Moral philosophy went into decline for many years, and if you took that class in college, I believe you caught it near its nadir. It was resuscitated by Rawls in 1971 and perhaps by Peter Singer later. Moral philosophy has a lot more cache today in the academy than it did during the 1960s for example.
OP:
Personally, I lean towards negative utilitarianism, which says to minimize the incidence of suffering. Popper advocated this in a footnote: he argued that suffering is simply more compelling and urgent than happiness. It’s also more measurable in my view, relatively speaking. Consequentialism in general has been criticized by Williams as not having a lot to say about certain moral issues, ones having to do with personal integrity for example.
And I would like to put a weight on other aspects of humanity. I have never studied Virtue Ethics, but ISTM that it has the advantage of not turning humans into the sort of Pavlovian receptors that classical utilitarianism seems to do. Nonetheless, negative utilitarianism is the first criteria that I reach when making a meta-moral judgment (ie a judgment about moral or ethical rules).
The problem there is that this framework has been rejected since Ancient Times. The answer to “What, am I my brothers keeper?” is “Yes, in fact you are.”
“Do no harm to others and you’re good,” is a very narrow idea of morality and frankly most people wouldn’t want to be close to someone who took it seriously. (I argue that proponents of the view don’t take it that seriously. Just as I, when pressed, probably don’t take negative utilitarianism seriously. The point being is that I argued for approximation in my case, and I have by no means invalidated lew’s position when it is seen as an approximation. Philosophy is hard and I am an amateur.)
Generally utilitarian proponents hem and haw to avoid that possibility. That’s when I reach for virtue ethics: it’s a bit of an intellectual desperation move.
Tell you what. Let’s ask the GREAT CELESTIAL POLICE OFFICER to step out of the room for a minute so we can talk about this like proper Vulcans.
Ah, that’s better! Now… is that speck in a petrie dish a human being? Hmmm… I’m not sure, so I’m not gonna just throw it in the garbage. And I can certainly try to influence your behavior (through web posts, etc), but there really isn’t enough evidence to make a law about it.
However, when the heart starts beating, things change. If you approach the matter LOGICALLY, it’s really hard to deny that the fetus is a person - it looks like a person, it has a heartbeat like a person, it has DNA like a person… um… it’s a person. Oh, sure, we can throw out all kinds of histrionics (But it’s my body! But it’s a baby! But it’s my body!! But it’s a baby!!), but that doesn’t change the facts. There are two people whose destinies are intertwined, and sometimes their interests clash. What do we do? What should the law say?
Unfortunately, there IS no good answer - only a lot of different bad answers.
A person has brain waves. A young enough fetus does not - nor does a brain dead body.
But I think we are in agreement. There are lots of answers, and each woman can come to her own conclusion, and we should support that conclusion and butt out.
That is all what we in the pro-choice side want.
Morals generally refers to specific moral values and/or beliefs. Ethics generally refers to any philosophical theory or study of moral values/beliefs. The former is directly normative with respect to our actions, while the latter is directly normative with respect to the rational requirements of such a theory.
So in your opinion ethics justifies morals? What of morals supposedly justified by deities and not ethically? If there were no supernatural justification for moral positions, I’d be fine with your distinction.
I’m not saying you agree with supernatural justifications for moral positions, but many do.
I think you’re making a false distinction there, Voyager. If, as Subterraneous suggests in post 104, ethics refers to “any philosophical theory or study of moral values/beliefs”, then it refers equally to theories which can be characterised as religious or theological or theistic and those which are not. Thus is somebody does have a philosophical theory in which morals are explained by reference to some notion of divine providence, that is still embraced within “ethics”.
Let’s use his definitions for this. As I said upthread, it seems to make sense to distinguish morals with ethical justification from morals with no ethical justification - unless the various theological arguments are considered ethical.
Those working in the field may make that distinction - as I said, my class was a long time ago. But there seems to be a distinction in common English usage. I searched on SSM unethical and didn’t get a lot of quality hits. Wiki answers says ethics depends on practices, which is odd, one hit said voting on SSM is unethical since it is a right which should not be validated by voting, and then there were some on the ethics of legalizing it - which makes sense.
I see a useful distinction. That’s about the extent of it.
That;s basically my point. They are considered ethical. Why not?
I think the only distinction is the one of fashion that I mentioned earlier; in certain subcultures they prefer the word “immoral” over the word “unethical”, but it doesn’t follow that they think the two words have different meanings. I think the distinction in meaning that you urge is not a useful one, not least because I don’t think it’s shared by most people, and consequently is more likely to give rise to confusion than to clarity.
