[/size] [eth-iks]
noun

  1. (used with a singular or plural verb) a system of moral principles:

  2. (used with a plural verb) the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.:
    medical ethics; Christian ethics.

  3. (used with a plural verb) moral principles, as of an individual:

  4. (used with a singular verb) that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions.
    Compare axiological ethics, deontological ethics.

As noted in the original post, my theory does not deal with rules, nor with motives, since the latter are too hard to discern (at this time.) It does discuss personal norms that are based upon moral principles that are shown to be axiologically sound (i.e., demonstrated to be good - grounded on the best-available definition of what “x is a good C” means.) When Intrinsic Value [size=97][a dimension of value in Formal Axiology][/size] is applied to the concept “norms” we get the “Obligatory Norms,” those that one may assign voluntarily to himself … such as, for example, “I want to be a person of good character, one who complies with the wisest, most-logical, moral principles that humankind has ever devised in all the history of ideas pertaining to the topic of Ethics.”

Such ideas would fit into a sound, coherent, reasonable, plausible theory such as the one proposed by M. C. Katz. …one to give consideration to until a better theory comes along. This theory does discuss conduct, and does analyze ends (and means.) Cruelty has no place in an ethical life; it may come up in the theory as one type of deviant behavior that therapeutic Psychology examines and treats.

What do you think?

10

Yes, impious, you are correct - correct by any standard definition of “ethics” or by the definition of the term in the Ethical Theory offered in the o.p. above.

11

I think it’s sometimes possible to redeem cruelty and thus find it ethical.

12

I’ve been of the opinion that redemption is a religious matter. Ethics can be a science - which is secular.

It is the case, though, that I devised a proof in formal Value Theory, which concluded that a “prodigal son” (one who is inconsiderate, or has hurt people, or who has done something immoral) has just as much value as an “upright son” (one who his parents are proud of, who cares, who shows elders great respect, who has a noble character.) The implication of that finding is that even though we might hate the transgression (the immorality, the violation of ethics) we are to love (to Intrinsically-value) the transgressor, since that individual is of uncountably-high value… as are we all.

13

I’d disagree, even though I think highly of moralism.
Some persons are bad and have lost their true value.

14

Is it possible that the writer of this quote may be wrong about stuff?

…Kidding aside, the Hartman/Katz theory of ethics, titled A Unified Theory of Ethics, defines the field as coming into being when one sees individuals from the perspective that they are of indefinitely-high value. The field I refer to is the Science of Ethics. A subset of it is called Moral Psychology and that is the experimental side of it. Its meta-language is Formal Axiology. It is a vast field, a study, a research discipline, and a logical frame-of-reference guiding the discipline. It is also a practice, when the study is applied… ethics in practice. Two other sub-fields of it are Life-Coaching and Education. The remedial branch of it is known as psychotherapy.

With regard to Ethics, I say to everyone and anyone: Try it; you might like it.

15

Metaphoricly : I don’t love or protect my tumors.

16

Some people would call child molesters and rapists “skunks.”

You would patiently explain to them that their thinking is confused, that skunks are cute and cuddly. And they make great pets!

With reference to those you speak of as “bad persons”…
No, my friend, I would not protect them. They need to be locked away. The same with sadistic murderers, those who kidnap young girls and keep them as sex slaves, madmen, those with criminal minds: get them away from civilized society !! { See Gary J. Acquaviva, VALUES, VIOLENCE, AND OUR FUTURE (Rodopi Press, Atlanta, Amsterdam. 208 pp. } This book explains how to distinguish good from evil and examines the minds of people on death row in prisons to discern their belief systems.

I find it difficult to show respect to Dick Cheney, former Chairman of Halliburton Crp. and former Vice President, a man who I consider to be a war criminal. ( He shot his own good friend in the face.) Thousands of people were maimed in the Iraq War which he defends as a good idea; he, and his cohorts initiated that war. They are called “the Neo-conservatives.” Yet, if I were to encounter him, face to face, I would be courteous, and behave as respectfully as I could – because that is who I am. Even from a criminal we might have something useful to learn.

Even a criminal has a (latent) capacity to somehow contribute to the greater good, to be of service to others, perhaps to entertain, perhaps to express an inner hidden artist or inventor.

17

You are speaking of the people who are currently running your entire world.

18

Why do you say that about President Obama, Prime Ministers of England and Israel, President of Australia and of Italy?

I cannot agree with your rash claim.

19

I take it that you don’t even understand that the people you mentioned aren’t even supposed to be running the world, much less that they actually don’t. The function of the President of the USA is to militarily carry out orders given by Congress. In Obama’s case, he uses executive orders to actually make new laws (not his job) by cheating the constitutional system with the obvious intent of eventually being rid of the Constitution entirely. He is a Muslim socialist, answering to the UN and Islam, not Congress (his Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, even told the Senate that they will be informed as to what the President is up to when the President sees fit). But beyond that, he isn’t running anything anyway. He does as he is told. He is an appointed salesman, nothing more … as are the others that you mentioned. And I suspect that you still believe that Presidents are actually voted into office by the people. Obama was appointed President because he is black and Muslim. Hillary will be President merely because she is a woman and socialist. Popular vote hasn’t anything to do with it. If things get out of direct control, people are assassinated.

You express extreme naivety concerning how your world is really functioning. And that makes your ethics reasoning very dubious. Your world is being run by extortion and obfuscation from people who stay out of sight. The ethics that you promote does little to change that. And far too many people know it.

20

I do think everyone deserves love.