This is addressing the subject unhooking it from the aim, the goal, of a “for what”?
Make things better in general for what, or to what ends?
An ethics that works for all and any time becomes a religion.
Yo, cassie.
I could answer that question.
Wanna talk with me?
Or are you looking for prey to justify your denial and fear?
Cassie’s correct. This is the standard Platonic error. THE GOOD
by virtue of which acts are virtuous or not so.
Man has no role to play here, just to serve an idea that may serve anyone who claims to be good.
So the underlying ‘esoteric’ message here is: claim to be good and great fools will come to your aid.
True, no doubt.
It’s more than just that.
If one claims to be on the side of ‘good’ achieving the state of ‘the moral high-ground’ one can just about commit all sorts of horrors so long as they convince the majority that it is the ‘moral’ thing to do.
The perfect smokescreen and camouflage where the sheople just eat it up constantly.
Fixed cross, cassie, and Tyler:
You may consider perhaps reading the paper, BASIC ETHICS wherein it plainly explains that every word of the system is highly tentative, subject to revision and upgrading at any time. [size=85]From now on every proposition in it is to receive a date and an index. When a change is made in it because something better has come along, that will receive a new date stamp, so that future ethical scientists can follow the history of the discussion.[/size]
You see, I regard Ethics as a science …which has evolved out of Moral Philosophy: It -the Ethics that I’m talking about - is a body of useful information about what functions for human beings so as to produce the least quarrels, altercations, violent arguments, and fights - in other words, harmonious human relationships shall result. Furthermore, the study I call "Ethics’ tends toward producing the optimum and most-efficacious self-development that brings out one’s inner capacities so that one becomes all s/he is capable of being and becoming.
It also is designed to focus upon what enhances sweeter cooperation toward getting mutually-shared goals done. It has empirical import as well as theoretical import. Eventually the terms of the system form a network where every term is related to every other - just as we find in physical theory. The terms used will be well-defined. This is an open-source project. If the theory failed to give the Individual complete autonomy, and/or failed to foster individuality, I would reject that theory immediately !
Here “science” is defined as a logical frame-of-reference applied to a set of data, thereby organizing and explicating the data with a view to greater understanding. A practice would follow from this, just as Medicine is a practice that follows from a knowledge of physiology - [size=50]and which has in it a whole lot of trial and error. They conveniently bury their errors literally.[/size]
The aim of the whole enterprise is to provide you with what you would designate to be ‘a quality life.’ This implies you’d be happy and successful. You would be the judge of this. I am more opposed to tyranny and coercion than you are!
Don’t you think it appropriate to know what the system is before you knock it??
To start with, I strongly recommend you look up my posts here at this Forum, and maybe go so far as to READ them. Or click on some of the items in the signature here below and check out the ideas they contain.
[size=85] I am a professor of Philosophy, now retired, and with all due respect, if I may make a suggestion, how about you do your homework…[/size]
thinkdr,
Cassie/FC aren’t communicating in good faith.
Tyler,
If one truly loves another and treats the other with love, they’ll want to enable the flourishing of another.
It’s a win - win.
They’re not manipulating, they’re influencing without any smokescreen. To love another, is to empower the over. Lying undermines another, therefore, one who’s trying to empower the other wont lie.
Again, read this and ask any questions. You said I speak too abstractly, if you ask again, I’ll happily put it in different forms. (The replies in it could likely help you understand)
Although I favor the intent of your ethics package (let me repeat that: “Although I FAVOR THE INTENT of your ethics package”), I believe that it has a very serious weakness and thus flaw. It doesn’t compensate for its adversary. Nothing succeeds very far if it doesn’t inherently compensate for its antithesis. You seem to not believe it has an adversary thus expect it to automatically spread.
Whatever ethics you propose must inherently cause any spreading that is required for it to achieve its purpose. “A better world” implies that a great many, the mainstream, have accepted an ethic that maintains “a better world”. But if starting in a decadent world, it must also automatically produce that better world.
