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

[prof]

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, or a url, is offered later below.] 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 w e 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 in 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 support, 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. 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: Do no harm!

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 University in Ohio has revealed that 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 the m decently, they often tend to treat us the same way. It is a win/win situation, all around.

For further details, see http://www.myqol.com/wadeharvey/PDFs/ET ... ENTURY.pdf


Your views, readers? Does this resonate with you? If so, pass along the ideas and concepts. 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?

[Bill Wiltrack]

.





.............................................. Mirror-neurons




.

[Dalek Prime]

To do no harm is to ensure you do not create the conditions for harm. And you do when you procreate. Thus, you have your most basic ethical choice. That is the antinatalist position.

Anyways, you folks never get this, so carry on fooling yourselves.

[Bill Wiltrack]

.




............................................Wait a minute...not so fast.

I get it.




.

[Dalek Prime]

.




............................................Wait a minute...not so fast.

I get it.




.

You, sir, win a cookie!

[prof]

...Didn't have any children; it didn't work out that way for me in life. Doesn't look like I'll have any now. Yet I don't get it: if humans avoid procreating, doesn't the species die out? Is this not the road to extinction of the human race?

Dalek has not spelled out how having a child is "creating a condition for harm" as he puts it. It can be a very loving act with loving care shown thereafter to both the child and the parents and family of the child.

As Empedocles (494-434 B.C.) may have phrased it, while strife divides the one into many, love unites the many into one. Strife is divisive; Love {Intrinsic valuation} is unifying and makes for closeness.

Fundamental in Ethics is trust. Trust ...but with enough skepticism to avoid being gullible. Practical Ethics teaches us to avoid excessive suspicion of the motives of others.

It is also the case that autonomy - one of the Moral Principles derived in the booklet, m.c. katz - BASIC ETHICS, does not mean giving free reign to appetites. Our capacity to reason can help us control our inclinations to fall for the ethical fallacy that "anything goes!" Some emotional states are in fact better than others. Self-discipline sets us free !!

Cultivate excellence of character in yourself. Avoid strife. Wholeness results in Ethical constructiveness. Seek and find common ground. What can we unite around? What shared goals can we work on? How can we foster more cooperation?

With regard to the majority of human beings I would make this observation:

When something fits together we assign it some positive value. Hence let us work for policies which enhance the most people, policies which result in a multiplier effect (as it is known in Economics.)

Such effects make everyone richer -- not just a tiny percentage of the population. Such policies fit things together well.

See this interesting video on applied ethics that suggests some fitting policies:
http://www.c-span.org/video/?326443-1/d ... m-hartmann

[Dubious]

As Empedocles (494-434 B.C.) may have phrased it, while strife divides the one into many, love unites the many into one. Strife is divisive; Love {Intrinsic valuation} is unifying and makes for closeness.

Generally speaking outside one's family...and most times not even within it does love ever appear and if it does, so anemically as to seem starved itself. Love is more like one of those scrawny Hollywood aliens that we get to be in harmony with only occasionally and for a short time. It's through this momentary influx that we know of its existence. Love is mostly an idealistic or philosophical prerogative, definitely not an existential one. It never was and never will be. It wouldn't be practical. Humans talk about a lot of things they can never live up to simply because they were never programmed for it in the first place. We may be denoted as 'warm blooded' but deep inside we're as reptilian as any lizard. In human affairs, love is a non sequitur which only gets in the way.

[prof]

Also, when discussing what is fundamental in Ethics (both the theoretical and empirical study I call the Science of Ethics) we ought to keep in mind what I have written here about the relation of Means to Ends. It is worth reviewing:


viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9375

While we are actively engaged in minimizing disvalue for the Individual person, engaged in reducing human suffering, poverty, and misery, we ought to keep in mind that our Ends do not justify the Means unless the Ends-in-view are thoroughly compatible with the Means we use to get to those Ends. It is good to empower the Individual, and provide opportunities for advancement and success for the Individual - and avoid violating the Autonomy of the individual, and encouraging self-management, self-leadership. All this will add value to situations, and even multiply value.

