The Status of Ethics Today

[prof]

There is an imbalance in human affairs between the progress of technology and the progress in ethics. Technology is progressing by leaps and bounds. Ethics seems stagnant, no further along than in the times of Aristotle. What could right this imbalance? We have, so to speak, one foot on a moving jet and the other foot on a mule.

If the people of the world knew their ethics isn’t it true that our difficulties would largely disappear? Knowing one’s ethics includes knowing that one is to practice ethics – otherwise, as Kant long ago observed, ethical theory is a mere intellectual exercise. If the theory is any good one must live it! Such a theory would somehow encourage one to make a commitment to ethical choices as to which way to go when a decision is called for. E g., “Shall I shoplift this item? It would be so easy. And I could make use of it. Or, should I consider the owners of this shop? Should I look ahead? Should I consider the risk that some day when I have established a reputation in a respected profession, my habit of appropriating whatever I feel like to myself may result in getting caught and doing jail time? Isn’t this likely to ruin my good reputation?”

Ethics is about moral values; and about implementing them: setting a good example. Moral values are about living in accordance with moral principles. Such principles would be derived in a good ethical theory. However, these principles are not rules; they are merely guidelines to living a (morally) good life. They are suggestions, very similar to the good counsel: If you want to be healthy, eat many raw fruits and vegetables; be fussy what you put into your body! {Some would argue that being ethical toward yourself includes the will to be healthy, since then you are in a better position to help others to rise - but that is a whole other discussion.}

Comments? Your views on the status of ethics?

[Bill Wiltrack]

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Science and technology does affect human morality. Determines it to a varing degree.

Capitalism is amoral. Throughout the world raw capitalism is expanding.


Humans, and their values are less & less important.

A machine can do anything we can do - better.


It is proven daily that money is more important than human life.


So, I would say, The Status of Ethics Today is just about non-existent.







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[Greta]

On a national and international level the stakes are rising as the Earth has ever less to give us and competitions for what's left intensifies. As with Golding's Lord of the Flies, ethics and morality is revealed to be a luxury item largely only available in good times.

Also note the oft-observed truism that the first casualty of war is truth. Truthfulness is exceptionally difficult to come by in the international domain, giving way to spin, with complexities being either ignored or misrepresented as being of simple causation.

[Serendipper]

There is an imbalance in human affairs between the progress of technology and the progress in ethics. Technology is progressing by leaps and bounds. Ethics seems stagnant,

It is proven daily that money is more important than human life.

Ethics is not stagnant, but devolving as technology antiquates the value of people. Why be moral when you have 700 friends on FB? Shit all over everyone and still have an infinite supply of suckers because you couldn't keep up with the birth rate even if you had a shit-spewing cannon.

It used to be, before mobile devices, that one had to be ethical or else be ostracized from a small community, but now we're all deluded narcissists fully-enabled to have no regard for human life whatsoever because people are cheap and easily replaceable, unless we can gain some flattery from feigning consideration, like saving a baby from a burning building, but that's the extent of it.

Now we're a generation of renters/leasers who don't put down roots or take ownership, so when we've pissed everyone off, we can easily move to a new village to pillage and keep bouncing around having no consideration for anyone, anywhere and totally get away with it.

There is not one thing selecting for morality in society. Not one thing.

I talked to a guy online a couple years ago who said he was tired of how people are online and that he was going back to meatspace. I said "You know meatspace is the fake world right? That's where people put on shows because they don't have the guts to be truthful to your face." He said, "I know, but I'd rather be lied to."

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcjpags7JT8

Would I lie to you? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhpu2N4rQZM

You can't hide your lying eyes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc1eAuyURwg

At least we have some good music

Seriously, if I were dictator of the world, I'd immediately ban all mobile devices and force people to wait until they got home to chat with others. A phone would be for voice only. That would go a long way towards increasing the value of people. I'd also impose a 100% renter's tax to incentivise ownership. Everyone would hate me, but they'd love and value each other.

[prof]

Thank you, Bill, Greta, and Serendipper for some very-thoughtful replies.