Philosophically, it is the “snowball’s chance in Hell” problem. It doesn’t matter how good the ethics are if they can’t compensate for the heat. I see nothing in this ethics package (and yes, I read your documents) that compensates for an adversary that I am very certain exists and is much, much wealthier, intelligent, and influential than your team.
Scientists in gathering data and guessing at patterns can and will find some useful “truths” and thus make some progress in a technical, mechanistic way. But such a method cannot find the greater truth beneath it all, that which actually makes it all work. Thus they delude themselves into thinking that they are the path to great wisdom and superior ethics. But they live in a fantasy kept afloat by something they will never know.
All of the universe and especially in regards to society, is like an iceberg in that the larger portion of it that keeps it afloat, goes unseen. The portion one sees is kept in the light by that which is kept in the dark. What you see on top, above the water, is merely the product of all that you don’t see beneath. If you don’t like what you are seeing, the cause of it is far beneath the surface. Or as it has been said, “He who reigns in darkness, rules the world.”
But because you do not see him, like the scientist, you believe “He” does even exist.
Your adversary (promoting the antithesis of your ethics) uses a method that is self-perpetuating. And from it, “He” gains great wealth. And he uses that wealth to ensure that all competition is kept non-efficacious.
I could explain much more and what you really could do about it, except that you can’t hear me, because you don’t believe that compensating for any adversary is relevant. You believe that you can just “spread the word”, as so very many have tried for centuries, and it will just naturally become dominate. Thus you are not finding the deepest ethic that perpetuates itself toward the positive that you wish to see.
How does one “compensate for the adversary” without giving this “antithesis” too much attention such that one is over-valuing it?
An old adage says to us: Be careful what you think for what you dwell on eventually becomes your destiny.
Some philosophers take a specious argument and devote 50 pages to refuting it. Then if their paper or book is published they thrust out their chest and - in effect - say “What a good boy am I.” {They finally get around, in 2 or3 pages, to telling what they believe is a sound solution …getting to the constructive part.} I don’t like to read such documents or books, where I have to plow through so much negative, distorted thinking before I get to what I really care about.
What you give your attention to is what you are Intrinsically valuing. Is it possible that you focus so much on the devil, or on evil, that you under-value the positive, constructive findings and results? In my booklet, BASIC ETHICS, I explain 'The logical, existential, Hierarchy of Value (the HOV.) And I explain why it is vital to go in the Intrinsic direction on that hierarchy, in order to create the maximum value. All the dimensions are necessary and important but if one doesn’t give the priority to the Intrinsic, then one will lose value instead of gaining it. [Truth be told, Intrinsic-value is another term for love, yet one that is more acceptable in academic settings.] Roughly speaking, applications of the three major dimension on the value spectrum are S: the intellectual values; E: the practical and pragmatic values; and I: people values. The Ethics system directs us to: Put people first.
In the Unified Theory of Ethics roundtable discussions space is given to hypocrisy crime, corruption, incest, succumbing to temptation, poor child-rearing practices, greed as an obsessive-compulsive disorder, various examples of immorality such as maiming little children and sending them out to be beggars, burying people alive, calling women “witches”, brain-damage and how it can produce psycopathy, etc. So I can’t be accused of ignoring the problems which we are called upon to overcome. However most of these negatives are just mentioned in passing. I definitely do focus on the positive.
I seek good logical models for the concepts “integrity,” “morality,” “honesty,” “peace,” “happiness,” “success,” “freedom,” “empathy,” “transparency,” “authenticity,” etc. That is what I work toward; and eventually I hope to show how they - as well as other key terms of ethics - are all related to one another in a web or tapestry of connections, integrated into a single framework.
If readers here can contribute to this project, so much the better, and I heartedly welcome you all to do so!
