Ethics

[The Feral Underclass]

How do you say that doing something is right or it is wrong? Why is taking someones life wrong and giving someone food right? Where did our sense of ehtics come from? Why did we attach value to one thing and not to another? Why do you think ethics have changed through out history. In roman times it was acceptable to throw criminals to lions. Now it isnt. In Eqyption times it was acceptble to sleep with members of your own family. Now it isnt. The same can be said for Greek times. Pedarism was a common and accept right of passage in ancient greece. Now it is illegal?

If you say that doing good is defined by happiness or help you bring to other people, how was the concept developed? Why did the human brain accept that helping people was right and not helping people was wrong? What are ethics?

[Rasta Sapian]

I would say this is a no brainer, at least it should be :huh:

for 90 percent of the choices we have to make, i think common sence will suffice :)
call it, instincts, just be a good animal! :)

however the other 10 percent which composes difficult choices ie. ethical issues etc., for these choices; we will have to get a bit deaper and use the morals we were raised with along with the new ones that we learn and add to our conciousness along the path of life. :)

thats just my 2 cents......

p.s. i am being subjectively subjective.................

peace yall

[BOZG]

What is in the interests of class is what is moral. =D

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Rasta [email protected] 25 2004, 11:30 AM
I would say this is a no brainer, at least it should be :huh:

for 90 percent of the choices we have to make, i think common sence will suffice :)
call it, instincts, just be a good animal! :)

however the other 10 percent which composes difficult choices ie. ethical issues etc., for these choices; we will have to get a bit deaper and use the morals we were raised with along with the new ones that we learn and add to our conciousness along the path of life. :)

thats just my 2 cents......

p.s. i am being subjectively subjective.................

peace yall
How do you define what is common sense? My point here is How morals became morals? How your concept of judging what is common sense and what is not is defined? How do we know what is right and what is wrong?

[Gunman]

TAT, i think the best answer for your question is: It depends on the point of view ;)

[Pedro Alonso Lopez]

Well my opinion is that all our actions occur from an emotional response, from the passions. The rational faculties keep check to make sure they are sane choices but are subservient to the passions.

If you havent worked it out, I follow Hume's line of thought on this:


Reason is and ought only to be the slave of passion.

[The Feral Underclass]

Who first thought of emotion? Where did emotions come from? Who decides what is a sane choice? Why is an insane choice not a sane one?

[Pedro Alonso Lopez]

Originally posted by The Anarchist [email protected] 25 2004, 02:05 PM
Where did emotions come from? Who decides what is a sane choice? Why is an insane choice not a sane one?

Who first thought of emotion?

Nobody thought of emotion, they felt it.

The first person to put the concept of emotion into words is impossible to pinpoint.


Where did emotions come from?

Nobody invented emotions, we put concepts towards feelings. For example somebody would have applied a word akin to our word 'fear' to the feeling he got when faced by another tribe or form of danger.


Who decides what is a sane choice?

It is a rational concensus among the vast majority of people for whom reasonable actions are considered sane because they adhere to what is considered the normal actions of a human beings.


Why is an insane choice not a sane one?

Because it would defy the rational faculties and bypass reason, both of which are considered sane aspects of the mind.

[Don't Change Your Name]

Well that's impossible to say.

Killing = bad. Why? Authority over another person, and no one would like to be killed. The only situation when it's justified is when the other person can kill you.

We shouldn't fall on morals too much, I think that doing so is ridiculous. It's impossible to tell the "truth" about such a thing. But I think that for example killing is also a bad thing when it makes no sense. It makes sense when the person you kill was about to kill you, for example, otherwise, what's the point? WHy would you end someone else's life if you don't really have a benefit? Part of what makes this such a hard thing to know is that values do not exist and it can't be proved to be "real", so that's why I make the difference between what makes sense and what doesn't.

[Lefty]

I think our current morals are dictated by society, but even if society did not exist, man would still have a concept of right and wrong based on the emotions he felt depending on his actions. For example, he might not think that stealing was "wrong," but torturing animals would still be wrong because of the emotions one feels when one is forced to see another animal in pain.

[BuyOurEverything]

For practical purposes, ethics should be based on what does the least ammount of harm to nonconsenting parties. 'Parties' consist of self-aware, intellegent humans capable of interacting with society, or capable of regaining the capability of interacting with society. Any ethical decision should be rationally based on this criteria.