At the same time as we are minimizing disvalue we are optimizing positive value. Yet let us make sure our means are consonant with our ends. If we want love in our life, let's employ loving means; let's express love, and shower others with love. It's elementary, yet hard for folks to grasp.

If you love Peace, then be peaceful. Engage in nonviolent direct action against injustice; exercise truthforce. There is no peace without justice. So work to establish Justice. And remember that Lives Matter ! Each individual is to be Intrinsically valued.

p.s. Dubious seems to have had a bitter reaction to a romantic involvement gone bad. Could it be that he is projecting his disappointment onto everyone? What I mean to say is that acts of love are occurring continuously and constantly among human beings all the time. I defined "love" in chapter five, pp. 16-18, of my paper, ETHICS FOR THE 21st CENTURY: KEYS TO THE GOOD LIFE, which philosophers and philosophy students may care to google, and may find its concepts to be of interest.


Comments? Questions? Critiques?

[Dubious]

p.s. Dubious seems to have had a bitter reaction to a romantic involvement gone bad. Could it be that he is projecting his disappointment onto everyone?

Is that the best your 'insights' can come up with, all due to a romantic involvement gone bad? How disappointingly banal defaulting to the LCD conclusion! I negate love because of a failed Romeo and Juliet affair! Besides, it's an oxymoron, since in any romantic involvement, love would most certainly have preexisted before it expired. No! It's long experience which finally subrogated love to the precincts of philosophy only not being an active ingredient in humans.

My point, to repeat, is that love amounts to nothing more than hypocrisy in human affairs, not categorically, but mostly expressive of a rare nobility that's mostly borrowed. Being altruistic DOES NOT in itself denote love and never has. It's long observation and experience which implies to me that love amounts to nothing more than a benign bureaucracy in what is termed euphemistically as the human spirit. Love at best is merely Nature's deception and nothing more. As such it has its place.

I defined "love" in chapter five, pp. 16-18, of my paper, ETHICS FOR THE 21st CENTURY: KEYS TO THE GOOD LIFE, which philosophers and philosophy students may care to google, and may find its concepts to be of interest.

If, as a 'philosopher' you feel the need to define it so that we may 'conceptualize it, I rest my case.

[Bill Wiltrack]

.



I enjoy the way you articulate yourself and characterize a reflection of truths.



I might add that I believe love is EXTREMELY selfish. At times mimicking a disease.





.

[Dubious]

.



I enjoy the way you articulate yourself and characterize a reflection of truths.



I might add that I believe love is EXTREMELY selfish. At times mimicking a disease.





.

If in any way injured or betrayed it actually becomes one, as pockmarked as Mr. Hyde.

Love has as little power to inflect itself within the conscience of the human race as rectitude clearly shows itself to have in its impaired ability to rule it. In spite of being able to walk upright we still remain somewhat fiberless when it comes to being equally conditioned by a character backbone.

The future demands both backbones to operate in sync.

BTW, thank you for your kind words. I know I often score low on the comprehensibility index...only an asset to them who strive to be Philosophy professors. I'd rather be a grave digger in the desert. Thinking about it, the two occupations are not unlike.

[Dalek Prime]

...Didn't have any children; it didn't work out that way for me in life. Doesn't look like I'll have any now. Yet I don't get it: if humans avoid procreating, doesn't the species die out? Is this not the road to extinction of the human race?

Dalek has not spelled out how having a child is "creating a condition for harm" as he puts it. It can be a very loving act with loving care shown thereafter to both the child and the parents and family of the child. So, what you are saying is, there is no harm in life? And thus no risk in bringing another into existence? Is that it? You would gamble another's life is what you are saying. And you believe gambling anyone's life but your own is ethical? I believe you need to think a bit deeper on ethics, prof.

As Empedocles (494-434 B.C.) may have phrased it, while strife divides the one into many, love unites the many into one. Strife is divisive; Love {Intrinsic valuation} is unifying and makes for closeness.