By having a ethic that is inherently self-perpetuating. As long as you have that, you don’t need to concern yourself (very much) with what is in the way of it. But the person engineering such an ethics package must be honest and humble to reality, else he doesn’t even know if he is doing his job and certainly isn’t a “scientist” of it. Scientists can’t afford to be positivists. You appear to think that as long as you ignore the bad, it will all go away.
If your ethics for how to treat your car happened to ignore compensating for oil degradation or water build up in the fuel tank, do you think that merely being positive and pressing on, would really just make the car run fine anyway?
Often in society, and most especially today in the USA, there are very influential people ensuring that specific others, “the unchosen”, do not succeed regardless of what they do. But of course, you want to ignore that and press on. The problem is that it is by ignoring it, they obtain their power to ensure it. It is very much like ignoring the paranoid idea that someone might steal your car or something in your home and thus not ever locking it up. And then when something is gone, just assume that you have misplaced it, still not locking it up.
The ethics of positivism creates its own adversary simply by making the temptation to take advantage of all of the blindness too great. Of course a wise adversary will help promote even more positivism, perhaps calling anyone “paranoid” for thinking anyone would actually be sneaky. In that way, he gains and gains and gains, because no one is looking at the negative that he has come to represent. The positivists make the people into servants of puppets to the negativists getting rich through sly thievery.
Design and establish truly good ethics by first being a realist fully aware of the potential of evil doings. Focus on them long enough to ensure that what you are going to be convincing other people to blindly do isn’t going to cause their ultimate demise and preferably is going to at least resist their adversary such that they don’t have to focus on that adversary so much.
It isn’t an issue of being a positivist or negativist, but rather being right and having the efficacious ethics that self-perpetuate against a very active adversary to them. But even that set of ethics must naturally compensate for the temptation for blind faith and presumption (the seed of ALL sin).
It is one thing to say, “don’t worry of the bad because these other specialists will handle it”, but quite another to say, “don’t worry of the bad because bad will magically disappear by not thinking about it”. Although the later will be true for certain kinds of bad, for it to be generally true and not create even more bad, it must the be exact, extremely precise ethics, not an experimentally derived, probably better than before, not yet perfect, type of ethics. To even find out what really would be that “perfect ethic” would necessitate examining the positive AND the negative possibilities regardless of the current situation.
Blind faith merely creates blind corruption. If your ethics isn’t creating sight, it is creating not only darkness, but real devils within that darkness.
I say;
If you are going to put blind faith in anything, as a method, then put it in ensuring that you are not blind.
“Clarify, Verify,…”
If you do merely that one thing in truly all that you think, do, and say, granted a place to begin and slowly grow, it will be self-perpetuating and overcome even the most extremely wealthy adversaries to it. Science has mildly proven it already. What do you think made them so successful - clarifying, verifying, instilling,… It is the very foundation of life. They merely needed a little more help being precise in their thinking (especially their ethics) before taking on the world of adversaries, yet still made an unstoppable impact upon the entire world.
James
Do you have any suggestions as to how to make Ethics self-perpetuating?
And as I mentioned in my previous post, in the 5th paragraph , I do not ignore evil. My view is that the truth shall set us free; we live by the facts and we search for the truth. We will recognize it by how concise and acute it is; and how it is at once quite deep and quite clear.
While I acknowledge the evil in the world I am not a Devil Worshiper.
It seems to me, and I may be wrong, that if enough people gain a good sense of values then the world will tend to straighten itself out. Criminals, while they may be shrewd, are in general stupid. Those who engage in self-defeating behavior often kill themselves off prematurely. The more people who become rational, and evidence-based in their reasoning, the closer we get to the lynchpin moment, the tipping point - where everything crystallizes and good events occur rapidly as things fall into place for an ethical world.