As for the claim that ethics “depends on practices”, I don’t find that odd. Ethics is defined in the OED as “the science of morals; the department of study concerned with the principles of human duty; (in a narrower sense) the moral principles or system of a particular leader or school of thought; the moral principles by which a person is guided; or (in the widest sense) the whole field of moral science.” And one method of exploring ideas of human duty is to look at what humans actually do, and their accounts of why they do it. Ethics “depends on practice”, then, in the sense that if we want to know what ethical conceptions drive people’s behaviour we can start by looking at their behaviour and considering the account they give of it. I think this focusses on the definition of ethics as “the moral principles by which a person is guided”, i.e. the moral principles that actually influence actions and choices, rather than the ones that we might think ought to.
Because they come from power alone. God can define something as moral which cannot be justified by any secular system of ethics. God can define something as immoral which can easily be justified by secular ethics. I believe all this has already been covered by this thread. And we also have the practical issue that since God is absent from our world, theological morality is defined by people who often do not feel they need to give ethical reasons for their beliefs. As I mentioned upthread, those opposed to SSM in the Prop 8 case, who definitely considered it immoral, were singularly unable to give secular ethical reasons for their opposition.
As for the rest, the definition describes how we can study for instance for instance the ethical system of a slaveholder. I was thinking more of developing ethical systems.
It has, but you seem to be overlooking what was said about it.
In the first place, it’s not generally true of religious ethics that they are based on power/commands. I’ve already pointed to the very strong ethical tradition within Catholicism which sees becoming like God as the identifier of what is good, as opposed to obeying God. I could also point to the Buddhist ethical tradition – unquestionably religious, and unquestionably not based on commands. Conversely it’s perfectly possible to have a non-religious ethical philosophy which does rest on the commands of authority.
We could shift the ground a little and suggest that “morality” could be used to speak of ethical systems which are based on commands, whether religious or not, with “ethics” language being reserved for ethical systems not so based. But there are two objections to this. First, there isn’t necessarily a fundamental divide here; there are plenty of ethical systems which treat obedience to authority as important, but treat other things as important also; would they be “moral” or “ethical” under this usage? Secondly – and no doubt this is connected to the first point – most speakers of English don’t actually observe this distinction, or for that matter the religious/non-religious distinction that you suggest. There’s been abundant evidence in this thread of that. And if the distinction is not one commonly observed by speakers of English, it’s not much use.
Your argument here seems to me to presuppose its own validity. Religious ethicists are unable to give ethical reasons for their beliefs? On the contrary, they are perfectly able to do so. You just won’t accept them because you arbitrarily define their ethics as not ethical. People who don’t already agree with you about this will find your argument unconvincing. As for their being unable to give secular reasons for their stance, they may well be able to articulate secular reasons. I’ve seen lots of religiously-motivated people offer secular arguments against same-sex marriage (not that I have been persuaded by those arguments). They will do so if they are seeking to build wider support for their views. But if you ask them why they hold the views they do, as religious ethicists they are likely to offer a religious account of their ethics. You have failed to persuade me that there is any reason why we should deny the term “ethical” to their position.
You think the ethical system of a slaveholder is not developed? Do you think it springs forth fully formed? Aristotle defended slavery; would you deny the label “ethics” to his foundational and hugely influential work on this topic, entitled (as coincidence would have it) Ethics?
Or are you using “developed”? in some non-obvious sense here? Are you in fact seeking to confine the word “ethical” to ethical systems that you find appealing or whose basis you find appealing, and dismissing all the rest as mere morality? Because that would be a bit subjective; it wouldn’t provide a foundation for a distinction that could be used in meaningful discourse, except with people who already agreed with you.
I was brought up Jewish, and that morality is definitely based on commands, though often on the intent of the commands as opposed to the literal commands. Never having been taught by a nun I have no idea about what Catholicism teaches, though I thought God is basically unknowable so being like him is an odd goal. Still, why should he be the model? I’ve heard three reasons - he is our creator, he is more powerful than us, and he knows more than us. The first two are hardly the basis for any reasonable ethical system, maybe the third though the evidence that God actually knows more than us is a bit light.
Now it is possible to have a non-religious ethical system which looks just like religion in the sense that some authority is assumed to be all powerful. But truly secular systems must have justification for reliance on authority. Religions teach listening to parents, but you can have a more limited ethical justification for this also. In any case non-religious authorities are much weaker in the sense that, unlike God, they make mistakes and die.
No, I don’t think commands are of fundamental importance. The source of authority is much more so. Religious systems in which moral behavior leads to some afterlife consequences could easily be ethical systems if only we could demonstrate that the world works that way. Some ethics can be based on the consequences of ones actions.
First I am definitely not saying no religious morality can be justified ethically, and that ethical arguments are never used. I’m thinking of limited instances of where they diverge from secular ethics. So I’m not saying that all religious morality is unethical - that would be absurd. There is lot of overlap. For SSM, please share the reasonable ethical arguments proposed. (Reasonable does not imply agreement.) What I heard was appeal to invalid studies and data, and an appeal to semantics, about changing the meaning of the word marriage. The reason I brought it up was that the anti-SSM group had an opportunity to make ethical arguments during the court case, being prevented from making moral ones, and basically weren’t able to make any even close to cogent. Cases overturning laws banning certain sexual practices are similar. So I say their position is not ethical since they are unable to make an ethical argument for it.
