Ethics is the attempt to rationally establish morality and to distinguish moral rules that can be justified from those that cannot be justified.
Thus every ethics faces a basic predicament: By defining and justifying moral rules rationally, it puts them into perspective and thus makes them relative. From this point of view, the invention of ethics is birth of nihilism.
Ethicists therefore pretend to be able to rationalize something that cannot be rationalized - moral preferences. The rationalization of the irrational, however, almost certainly leads to ideology.
Ethics thus reinforces the expansive character of morality. For those who believe that their moral norms and values are rational automatically regard them as universalizable. Whoever contradicts them not only has a different way of life, or comes from a different culture - he or she is rather irrational, stupid or deliberately malicious.
With the invention of ethics, a new type of human being enters the stage: the professional for morally correct actions, the intellectual. He or she is the high priest of the new, rationally founded morality.
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Ethics is just more words. If you read “Nicomachean Ethics” by Aristotle then you know why it makes sense and you get lots of wiggle room as to what morals you apply, but morals are necessarily a more advanced behavior of morons. It makes more sense for a person to direct their ethos towards as noble a purpose as they can concieve, to whatever capacity their life can afford.
DZhukovin
Level 7
Aug 8, 2019
1
French spy who sabotaged the Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior ship apologises
The assassination of Fernando Pereira was certainly immoral.
Jean-Luc Kister: "The destruction of the vessel was an unfair, clandestine operation conducted in an allied, friendly and peaceful country"
Monsieur Jean-Luc Kister apologised ... which implies the admission of moral failure. Obviously he didn't breach the ethical standards of his employeur whose job includes killing.
PontifexMarximus
Level 8
Aug 7, 2019
0
Great post! From my Ag bio:
The synthesizing, holistic and NON-VERBAL right brain is the only hemi that experiences the Tao/Multiverse. But all it can say about it all is, "Wow!'"
The linear, sequential, egotistical, VERBAL left brain is the babbling ape that vainly and voluminously attempts to explain the Tao/Multiverse that it cannot access directly like the right brain, so it MAKES UP STORIES to explain the inexplicable.
We are all familiar with religious myths. But venturing into the realm of academia throughout history, we can easily find myths and mayhem everywhere, too: Ph.D adherents to many different schools of thought and personal subjective interpretations in theology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, environmental studies, psychology, artificial intelligence, economics, etc. ad infinitum. NOBODY fully agrees with ANYONE else for a damned good reason:
Since the multiverse is merely packets of energy vibrating at different frequencies, there is NO objective, definitive, agreed upon 'REALITY' out there or inside us. Each conscious entity on Earth, including millions of different species/life forms, creates its own subjective reality. In that way, perhaps, we are all small 'g' gods and goddesses, so feel empowered in that!
MoonTigerII
Level 7
Aug 7, 2019
1
Ethics are expressions of cultural norm/value- deviant activity.
Every culture whether industrial or pre-industrial has orthodox/taboo praxis.
Ethics, to use a term, are fluid functions of structured society. Ethics are not invented, they transmute according to the needs of the society within which they are embedded.
Geoffrey51
Level 8
Aug 7, 2019
0
The non sequitur here is moral relativism is not nihilism.
Moral preferences can be rationalized but only subjectively and are not absolute.
People with different morals do not have to be deliberately malicious.
dare2dream
Level 7
Aug 7, 2019
3
@BeerAndWine what if someone was preparing to set off a hydrogen bomb in a large city and you had him in your gunsight. Would you pull the trigger? Technically it would be murder.
@BeerAndWine Sounds good.
@BeerAndWine Ethics are still a subjective slippery slope: What if one kills because he thinks a powerful leader's willful ignorance has resulted in many deaths? How many people have not had such thoughts over the millenia re thousands of powerful leaders, many of whom history regards as heroes? Where does one draw the line? The line is always MOVING. Ethnobotanist Wade Davis tells of a tribe in the Amazon so violent that over the years, all but two villagers in the graveyard died of spear wounds. When he investigated further, the remaining two were dying of old age, so they speared them, too. Morals are subjective.
@BeerAndWine Agreed. Just a philosophical exercise on my part, not a practical one, in normal times. But when chaos reigns, as it has so many times in history, all bets are off and even philosophers have become cannibals, as happened during the 900-day Seige of Leningrad/Saint Petersburg, The Flower of Europe, in World World Two.
A young Jewish boy asks his dad "What is business ethics?"
"I'm glad you asked me that son. Let me try and explain. Say a lady comes into my shop and buys something for $20 but when I get to the till I find there are 2 x $20 notes stuck together. This leaves me with a business ethics problem"
"You mean do you chase after the lady before she leaves the shop?"
"No son, do I tell my partner"
273kelvin
Level 8
Aug 7, 2019
2
I am a moral relativist. As a soldier I had a duty to do things that in other situations would be considered immoral. IMO it is an important part of maturity for your emotions to be eclipsed by the intellect.
As a child I had to help my father prune some fruit trees. I was heartbroken that the beautiful trees should have their limbs cut off. Seeing the limbs piled up for burning made me cry. Later I became calloused and my emotions became blunted—both highly desirable and good outcomes IMO because in my career I lopped off a hundred thousand branches or more.
A person who is not controlled by emotion is in a position to actually accomplish things for the good of mankind. A current example is immigration. Feeling sorry for the immigrants and opening the border to all comers might feel good but the long term consequences would probably not be the best outcome.
Moral relativism is associated with calloused, blunted emotions, but also with clear thinking and courageous actions.
WilliamFleming
Level 8
Aug 7, 2019
1
Moral values are more or less an excuse for us to claim superiority in our viewpoints. Ethics was never really about doing the right or the fair thing, it was always about operating and maintaining society.
When you think of things in this way, a lot of the things cultures used to do that we now consider to be morally wrong were perfectly justified.
For example, most ancient cultures had practices such as slavery, or the subjugation of women.
Slavery gave society a source of cheap labor that could be used to build and maintain your infrastructure, making it invaluable to a practicing culture.
Sociologists have proven that educated women have fewer children usually latter in life. So if you want your culture/social group to expand, denying women certain rights will help you do so.
The real insight is to recognize that whatever moral justification you give is valid no matter what conclusion you are coming to.
Happy_Killbot
Level 7
Aug 7, 2019
1
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