So the TLS's answer to the categorical imperative is "be as good as you can be I guess. . ." That has the same problems that they find in utilitarianism, only even more so. It is even more vague and even less calculable than they claim utalitarianism is. How good is a person capable of being? How do we find out how good an individual is capable of being? Are psychopaths given special allowances? What about people with very little self control?
If ethics is dependent on knowledge does that mean Aztec human sacrifices were a morally great deed when performed by the Aztecs under a misconception that the souls were going to heaven? What about Hitler's genocide under the misconceived belief that he was creating a better and more peaceful Europe?
But if not knowledge then upon what is it based? Instinct? If so, then society would crumble into loose animalistic structures. Law? Then, to appeal to Hitler once more, would you still shelter a Jew against the ethics of the law? External supernatural force? We are then met with the old questions of "which one" along with the problem of interpretation (do we take Levitical restrictions on beard trimming literally, for example). It seems like knowledge is the only thing we can use to form good ethical structures...perhaps with enough data our ethics will become better.
> But if not knowledge then upon what is it based? Instinct? If so, then society would crumble into loose animalistic structures. Law? Then, to appeal to Hitler once more, would you still shelter a Jew against the ethics of the law?
Thats actually why I argue objectivism as being aligning better with what's possible within the field of ethics. The whole idea is you can only morally do what you want, without intentially removing others freedom, unless they pose a direct threat to your freedom. As a rule of thumb, this actually works exceptionally well.
Murder for example is wrong (morally), by that code of conduct. Traffic laws would be moral because it keeps others from removing your freedom by either not letting you access the road or accidentally killing you by being reckless. It also handles the Hitler argument, whereas some utilitarians my argue what Hitler did was moral.
The whole point of this philosophy is to maximize personal happiness, while minimizing conflict. Data has little to do with it, because respecting one another is the whole point. When you start discussing ethics in terms of "sociatial good" it starts requiring one to know the future. For this reason, I'd argue objectivism, when applied, provides the more useful form of ethics, where one only has to worry about their own happiness, while not intruding (too much), on others.
One problem is defining what "intruding on others' happiness too much" means - it's not obvious how to derive from this principle the hours when making loud noises within city limits is OK, or what about necrophilia in public, or pollution, etc. Almost anything I do might make someone very unhappy and I'm not sure what philosophical principle can be used to distinguish cases where I should stop doing it from cases where I should be able to reply "toughski shitski."
Another problem is whether it's OK to require a thirsty person in a desert to give up all their assets in exchange for water, and whether it's OK for the thirsty person to knock you out and take the water in response; most people would side with the thirsty guy for what I think are very good reasons in terms of the practical implications while objectivists would not.
To your first point, making someone unhappy isn't unethical. Making loud noise pretty much at all, is infringing on people's freedom. No one will bicker if you can't avoid the sound like starting a car, but if you play a loud TV it's unethical. Necrophilia is totally fine by this ethical standard, as it disgusting you is not infringing on your freedom (to say sleep, as the noise example). Pollution is a tough one, but trying to minimize it would be more ethical as it infringes on less people, etc.
To your other problem, I fully understand the practical implications. Knocking the guy out and stealing his water is pretty unethical. However, coming to equitable terms is fairly easy. More humans can think one step ahead and just gouging the guy for all his posetions means he won't help you in the future. Long term, that is bad for you, thus you'll likely not charge too outrageous
You might see logical consistency in the above; I see a bunch of things tied not by any logic but solely by the fact that a set of people agree with all these things.
For instance, why is making noises infringing on your freedom from noise, but the requirement of silence is not an infringement on your freedom to make noises? Freedom from noise and freedom to make noises are both "freedoms" and one comes at the expense of the other. What is the way to weigh their relative importance which is universally applicable to other cases and not rooted in culture or personal preference?
Yes, but objectivism suffers from decay on its own fringes as well. An objectivist can both be personally against gay marriage, for example, while publicly decrying any law against it because that would "infringe upon freedom." In that case it becomes more of a good law making structure rather than a valid ethical system since the individual's morality is compromised at the expense of society's ethics.
No, the authors seem to suggest, "be as good as the average person can be":
"He excludes from the scope of ethical obligation not just the literally impossible, but also anything that is merely beyond the abilities of the normal person. Ethics cannot tell us to do what would require the impartiality of saints or the foresight of seers."