Notice that most of these people did not change their positions. That is to be expected, since their positions are based on moral arguments (Biblical ones in this case) and not ethical ones. If you are opposed to SSM because God forbids it, no amount of ethical reasoning is going to get you to change your mind.
As an aside, in an area that is not involve with ethics, creationists are quite similar. If they are convinced of creation because of their reading of the Bible, no amount of evidence is going to make them change their minds.
To be clear, in both cases it is perfectly possible to believe in God and reject those portions of the Bible for various reasons. I am not painting with a broad brush here.
Those of us who are developers might put a different definition first. I was clearly using develop in the sense of construction - developing an ethical system involves constructing it. Developed in the sense of mature is different, and undeveloped ethical systems wouldn’t be very interesting to study. As I said a while back the reason we get conflicting ethical systems is that we start with different premises. Starting with the premise that a certain group is not quite human can quickly lead to slavery. Now, we can make good scientific and logical arguments about why this premise is faulty. And to tie things up, that is where “moral” system are different. If you are convinced of the existence of God, and if you are convinced that God says that this ethnic group or that tribe is not as human as you are, no amount of scientific evidence is going to convince the true believer otherwise - especially if the true believer benefits from the system.
Of course, other religions make other allegations.
Besides, as I reason it, if God loved us, he wouldn’t want our obedience, but for us to become educated, so that we make the right decisions on our own, without his having to tell us what to do. This is how real-world loving fathers raise their kids.
That is not what UDS said, but it is somewhat more in line with my understanding. Fortunately I didn’t have a father who treated me like God treats his children - only mild and rare spankings, no drowning, torture, or being locked in the basement. Not lucky, I guess.
The point is there’s huge variety of religious ethical perspectives; they are every bit as varied as secular ethical perspectives. It’s no the case that a commandments/authority foundation is normative for religious ethics.
Yes, Voyager, as a Jew you’d have been exposed to an ethical system in which divine commandments played a signficant role. But they’re not the foundation; the commandments are addressed to Jews because of the Covenant, and that’s where they get their binding force from. In that perspective, the Covenant is the foundation, surely?
And yet there’s a morality even without any covenant. Cain is punished for slaying Abel, even though at this point Cain has no Covenant with God, and no commandment forbidding murder has been addressed to him. Consequently the wrongness of murder - as presented in Jewish ethical thought - is not founded either on a commandment or on a covenant. It precedes both of these.
In short, I suggest you may be short-changing your own religious ethical heritage if you present it as based fundamentally on God’s authoritative decree that X is good and Y is bad. God’s decrees and judgments may indicated goodness and badness; it doesn’t follow that they create it.
Trinopus, yes, you can certainaly argue that God wants not our mechanical obedience but our maturing to a point where we take responsibility for our own ethical judgments. That’s an authentic - and widespread - religious ethical perspective. Which, again, undermines any attempt to distinguish between religious “morality” and secular “ethics”.
It is for Western religions. Now, even Western commandments are rather flexible in order to give the people supposedly speaking for the deity room to maneuver. I think many non-Western religions don’t pretend to include a complete moral code, and so are even more so. Yet for many religious leaders have command authority when they wish it. We were more clever about integrating religion and politics.
However the diversity you mention is one very good reason to reject all of them.
The Covenant is the reason the commandments apply to us, and the bris is the sign that we buy into the contract, as it were. The Covenant itself has no moral direction. Those who lived after the covenant and before the granting of the law did not seem to follow the law. Abraham’s arguments with God came from basic ethical principles, not commandments, and notice that God mostly responded in the same way. God reacts very differently during the story of Sodom versus during Job.
God is acting more as a godfather than a moral judge here. He does not exile Cain for the murder directly, but in response to the voice of Abel’s blood. And God exiles Cain, (from where to where is another matter) but also protects him, since the Mark of Cain is not a curse but a warning to others to not hurt him. So, there being no commandment, Cain gets off rather lightly. Then there is the fact that Abel is favored by God, doing the high quality sacrifices.
In short, I suggest you may be short-changing your own religious ethical heritage if you present it as based fundamentally on God’s authoritative decree that X is good and Y is bad. God’s decrees and judgments may indicated goodness and badness; it doesn’t follow that they create it.
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And there’s the rub. If God does not create it, who does? Is God just the transmitter of a cosmic book of ethics? While God does decree this stuff, we have a long tradition of deciding what God really meant. Even the Orthodox have ways of hacking the rules to work better in modern society, and we go down to Reform who pretty much ignore them. But things are still commandment based, even in the breach.