[apathy maybe]

In my opinion you should treat others as you would like them to treat you. So you don't kill people, 'cause that would give a precident that others are allowed to kill you. You help out the poor, in the hope that should you ever be in that situation, someone will help you out.

This is they same thinking that prompts my love of equality. If I have power over no one, no one has power over me.

Well that is simplistic, but the two views which I take (me first and society first) are interchangeable. An anarchist/communist society is good for everyone, not just for me.

[pandora]

Once again I go back to Socrates because I like him so much for his use of dialogue to help people come up with answers, of course usually his answers and he had a lot to learn about women:

He imputed that evil and good are not nouns but verbs and something is known as good because it's actions are good, and something is known as evil because it's actions are evil.

No wonder he was killed, the US would definately have some explaining to do if this was the rationale.

He was entirely against the state killing due to this logic, it would therefore become evil.

[BuyOurEverything]

He imputed that evil and good are not nouns but verbs

Evidently he didn't quite have a strong grasp on language.


something is known as good because it's actions are good, and something is known as evil because it's actions are evil.

And how else would someone classify things as good and evil? Assuming of course good and evil exist, which they do not.

Anyways, I was always under the impression that Socrates was into character ethics. IE, its not so much what you do as who you are.

[pandora]

Very humorous, unless we speak Greek I doubt we'll solve that arguement well, but he did speak of the goodness or evil of a being as being related to it's actions.

As far as being classist, definately these earlier philosophers were classest, of them Socrates was better in that he called the Sophists on their fat cat attitudes, and dialogued with the common man, somewhat respecting his intelligence, but turning him to his opinions as superior as well.

Philosophers like himself definately were not laborers and enjoyed the leisure time to think, they also felt that those that were philosophers needed to be seperated from labor for this activity to the benefit of society, so they were definately not communist by any means.

[perception]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25 2004, 08:41 PM
He imputed that evil and good are not nouns but verbs and something is known as good because it's actions are good, and something is known as evil because it's actions are evil.


basically existentialism - you are your actions.

I like Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative. If it's not alright for everybody to do it, it's not alright for anybody to do it.

But since I discovered nihilism I just make up my own morals as I go. It's all subjective anyway.

[cubist]

i think it depends on the person, and his upbringing,

i am a socilaist i find most business practices unethical yet others don't see this as unethical.



i don't believe all the laws are ethical but i don't believe all legal actions are ethical either.


for 90 percent of the choices we have to make, i think common sence will suffice whats common baout common sense, its fucking rare these days

[BuyOurEverything]

I like Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative.

I think it's shit. He fails to take into acount the situation in which one is in, as well as failing to give reasons for his 'rules.'

[Pedro Alonso Lopez]

Kants theor is empty: it only gives a framework showing the structure of moral judgements without giving any help to those faced with making actual morla decisions, what the ought to do so to speak.

It also permits some immoral acts, some dodgy things can be univserlized.

It also has implausible aspects: it can justify some absurd actions such as tellin a killer where your friend is rather than lying to him that he is elsewhere.

It also underestimates the role of the passions.

It also fails to take into account consequences.

It is a damn flawed way of ethics.

[Wenty]

I think you could well argue that a basic concept of right and wrong is innate and that people who commit acts of evil have been corrupted in youth or somehow or are abnormalities. You could also argue that ethics is a preference; if we accept this it logically leads to a world full of inequalities though.

Sartre gave a good example of a pupil who came up to him during the war. He said to he had a dilemma. Whether to stay with his mother to give her comfort as all her other sons had been killed and she needed support or to go fight for Free France and help liberate his country. Sartre basically says theres no system of ethics ever devised that could help him make this decision. Eventually whatever decision he makes will be the right one, because he made it. It might have bad consequences who knows but he was at least not showing bad faith and being true to himself.