[size=200]
So keep hope alive ![/size]
Ethics is catching on 
There is only one way that I know of. It is the very foundation of life itself. And it dispenses with “evil” automatically. It is what has kept you alive since the moment you were conceived;
“Clarify, Verify, Instill, and Reinforce the Perception of Hopes and Threats unto Anentropic Harmony”
Discuss that one with your colleagues. I can explain it in more extreme detail, but it becomes abstract, design oriented, and strategic. It is literally what your DNA has been doing all along and what your mind and heart have been trying to do all of your life. It is what you have been trying to do on these threads. All you really need to do is come to understand it, “Know Thyself”.
It is self-perpetuating both inside of you as well as outside of you. Within, the demand to clarify continually reduces the seed of all “sin” (error in judgment) known as Presumption. As presumption is reduced, it becomes more difficult for truth to be hidden within your own mind. Opportunities become visible. Outside of you in a society, the same occurs. As any one person clarifies, verifies, and instills harmony, those around him catch on due to the clarity of what is happening as well as the old “go along to get along” persuasion (a crude form of that same ethic).
And then because it is a real harmony, it is inherently stronger than its surroundings. Because it is about clarifying and verifying, it inherently handles any adversary better than it would have otherwise. It is the process of adapting to the actual situation as it truly is while maintaining all of the brilliance a mind can produce. It is the envy of Science. It is the way that brings the light that the darkness flees from.
And inherently from that humble beginning, it is soon seen that a small “team effort” is best (much like your team of colleagues) who all understand why they are doing what they are doing (because it was made clear and verified). In the long run, they discover that they actually have no need to do anything else but that “one ethic” because everything else they might do, will only more endanger themselves and all others around them.
All ethics have actually been born from that one seed-ethic, as has all life. The only issue has been the complexity of humans against humans causing obfuscation so great, that the mind never really got anything clarified concerning why it even exists. The cognition cannot be formed already knowing its purpose, else it wouldn’t be cognitive. That is one of the reasons why it was said that people are “born in sin”, because they were born into the confusion already taking place and haven’t a chance to get it straight before they are an inherent part of it, and through their own need to presume and press on.
The “seed of sin” is presumption. That one ethic mentioned gradually removes it from the mind and from all society. Any other ethics that are truly valuable become clear along the way… automatically, without being foreseen.
The best kind of control happens when you convinced the other person that your control over them is for their own ‘good’.
Love has nothing to do with it.
And thinkr,
That one ethic has been the very point and purpose of forming every social “stone”, such as the “Philosopher’s Stone”. And in Christian terms, it is stronger than the famed circle of Satan and what Jesus was doing from the moment of his birth. What do you think they meant with, “bringing sight to the blind” (clarity) and “life to the dead” (perception of hopes and threats)? And if you don’t believe that Jesus made a self-perpetuating impact throughout society, then we have a serious misunderstanding of terminology.
If you’re going to compete with the big boys, play a big boy’s game. Do what works.
Thank you James for your contribution. There is truth in what you write. I said much the same in BASIC ETHICS: A systematic approach where I recommended ‘reducing or closing perception gaps.’ I explained that asking questions is one very good way to do it. This is your “clarify” principle. And it is true that such gaps are the cause of virtually all the disharmony among humans on this Earth. I learned about this from Harvey Schoof and Peter Demerest who are philosophers as well as life coaches.
See peterdemarest.com/
To everyone:
I’d like some feedback as to what you think about this new Axiom for Ethics offered in the original post of this thread.
Is it sufficient, or are more axioms necessary? Is it – if indeed it can generate an entire system accounting for much, if not most, of the ethical data – a breakthrough? The claim is made here that it can do it. A lot of principles have already been deduced, as you can tell from looking over the writings of M. C… Katz [see many of them listed in the signature below; click on the links to have and enjoyable and edifying reading experience] and by researching current and back editions of The Journal of Formal and Applied Axiology.
I mentioned ‘Ethical data.’ What are these data?
Ethical data include instances of volunteerism to alleviate suffering, altruistic acts, celebrities making efforts to serve as moral role models, teaching and uplifting the less-advantaged children and youth.
