tonight i attended a discussion on ethics at the new york society for ethical culture. completely enthralling. conversation was started and moderated by a professor of evolution and the philosophy of science, who began by setting the parameters of various ethical systems like duty-bound and utilitarianism/consequentialism. was continued by questions and debate by a group of about 30.

so, what are good places to start? i've done some artistotle: socrates and plato next? fill me in.

I wish i was as hungry for information/knowledge as you c_b.

I'm just hungry for tonight's steak.

Speaking of, you still a vegetarian?

I'm no expert, so please take my recommendations as those of someone with no particular expertise, just an interest on the order of your own. There are a couple of ways to approach thinking about this topic. First, are you looking for schools of thought on how to consider ethical questions in general, or are you interested in analyzing your own system of beliefs and perhaps better defining them?

A book that I think has been very influential in Western thought regarding examining ones own beliefs is The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I can't imagine anyone post-Enlightenment looking at life with such pessimism; however, he was Emperor of Rome at the height of its glory and needed to be able to justify to himself the committing of countless atrocities while living as a man in the world. I think that reading it can provide most individuals with a degree of self-awareness that might surprise them.

After that, almost all of philosophy deals with ethics to some degree, but because we've talked so much about free will and choice in some of these threads, I think that it might be interesting to read some Spinoza, specifically his Ethics. In Spinoza's worldview, one in which "free will" doesn't really exist, what role do the choices we make have? God runs rampant through this discussion. Don't worry about the "proofs," they don't really prove anything.

I think that most people would find that they recognize a lot of the ideas that they've grown up with in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The battle between how we perceive things and our judgement based on our perceptions lead to something of a dead end prior to Kant. Kant put "instinct" back into play. Yes, we can "sense" that something is "right" or "wrong" without working through the logic of how we perceive things. This book is loaded with things that c_b is interested in. He proves that God that the proofs that God exist are specious while asserting that God must exist. Go figure that one out.

And I think that most Americans are probably already pretty familiar with the philosophy of William James. All of those moral surveys kind of stem from his view of things. We very often need to act in situations in which we do not have all of the evidence or we have conflicting evidence. It is therefore logical to act upon our hypotheses. A lot of this is in his Will to Believe. He also states that if the existence of God works for you, then that's good enough for you to believe it's true. I may be mistaken, but I think that most Americans view the existence of God in those terms.

wow, cb's hanging out on the upper west side

yessir.



heh ... doesn't happy very often. but i do love the uws.

i think both. thanks for the recommendations.



oh really?



wasn't kant a duty-bound ethicist?



interesting.

Absolutely. That's the principle of the "categorical imperative."

To be moral is to do things because they are the "right" thing to do rather than because they make you feel good or you would profit from them in the end. It's a good idea to be kind to others because the result would be a more pleasant society. Similarly, murder is a bad idea because if we all decided to murder someone, there wouldn't be any people left to have a society.

I forgot to add that you might want to also read Kant's Metaphysic of Morals. This book talks about his system of ethics.

You would really find his justification for the existence of God which is in the Critique quite interesting. It's very pre-William James.

Also, have you read anything by John Stuart Mill?

we discussed the duty-bound and utilitarianism ethical systems at length last night we also talked about aristotle's virtue ethics. i don't see myself as part of any one, but more a mix of them. my question to the professor was where intent comes into play for the utilitarianism viewpoint, because we can't see consequences, and consequences don't tell the whole story.

You should definitely read some John Stuart Mill.

if you could sort of just name a range of a few, maybe 5, books i should read without a doubt, what would they be? perhaps one each by mill, plato, kant, spinoza, and william james? i know i'm leaving off mr. aurelius here.

c_b, we should definitely go out for coffee.

Let me give you some background about me. Because I'm no authority on anything. When I was in college, I took Western Civilization as my freshman history/literature/philosophy course. It was based on Mortimer Adler's Great Books program, and it was a college student's dream. It profoundly affected the way that I think about things. But it also perhaps biased my thinking process in favor of the professors that I had. I'll never forget one of my professors weeping while he read the story of Paola and Francesco from Dante's Inferno in Italian to us. I'm ridiculously sentimental, and that affects my thought processes as well.

Here is what we read, straight from the syllabus:

Utilitarianism, Mill
The Republic, Plato
The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant
Ethics, Spinoza
Pragmatism, William James

I think that you might also be interested in Kant's Metaphysics of Morals and James' The Will to Believe.

I think that it can be very difficult to understand some of these books (Spinoza I'm looking at you) without looking at a lot of other things that they've written and other authors of the period who reference them and attempt to explain them. It's definitely a process. And at the end you'll be dazzled by their ability to carry through their arguments, but you'll find yourself disappointed by the fact that you can't really embrace any of them. I guess at the end, you hit upon the fact that you are your own person. The ultimate in ethical conclusions.

How would you say ethics differ from morals?

Are ethics just a way to control people?

Are ethics an artificial contrivance to try to overcome basic human nature?

Please continue the discussion of the books once you read them. I would love to learn more but I am too deep into other I books I have to finish first.

Ethics is really about how you think about your behavior. Morals are what you actually do. One of the tricky things that I've found is that everyone defines things just a little differently. But basically, both have to do with making your life the best that it can be for you.


They are kind of an internal control. You have to first think through what what would make your life a positive experience. Then you need to put your philosophy in practice.


Isn't basic human nature the desire to be happy?

If ethics are just an internal control then can their be bad ethics? If a person does not want a particular control in their life can this ever be viewed as bad? I fail to see how ethics are about anything except control. My professional designation has me sign an ethics agreement which is all about controlling my actions.

I think basic human nature is to survive. I think to experience may come before happiness. Bringing this back to ethics and it being about control, if my happiness can only come at your expense this is usually regarded as unethical.

It would be great fun. We should go to a coffeehouse that has live music and poetry readings. This can be a very tough discussion. I worked for a philosopher's conference once. They spent the summer reading Martin Heidegger's Being and Time. I was one of the food service workers, but I read the book anyway, and spent a lot of time talking with the philosophers about it. There was a whole lot of discussion that never got resolved on what some of the words even meant. It was definitely better in person.

Ethics in its purest form is the methodology that you use to think through what would make your life good. I'm not sure that "good" and "bad" ethics exist. It's also a thought process that concerns living in a civil society. So if you and I were on a desert island starving, and you killed me because you could survive just a bit longer if you ate me, I'm not sure that an ethical question exists between the two of us. If you were then rescued the day after you ate me, and society ruled that you were morally wrong to do it, that would certainly affect your long-term happiness, but you would still have survived.

What really controls our behavior are codes of rules and laws. If we were neighbors, and you had developed a taste for human flesh while living with some now-deceased colleagues on a desert island, would you not kill me and eat me because it would be morally wrong, or because you would go to jail?

Silly, I wouldn't kill you and eat you because you're beautiful.

My morals may tell me it's wrong to kill you, someone else's morals may say it's just fine and dandy. I would say the consequences for certain actions (i.e. fines, jail) keep me from doing things far more than my morals. My morals only prevent me from doing things I don't really want to do anyways. Societies morals only prevent me from doing things when those morals are reflected in laws with consequences that I view as too steep to justify breaking.

On the whole societies ethics and morals are pretty irrational. Then you throw in the whole legal system and it becomes more irrational than a belief in God ever could be. More so than God and religion, ethics, morals and the justice system are exclusively about control based on irrational principals.