[dark fairy]

I have asked my self this question many times and damn it takes a while because i partly answered the damn thing it is a big question

[Rasta Sapian]

Originally posted by The Anarchist Tension+Apr 25 2004, 10:18 AM--> (The Anarchist Tension @ Apr 25 2004, 10:18 AM)
Rasta [email protected] 25 2004, 11:30 AM
I would say this is a no brainer, at least it should be :huh:

for 90 percent of the choices we have to make, i think common sence will suffice :)
call it, instincts, just be a good animal! :)

however the other 10 percent which composes difficult choices ie. ethical issues etc., for these choices; we will have to get a bit deaper and use the morals we were raised with along with the new ones that we learn and add to our conciousness along the path of life. :)

thats just my 2 cents......

p.s. i am being subjectively subjective.................

peace yall
How do you define what is common sense? My point here is How morals became morals? How your concept of judging what is common sense and what is not is defined? How do we know what is right and what is wrong? [/b]
ok let me explain this in a more simplified mannor

common sense: red light = stop, green light = go

ethics and morals: should I let this dude suck my #*%^ ? think about it :P

[cubist]

Wenty i dislike your use of the word evil, What is evil, when we can't decide whats right and wrong how can we define evil.


as for the thing i bleieve that its inate human nature, we know what is wrong, Like in kill bill, even with no concept of life or death, BB knew what she had done,

the truth is many people have the mental capacity to ignore these humane feelings i believe we all feel them but many ignore them, look around the world how many people sleep at night not worrying about the people dying, how many times do you go to bed whilst america is bombing a o****ry and we ignore it we have to if we mourned the human life loss through inhumane actions of humans then we would be veryt sad depressd peopel all the time we would want to die,


i find it funny taht only ants maliciously kill eachother like we do, no other anim,al kills for no purpose.
we know what is right and we know what is worng but we don't think like we feel, we delude ourselves when we let capitalism delude us.

we shouldn't be happy about loss if we gain from it but we are certainly a selfish world,

[Wenty]

when did i define evil?

[cubist]

that people who commit acts of evil have been corrupted in youth

granted you said you could say, but still implying actions are evil when Good and bad ethics can't be defined presides that you have your own conscious classification of ethical and not that we must live by.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Rasta Sapian+Apr 28 2004, 08:29 AM--> (Rasta Sapian @ Apr 28 2004, 08:29 AM)
Originally posted by The Anarchist [email protected] 25 2004, 10:18 AM

Rasta [email protected] 25 2004, 11:30 AM
I would say this is a no brainer, at least it should be :huh:

for 90 percent of the choices we have to make, i think common sence will suffice :)
call it, instincts, just be a good animal! :)

however the other 10 percent which composes difficult choices ie. ethical issues etc., for these choices; we will have to get a bit deaper and use the morals we were raised with along with the new ones that we learn and add to our conciousness along the path of life. :)

thats just my 2 cents......

p.s. i am being subjectively subjective.................

peace yall
How do you define what is common sense? My point here is How morals became morals? How your concept of judging what is common sense and what is not is defined? How do we know what is right and what is wrong?
ok let me explain this in a more simplified mannor

common sense: red light = stop, green light = go

ethics and morals: should I let this dude suck my #*%^ ? think about it :P [/b]
Are you saying that homosexuality is immoral?

You are defining what is moral...you, you being you...one human being in a planet full of 6 billion. You are applying your subjective opinion to existence and thus defining existence. You can not do that. Existence is not definable. It has no definition, therefore no moral is valid as the truth.

Morals are a subjective concept and should be ignored.

[cubist]

i don't think he is, he is portraying a christian moral dilema oh wait he is a christian so probably yes

[Wenty]

What kind of a world do you think we'll be living in if we ignore morals?

cubist - i'm was making a supposition. Besides, I think you can define good and evil.

[cubist]

i don't think you can when we can't decide what ethics are,

[Revolt!]

We can decide what ethics are, what is under scrutiny is if there some sort of objective nature to the terms 'good' and 'bad'. The same for all.

[cubist]

hmm maybe, but at the moment the word evil is a particular dislike its too christian its too george bush, using evil implies it is superior or worse than bad

[Revolt!]

Lets not get sidetracked by recent rhetoric. We have the whole of history to help us form this opinion.

[cubist]

you say we have the whole of history, but i put unto you that attempting to apply what history has taught us to a new scenario is futile, as the scenario will never be the same the social restraint and circumstances would be different, the piolitical agenda will be different, and more so the reason for taking the action would not be the same reason as the person in history.

just becuase a nuke ended the last world war doens't mean it will end the next, but not using it becuase of the damage cuased could create more damage!! ya see, history shows us guidlines to work within not defines the difference between right and worng

[E_squared]

Good and Evil is general concensus. If I did something that the community thought was "evil" they would look down on me, reject me. I would know why they rejected me and my mind would come to the conclusion that the community thought my action was wrong. This very situation happens everyday in the court houses around the world. A jury of our peers judges what is right and wrong. General concensus changes because of experiences, history, family values passed down generations, and many other influences. Every individual decides what is right and wrong to them based on thier experiences. When a majority of people believe the same thing it becomes generally accepted as right or wrong.