Superman is not ethically required to save the world from the giant meteor because the average man could not. I, as a professional programmer, am not required to make ethical choices when writing software because the average person cannot write code at all.
Your notion would also extend to saying "Superman is not ethnically required to not punch hole through that building killing everyone inside, it because the average person cannot punch that hard".
It's is as if the claim is someone shouldn't avoid doing harm that their above average abilities offer them?
The authors seems to be saying something dissimilar to that: people should't not be require to do more than average person, even if they have the capability to do so.
Programmers shouldn't be required to perform code for charity for their friends and family. Doctors shouldn't be required to save lifes.
Wow, neither of you actually finished the article. Both of you are claiming the author believes viewpoints that the author presented in order to show problems with them.
Ultimately, the TLS didn't even claim a viewpoint. They merely presented a variety of opinions and critiqued them.
THe author incorrectly assumes certain things about philosophy to argue for his position, which, as pointed out by others, is actually no improvement over utilitarianism etc.
When he talks that philosophy never thought they are over intellectualizing ethics or making it too distant from the practical application, I have to assume he never heard of Strawson's critique or of phenomonology of ethics which both seem to tackle it.
Philosophical discussion of ethics often seems to assume that we can take up some point outside it, and erect or discover a set of ideas that will build it up from nothing, and persuade all who are unethical.
Actually almost all of us are always already operating within an elaborate set of ethical beliefs, and there is no way we can escape believing them. What we instead do is try to improve them. It is somewhat like our perception of the physical world, from birth we perceive and believe in it, and through thought and experiences we expand and correct our cognition of it.
Ethics, though, has an exception in that there are some people, sociopaths, who lack this aspect of human experience. Philosophers often think they can construct a set of arguments that will persuade sociopaths to become moral people, but this is not possible.
Well, Plato tried to make Alcibiades into an ethical person.
The basic assumption behind much ethical philosopher is that human beings are naturally amoral and so they need to persuaded by a set of ironclad arguments as to what is good and that they should be good. Kant, for instance, argues we can't rely on our feelings so we need to have a set of absolutely clear moral principles to follow. Bernard Williams became famous for arguing this is not the case.
I don't think you understand how strong a claim you were making before, using phrases like "persuade all who are unethical" and "persuade sociopaths to become moral people."
> Well, Plato tried to make Alcibiades into an ethical person.
Plato (probably didn't, but put that aside) used Alcibiades as a character in some dialogues. Does it go beyond that?
> Kant, for instance, argues we can't rely on our feelings so we need to have a set of absolutely clear moral principles to follow
That is quite a different claim. It doesn't follow that such a set of principles will be somehow persuasive to all.
However, I do think that many philosophers think that human psychology is by its nature ethically highly deficient, and the solution is philosophical argument. Take Plato and his allegory of the cave, for instance, or Kant's categorical imperative.
It seems to me the author incorrectly assumes morality is the same as ethics. Morality is more individualistic whereas ethics are externally imposed rules from which one may derive their morality. A Biblical absolutist for instance uses the ethics of the Bible as a foundation for their moral code, but that still does not determine that one will lead to the other. As a society it may indeed behoove us to follow an ethical structure such as utilitarianism (an argument I have made specifically for democracies in the past) but the personal morality of the individuals within that society may vary greatly.
> It seems to me the author incorrectly assumes morality is the same as ethics.
Morality and ethics are the same thing, in general/philosophical sense ("ethics" has a specific meaning in a government/political sense which is distinct from morality -- or perhaps rather a specific subset of morality -- but that's clearly not relevant here.)
> Morality is more individualistic whereas ethics are externally imposed rules from which one may derive their morality.
This is a creative distinction, but not one that is generally held as the definition of either term.
A lot of people seem to think that "ethics" and "morals" mean something different–but those people who think this rarely seem to agree on what exactly the supposed difference is, nor have I ever seen anyone who thought this able to cite an authoritative source for their proposed distinction. The difference between "ethics" and "morals" is etymological – the first word comes from Greek, the second word comes from Latin. The traditional and historically well-established usage is that they are synonyms–most dictionaries and thesauruses treat them as such.