I am ill with the flu, and thus have not been on the computer for the past two weeks - until now. ...am still very weak. If I do not survive this ordeal, then THE BREAKTHROUGH is my legacy, along with the prior writings cited there:
http://myqol.com/wadeharvey/PDFs/BREAKT ... %20all.pdf

The "Big Lie" that the people of this planet believe is:

"Ideas, and material stuff (including money), are more-important than individual people; and ideas take priority over making sure that every last inhabitant of our human family has a minimum of subsistence, and an opportunity to rise further with regard to owning things - gaining an improved Quality-of-Life."

The Truth is that Individual human life is valuable, takes top priority. Things next, and ideas (and ideologies) last !!!!!

Ethics must be lived, put into practice.

So set a good example, folks.

[tassieguy]

The status of ethics is as it always has been. It's a fiction. I'm an error theorist and abolishionist. We could stop all the moralizing holier-than-thou crap we go on with and just do nice things for instrumental or prudential reasons. We don't need morality now we understand how it came about and why. Evolution programmed us to cooperate and generally be nice to each other. Of course there will always be a few defectors. We just lock them up so the rest of us can get on with it.

[Necromancer]

IMO,
Today the gold standard of ethics is Kantianism and being law-abiding under democracy and human rights. Everyone can now be measured morally under Kantianism given fMRI and more.

Clearly, some issues remain under political discussion in being subjects of applied ethics, like abortion, free cannabis, assisted suicide, guns, death penalty, bio-tech, animal welfare, fur industry, etc.

However, if one considers people who are in their good mind and people who are in their bad mind, perhaps one can find more objective solutions for today, 2018. Being dishonest in taking part in discussion should be defeated whenever possible by the same psychological inquiries now available to us.

Moving forward in a World like this, one solution may be to make The 4 Factors, revolvers/pistols, pepper spray, lie detection array (5 methods +) and radio-based scanner portals, widely available to people everywhere.

We have good data for the fact that these 4 factors will work:
* The unarmed Jews before Kristallnacht and Holocaust
* USA, more democratic than others, with its mightiest army and the ability to best deal with information systems such as Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Google and others and bringing self-defence to everybody, guns, tazers, pepperspray, etc. One may think that these corporations are easy to make "given some practicalities", but as a matter of fact, it takes cooperation, security, freedom, good governance/management etc. to such extent that these are not possible in other countries, be they EU countries and their attempts with Linux for more than 20 years and so on.

This is how I see it.

[-1-]

Moving forward in a World like this, one solution may be to make The 4 Factors, revolvers/pistols, pepper spray, lie detection array (5 methods +) and radio-based scanner portals, widely available to people everywhere.

Those four factors are antiquated. Nowadays the leading technological miracles in the USA are thought-broadcasting, (instead of radio-based scanner portals), having the tv, radio, media and the refrigerator have special personal messages to us, and inner voices that people hear in their heads and which tell people EXACTLY what to do.

Please also note that the four antiquated factors have been reduced to three, because in unison they are more efficient than the previous four.

[-1-]

IMO,
Moving forward in a World like this, one solution may be to make The 4 Factors, revolvers/pistols, pepper spray, lie detection array (5 methods +) and radio-based scanner portals, widely available to people everywhere.

We have good data for the fact that these 4 factors will work:
* The unarmed Jews before Kristallnacht and Holocaust

That's sort of curious. Were the unarmed Jews before Kristallnacht and the Holocaust each equipped with revolvers/ pistols, pepper spray, a lie-detection array (5 methods+) and a radio=based scanner portal? My mother was through that, and she must have throw those things out with the garbage after the war, because I never saw any of those lying about in the pantry where we kept the old junk.

If you mean that the unarmed Jews did not have these, hence their demise, then what about the Nazis that conspired to beat them and kill them? Were the German Nazis, SS kommandos and Hitlerjugend each equipped with revolvers/ pistols, pepper spray, a lie-detection array (5 methods+) and a radio-based scanner portal?

If neither, then the "good data" you claim is actually not good data, but garbage data, in effect. Because you failed to show the relevance of that.