[cubist]

under that thinking a majority of rapists can rape if they all live together in the same community becuase they all think its ok.

[Pedro Alonso Lopez]

I'd like to bring Hume back in since nobody seemed to point out faults with what I posted.

Moral judgements are governed by reason which acts as an advisor to the motives of an action which are caued by an emotional response to what you make a decision about.

Who finds a faults in this? Why?

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2004, 05:55 PM
What kind of a world do you think we'll be living in if we ignore morals?

cubist - i'm was making a supposition. Besides, I think you can define good and evil.
Do you believe in God?

This has nothing to do with me thinking whether you believe in the morals of God. I am just interested to know if you believe in a higher being?

[cubist]

i find fault morals is too vague we all have personal morals based on personal circumstance, i think racism is morally worng my parents have high morals but they are racist, they are only racist becuase they would blame the blackman other the whiteman but still its racism

what about those people they class as uncapable of actions that have undergone moral justification like charles manson, or bin laden, he wasn't governed by the moral judgements that bush is and bush certainly doesn't represent my morals

[Wenty]

we all have personal morals based on personal circumstance

It just seems like the extent to which the majority of people share the same basic moral standards is a testament to some sort of innate conception of good and evil.

TAT - yes i believe in God.

[DaCuBaN]

common sense: red light = stop, green light = go

hmmmmm I'm not too sure.....


We are all children of our environment

and after all, take someone from one of the undiscovered tribes out there (there's bound to be some left somewhere) and teach them the operation of a motor vehicle. Let them loose on the streets and see how far 'common sense' will get them. I think if they saw other vehicles slowing and stopping they may eventually figure out that red=stop and green=go, but it's something we learn, not something that's built in.

[perception]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2004, 04:37 PM

we all have personal morals based on personal circumstance

It just seems like the extent to which the majority of people share the same basic moral standards is a testament to some sort of innate conception of good and evil.

TAT - yes i believe in God.
No it isn't, it's a testament to the cultural foundation of morals and 'good' and 'evil'.

Peep Nietzche's Geneology of Morals

[cubist]

wenty, yes and no


do you understand how i could just kill a man,

i would overide my morals for different reasons to someone else, i woulod kill another man in certain circumstance which incur blind rage, but we as people have different points to which we will "boil" with agression. we are all capable of it, yet somepeople "deemed EVIL by those who are religious" but as you call them EVIL people are equals they are no worse than me and you accept the appear to be able to override your belief in an inate conception of good and bad. if it was inate how do some people overide it with such ease? why do only ants malicously kill like humans no other animal malicously kills its own species with out natural cuase (feeding defence mating rights)

[Wenty]

I'm thinking of a conception of good and bad in a biological sense first and foremost but obviously psychodynamic etc comes into it. Childhood experiences and so forth. Its a hard topic to ever make suppositions that are 100% conclusive.


No it isn't, it's a testament to the cultural foundation of morals and 'good' and 'evil'.

The truth of your interpretation is equally as valid as mine.

[cubist]

i see wenty, i think there is a natural nono, but the point is we ignore them all the time and we label people who counter us as bad people even when we have done worse, i believe the psycological means we use to process the biological ethics you believe in play a majority role in that actual ethics we live by.

feelings still me killing is wrong, i apply my thinking process and way up the situation and decide that killing is allowed so i kill, the brain is the processor of these ethical equations and there fore the controlling factor tends to be on the psycosis of the person, which would bring me back to the point that our ethics depend on our person, they aren't related to eachother but may have similarities to another mans ethics which are viewed as natural ethics, but we all still have this overide which is the problem, what makes somepeople ignore the gut feeling that something is wrong do they feel the gut feeling? if they do how do they bare they're conscience

[Wenty]

we ignore them all the time and we label people who counter us as bad people even when we have done worse

I agree.


our ethics depend on our person

This is a valid belief held by some Philosophers I think. My thinking is somewhere in between i think, its an unresolved issue for me.