Part of the issue, I think, is the term "moral" often has religious/traditional/conservative connotations, whereas the word "ethical" often has more secular/progressive connotations. But, a difference in connotation does not require a difference in denotation. And many of the proposals to define these words differently rely on secularist assumptions, about a distinction between a "personal" or "private" and "public" sphere, which is a distinction which appeals to secular progressives but which many religious conservatives will question.
In ethical theory/moral philosophy, ethics and morality are the same thing. Both are concerned chiefly with two questions: what we ought to do given what is (unless you're Hume), and whether what has been done is good (or just, or right).
I'd be honestly interested to know why you believe they are considered the same in the field of ethical philosophy. Throughout my education toward a degree in philosophy I was consistently taught they were very different. One cannot confuse the terms in the study therein because of cause and effect: ethics is the cause that leads to morals.
That's funny. I'm currently pursuing a degree in philosophy, and I was consistently taught that they were the same. Most of my professors used them interchangeably, with a slight preference for "ethics" when discussing theory.
I realize that my previous comment made it sound like I'm an authority on the subject (I'm most definitely not), so please forgive me for being so brusque in dismissing an alternative definition.
My impression is the two terms are not exactly the same, with some vague differences in connotations, but a great deal of overlap, and often used interchangeably.
By the way, this is general problem in philosophy, as compared with other fields. Many standard terms are inexact in their meanings, and used differently by different philosophers. So for instance, some philosophers use the term ontology to mean the same thing as metaphysics, and others make a strong distinction between the two. Heidegger even switched his meanings between his early and later career.
Indeed, there isn't even a standard definition for the term philosophy itself.
I'd say that all questions of "good" are philosophically underpinned, so ethics is always preceded by some philosophy, whether or not "philosophers" are around or not.
The article already begins by proposing that since ethics appears early in the life of a culture, without philosophers, their contribution of theory is unnecessary. This claim already builds a theory of what constitutes "good" contributions, which is a philosophical theory.
Ethics is a slippery slippery subject. Why? Everybody has a personal ethical, or perhaps two stances.
Many possible stances are combinations of three basic sorts of ethics.
Deontological. Follow the laws handed to us. Don't kill, don't steal, don't force people to incriminate themselves.
Utilitarian. Choose a path that yields the greatest good.
"Responsible". Choose a path that yields the greatest good, but excluding one's own welfare. "Nobody has greater love than to lay down his own life for his friends'" We make heroes of people who act on this stance.
When an abstract situation presents itself, most people I know go for the utilitarian stance. How can I drive the bus with the failed brakes to kill the fewest people? Fine. Big whoop.
But, when presented with a real situation, people gravitate to their deeper stances. "Dad's not going to regain consciousness. Should we ask the hospital to shut off the respirator?"
The deontological stance often says, "NO WAY! DAD DESERVES THE BEST CHANCE." In Judeochristian terms, this is translated "choose life."
The utilitarian stance might say, "that respirator is expensive. Could those resources be spent curing someone with a long life ahead of them?" Health insurance companies are 100% utilitarian, and that often comes across as offensively callous. It's not, really. It's just an ethical stance among many.
The "responsible" stance recognizes Dad's agency. It might try to ask what course of action is kindest to Dad, even if it's frightening to his children.
Obviously there are lots of nuances in these real situations. No actual situation comes out like a case study. In the work of practical ethics, it's important to work with people to help them discover and express their own deep ethical stances.
I said people have two stances, because peoples' stated, intellectual, stance is often not quite the same as their deeply held, operational, practical, stance. Both levels count, because people use their intellectual stances to unpack and grapple with their deep stances. That unpacking is some of the hardest work each of us will do in our lifetimes.
Is this all postmodernist relativist claptrap? Is it all age-of-uncertainty hogwash that ignores core human values? To many who hold strong deontological stances, the answer is yes. Can it justify genocide? Certainly not, because genocide necessarily denies the agency -- the ability to act upon their own stances -- of an entire group of people.
The philosophers of ethics do well when they help us tell the stories of our own stances in ways that help us do the hard work of confronting our own deep ethical stances when circumstances force us to do so.
If ethics is dependent on knowledge does that mean Aztec human sacrifices were a morally great deed when performed by the Aztecs under a misconception that the souls were going to heaven? What about Hitler's genocide under the misconceived belief that he was creating a better and more peaceful Europe?