[-1-]

Moving forward in a World like this, one solution may be to make The 4 Factors, revolvers/pistols, pepper spray, lie detection array (5 methods +) and radio-based scanner portals, widely available to people everywhere.

We have good data for the fact that these 4 factors will work:... to such extent that these are not possible in other countries, be they EU countries and their attempts with Linux for more than 20 years and so on.

This is how I see it.

Now, you finally convinced me. The lack of carrying guns, pepper spray, aluminum hats, and lie detectors make Europeans inferior programmers.

That actually makes sense. The most sense of whatever else you wrote.

Ja brochem amerikanish meshugene humbug... unberufen.

[-1-]

The status of ethics is as it always has been. It's a fiction. I'm an error theorist and abolishionist. We could stop all the moralizing holier-than-thou crap we go on with and just do nice things for instrumental or prudential reasons. We don't need morality now we understand how it came about and why. Evolution programmed us to cooperate and generally be nice to each other. Of course there will always be a few defectors. We just lock them up so the rest of us can get on with it.

I am a relativist in ethics. That, and an evolutionalist. Partially. Part of the evolutionary process favoured cooperation, part favoured hierarchical elbowing to be tribe-leaders.

This caused a mish-mash of genetically programmed ethical behaivour, some even contradicting each other.

Fair trade, sticking up for each other, watching each other's back, has been beneficial for all the individuals; excommunication of problem members, punishing behaviour for not contributing or complying, has been beneficial for most of the tribe, but not to everyone; and subjugating the tribe to do the chief's bidding, also hoarding females / males to the exclusion of other tribe members' chance to reproduce, favoured one individual and disadvantaged the rest.

All these forms of behavour survived in the human ethical behaviour, codified in genes.

All this highfolutin' talk about the status of ethics, the devolution of mankind, the Kantian code, makes me laugh. Americans may have developed the best computer operating systems, and they may have the second mightiest army in the world, and they each may have lie detectors, pepper spray and aluminum hats in their daily walk-abouts, but they are certainly antiquated in their tenacious sticking to Christian dogma.

Oh, incidentally, most of the Christian ethics derives from those codes that favour only one person of many, or favour some but disfavour others.

In my opinion.

[-1-]

I'm losing my gid... the effect of the first cup of coffee of the day is wearing off.

("Gid" is a backformation of "giddy".)

[-1-]

The Truth is that Individual human life is valuable, takes top priority. Things next, and ideas (and ideologies) last !!!!!

Ethics must be lived, put into practice.

So set a good example, folks.

Appardon... your Truth... is that an idea, or a person?

If it's not a person, then it's ranked below a person, and ranked below a thing... that is, it is not to be taken seriously. It is not to matter when there are more important things to sort out.

Your idea, as all ideas go, is on the bottom of the totem pole of important entities that matter to humans.

In other words, you decry the value of ideas by working to enforce an idea.

Not very philosophical, but hey.

[prof]

The Truth is that Individual human life is valuable, takes top priority. Things next, and ideas (and ideologies) last !!!!!

Ethics must be lived, put into practice.

So set a good example, folks.

you decry the value of ideas by working to enforce an idea.

Not very philosophical, but hey.

A very-deep thinker and a profound philosopher, Robert S. Hartman, discovered the Hierarchy of Value. It indicates that Life (which includes Experience) is more important to you than your perceptions; and that your perceptions outrank your conceptions in importance. By "experience" is meant the integration of your perceptions and conceptions into your life as lived.

Yes, he employed a system to put systems in their place, as ranking lower in a Quality Life than other values. This is paradoxical, yes. But background reading would sure help you understand. See: https://www.hartmaninstitute.org/self-k ... aluations/

Look Dr. Hartman up in Wiki. Also look up "Science of Value." Be careful not to ridicule concepts before you have the background to do so meaningfully!

Comments? Questions?

[Bill Wiltrack]

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My comment is, GLAD to see you are still with us!


My question is, Can you tell us more about yourself?; your illness, your stats, your living conditions, your state of mind now, your relationship to this forum, your family, your philosophy AT THIS MOMENT?


Thank you, ahead of time...& good luck in these days.







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