Further data: acts of heroism; acts of whistle-blowing; cases where corruption or temptation to do something immoral were resisted; times when long-term consideration triumphed over short-term; situations where some beautiful cooperation took place; joy was actually experienced in the workplace; instances when responsibility was assumed; or individuals held themselves accountable for errors they committed; businesses dedicated themselves to being ‘social enterprises’ or workers-cooperatives engaged in gain-sharing, etc.
So, gentle Reader, share your ideas: what is your impression of the proposed definition of ethics itself and of the proposed axiom?
And thanks in advance for the feedback.
As you may recall, the Axiom reads: Make things morally better !
Cassie asked the question: Make things better for what?
I respond: Better for the health and well-being of individual people and their social groups. Both ‘health’ and ‘well-being’ are flexible concepts which, as we learn more, are expanded in meaning. You know if you have ‘well-being.’ It means you have a quality life: you are content, relatively secure, comfortable financially. If you know your Ethics, you want this for others too. You want to make a difference; you don’t want to have lived in vain. So let’s make things better for people.
Let’s work on eliminating the misery. This takes priority over having one more billionaire in our city or country. Let’s lift up people, from the bottom up. “Trickle down” does not work: as the evidence reveals .So it is incumbent upon us to empower folks so that they have a say in policies that affect their lives. Let’s work to arrange for direct democracy.
{Note that I am in full agreement with Sam Harris in what he emphasizes in his book, THE MORAL LANDSCAPE.
The system presented in BASIC ETHICS absorbs into itself the Consequentialism of Dr. Harris. It does this as well for Virtue Theory and for Deontology. It synthesizes them all into the new paradigm for ethics. There is no conflict. They are NOT competitors. We need them all. Dr. Harris is wrong to focus on just one of these schools of thought to the exclusion of the others.}
Your views?
It would appear that what is missing is the “Verify” principle.
Each of those steps has an inside and an outside, inside your own mind and outside to the world. The one most disregarded causing all of the problems and thus the most necessary now (as science demonstrated), is the Verification step.
- Clear the path
- Verify that it really is as clear as you thought.
Else you will seldom succeed in today’s world. Self-perpetuating requires perpetual verifying. It is extremely clear to me when someone is not verifying their efforts. And it takes very little for me to verify that they aren’t.
I agree that constantly verifying is the best policy.
I have discovered some videos that relate to Applied Ethics, and I present links to them here for the edification of members and guests of this Forum:
Forward this one to your entire Contact list. The subject line could read “You don’t need to understand the language to understand the message.”
youtube.com/embed/uaWA2GbcnJU
[[size=81]The tongue is Japanese…but no matter…[/size]]
On the economy in the U.S.A…
“How Tax Reform can Save the Middle Class” billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-how
On the world economy - now and into the future:
Jeremy Rifkin, “The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things…”
booktv.org/Program/15628/Aft … thing.aspx
Let me reassure the critics:
There is no one way to treat all people.
There is no ONE ideal for a Self.
I have never claimed that there is. I shall never argue that the is.
There are, though, principles that enable folks to function better in groups, that make for harmonious human relationships. One of them is to show some modicum of respect to another member of our human species. I know well that it is hard to show any respect to certain individuals. However, this is more for you than for the drunken bum, the slob, or Dick Cheney: if you have self-respect, if you have a noble character, it is you who will refrain from (moral) judgment …because you don’t want to be a ‘moralist.’
Your thoughts?
Granted I am a little slow, but is there a real difference between a “moralist” and an “ethicist”?
Yes, there is a real difference between the two concepts.
An “ethicist” does research in the field of ethics, or applies ethics in his/her profession. Or an ethicist develops ethical theories and systems.
In contrast, a “moralist” is someone who tells others how to live; and often is a prohibitionist of some kind or is a sexual-snoop who is obsessed with sex and functions as a puritanical ‘safe-guarder of the morals’ delving into what is acceptable to show to the public, etc. A moralist often attempts to scare people by dire warnings.