[Rasta Sapian]

Originally posted by The Anarchist [email protected] 28 2004, 02:22 PM
Are you saying that homosexuality is immoral?

You are defining what is moral...you, you being you...one human being in a planet full of 6 billion. You are applying your subjective opinion to existence and thus defining existence. You can not do that. Existence is not definable. It has no definition, therefore no moral is valid as the truth.

Morals are a subjective concept and should be ignored.
no that was not what i meant, I was just using that as an example, that could be concieved differently depending on ones own ethics.

yes, I agree that morals are subjective, objectability comes into effect only when ethics are put to the test by the morals learned and used from your own life.

[Timon of Athens]

I would automatically say religion, but when you think about it, atheists can have morals as deep as any believer.
I follow Hegel myself. He basically said (in his Philosophy of Right-and it's going to be a terrible over-generalized summary so don't bother correcting it unless something's way out of whack.) That human beings have a sort of moral code imprinted in them, and that they should just follow that code... you should take a look at it. It's an interesting read if nothing else. Marx got many of his ideas from Hegel. It's quite funny actually, Marx being such a down to Earth materialist and Hegel an ideologist. They seem to contradict each-other..

[Wenty]

Thats because the Young Hegelian movement went in two different directions.

[El Tipo]

"love those around you as you love yourself."

"Do to others as you would have them do to you."

:rolleyes:

[monkeydust]

I don't think it's been mentioned so......

One basis for morality is utilitarianism, as put forward by John Stuart Mill.

Utilitarianist morality lies on the assumption that one of the essential goals of any human being, is happiness. As such, a moral action is calculated by how much happiness it will promote, or its utility.

If utilitarianism is pursued then such actions as enslavement might be considered morally wrong, on the basis that they create more emtional sadness, then joy or happiness.

It must be noted however, that basic utilitarianism is fraught with flaws.

To give a hypothetical example:

I may be a judge deciding the fate of one man convicted of rape. I may have evidence that this man is innocent. By utilitarianist theory, however, I may be compelled for him to be executed, on the basis that people will be deterred from commiting similar crimes in the future. Such a decision may create more overall 'hapiness' in the long term.

But is convicting an innocent man morally justified?

To solve this dilemma, some have advocated what is known as 'rule utilitarianism', in which actions are morally judged by what their consequences would be, under usual circumstances.

[Wenty]

Utilitarianism has been around since Epicurus. Its also been pretty fiercely criticised. Bertrand Russell said he thought it was 'so fallacious its hard to believe it was ever held by anyone'. Or something alone those lines.

[monkeydust]

No doubt.

I don't support it entirely myself.

I feel that it can, in many circumstances lead to a 'tyranny of the majority'.

Though some might claim that such a situation is morally acceptable, on the basis that the satisfaction of the majority greatly outweighs any concern for minority groups.

[elijahcraig]

Are you saying that homosexuality is immoral?

You are defining what is moral...you, you being you...one human being in a planet full of 6 billion. You are applying your subjective opinion to existence and thus defining existence. You can not do that. Existence is not definable. It has no definition, therefore no moral is valid as the truth.

Morals are a subjective concept and should be ignored.

Anyone who applies morality to something else, or someone else, is NOT judging in a subjective way in a personal sense, they are applying the standards of HERD THOUGHT to the individual or collective choices of a certain group in the way they act.

Morals are not subjective in that sense, they ARE products of conformity and “discipline and punishment.”


Moral judgements are governed by reason which acts as an advisor to the motives of an action which are caued by an emotional response to what you make a decision about.

Nietzsche has shown how moral decisions are often caused by the irrationalities of the individual based on what he called “insanity” in nations, parties, etc. This means that each individual does not necessarily make a moral choice based on the things you listed, but upon the morality established in any given situation by the Crowd, as Le Bon called it.


It just seems like the extent to which the majority of people share the same basic moral standards is a testament to some sort of innate conception of good and evil.

The majority of people in primitive society viewed “strangers” as messengers of evil, they also viewed murder, rape, and famine not necessarily evil.

The majority view of “innate” “good and evil” does NOT prove that these are necessarily true. In Heidegger’s sense, these “perceptions” would have a “reasoned truth” but not necessarily one which is objective. As Ibsen showed with something similar regarding the question of “truth” in “An Enemy of the People.”