Fundamental in Ethics is trust. Trust ...but with enough skepticism to avoid being gullible. Practical Ethics teaches us to avoid excessive suspicion of the motives of others. Who's asshole did you extract this conclusion from?

It is also the case that autonomy - one of the Moral Principles derived in the booklet, m.c. katz - BASIC ETHICS, does not mean giving free reign to appetites. Our capacity to reason can help us control our inclinations to fall for the ethical fallacy that "anything goes!" Some emotional states are in fact better than others. Self-discipline sets us free !!

Cultivate excellence of character in yourself. Avoid strife. Wholeness results in Ethical constructiveness. Seek and find common ground. What can we unite around? What shared goals can we work on? How can we foster more cooperation?

With regard to the majority of human beings I would make this observation:

When something fits together we assign it some positive value. Hence let us work for policies which enhance the most people, policies which result in a multiplier effect (as it is known in Economics.)

Such effects make everyone richer -- not just a tiny percentage of the population. Such policies fit things together well.

See this interesting video on applied ethics that suggests some fitting policies:
http://www.c-span.org/video/?326443-1/d ... m-hartmann

[prof]

For all those who think love - as I defined it between and among humans -- is phony, or a disease, or is a cause of harm to the loved one, I have this question for them:

How is that working out for you?

If you are happy, healthy, productive, empathic (sensitive to the vibes others put out), definitely contributing to the common good and the general welfare, feeling fulfilled, and at peace -- then fine. I'm happy for you. And wish you luck. Your philosophy of life, your belief system is a constructive one that keeps you in touch with reality. And you are likely to show and express compassion. You rate high in the I-Value score on a good value profile.

However, if you are low in your capacity to Intrinsically-value then it is advisable to consult a Life Coach and get some counseling in self-development until one knows himself, accepts himself, creates oneself, and wants to give himself. When you have reached a point where you want to give yourself away, and ego-recognition doesn't matter to you any more - you have profound humility - then you will be an individual of good character and integrity.

[Dalek Prime]

Save your two cent opinions and respond to what I'm saying.

Is there or is there not harm in existing? Why do you feel okay in exposing others to it? Is gambling another's life ethical?

You say I don't love. Perhaps. But I care more than you about others. That is what philanthropic antinatalism is all about. Caring enough not to risk and expose others, needlessly, to harm.

Now seriously, stop thinking so shallowly, and try to grasp what I'm saying. I say this because I do expect more from you as an ethicist.

[artisticsolution]

Save your two cent opinions and respond to what I'm saying.

Is there or is there not harm in existing? Why do you feel okay in exposing others to it? Is gambling another's life ethical?

You say I don't love. Perhaps. But I care more than you about others. That is what philanthropic antinatalism is all about. Caring enough not to risk and expose others, needlessly, to harm.

Now seriously, stop thinking so shallowly, and try to grasp what I'm saying. I say this because I do expect more from you as an ethicist.

I kinda get that. No one can know how another loves...it could just be that you love more deeply than anyone. Who knows...but if there are going to be people who are driven to procreate, for whatever reason, then isn't it just best to let nature take it's course?

I get that you are antinatalist for good reasons that involves caring and ethics and all that, but what I don't get is why it matters to you so much as you will live your life around a shit load of people (barring the destruction of Earth) and they will continue to exist and breed after you cease to exist...again...unless there is a cataclysmic event.

It just seems to me, that life is relatively short in the scheme of things and why not enjoy it and get any amount of happiness you can grab while you're here? If it comforts people to procreate to not be so alone in the world, then why shouldn't they? And if they don't want to have kids, that's okay too, maybe they are a little more secure than most? who knows?

Arising said something once about something he read in the bible that he agreed with....'tread softly upon the earth'...or something like that...I think your stance could be the literal translation of that....but then again...didn't it also say 'be fruitful and multiple' too? friggin ambiguous bible! LOL