Why be Ethical?Follow

If, like many nowadays, you don't believe in an afterlife or any spiritual karma, then why do you feel it important to be ethical?
This is something that I have been thinking a lot about lately, why be nice to people apart from the pleasure that I get from doing so? Why become a vegan (surely the only really ethical standpoint) if there's nothing in it for me apart from the warm glow of self-satisfaction?
I would greatly like to hear arguments for people from all ethical stances. I personally attempt to be ethical because I enjoy helping people, and feeling that I am seeking relevant information about ethical/political issues to play my small part. However, I couldn't claim to be a paradigm of virtue, I like to make fun of people (within limits) could give loads more to charity, an be far nicer to people and the planet in general.
So, what are the main benefits of actually BEING ethical in an age of flagrant excess, consumerism and hedonism, any thoughts/insights/opinions?

In many cases, it is because they are vain, and they feel that by being "ethical" now, they will be remembered and posibly revered when they die.

Whether you believe in God or not, I'd debate long and hard against somebody who said they don't care whether or not they are remembered when they pass away.

On another note, athiest or not, I think most would agree being "ethical" is a good way to get in peoples good graces.

Ethics have nothing to do with virtue. Ethics are merely about consistency. Serial murders who only kill prostiutes are adhering to a standard of ethics. If they decide to kill someone who isn't a prostitute they've strayed from their ethical code.

Ethics are about applying a set of rules, regardless of what the rules are. A good deal of life is deciding what your individual set of rules or belifs are. The rest of it is living up to them.

That's ethics. If you can't meet an ethical standard of your beliefs it's probably time to reevaluate what you beleive in.

Hmmm... Not really correct Smash.

Ethics derives from two Greek words (which are themselves presumably interelated):

Ethikos: "correct social behavior"
Ethos: "character, or self"

Ethics is specifically a set of rules by which an individual (the self) fits into the society in a way that is considered "correct".

It's not about being consistent only to one self. That's only half of it. It's about being consistent to one's self but in a matter that is consistent with the norms of the society one lives in. When the person is in harmony with the society, he is considered to be "ethical".

However, the rules don't have to be set in stone, and the "self" bit is still half of it. If you come up with your own rules on how to do things, and they are not damaging to the society you live in (and even better if they are helpful within the context of society), you are also being ethical, no matter what those rules may be. However, all definitions explicity imply an alignment with the "good" of society. So, a serial killer can never been seen as being ethical simply because his behavior is blatantly harmful to society. Ok. I suppose technically if that society needed serial killers for some reason, then he'd be ethical, but I don't think that's really the case here.

I have a bachelor's degree in philosophy, and my emphasis was in applied ethics, so maybe I can inject something into this discussion.
First of all, the term ethics applies to the theory of "the good life" or the study of how we should act in order to lead a "good life." More on that in a second.
Ethics covers two subjects: Morality and Prudence. Morality is the side of ethics that looks at how we ought act in a sort of qualitative way. For example, don't kick kittens because it's mean and it will make little kids sad, that's a moral judgement.
The other side is prudence. This is more qualitative, as in don't kick kittens because it will likely get you in trouble with the authorities.
This is a gross over-simplication, but the point is that morality is the more feeling, sympathietic element, and prudence is the more coldly rational. Put the two together, apply them to the real world, and you have ethics.
Ethics aims to layout a transcendent law, and that is where everyone disagrees so frequently. Some say the ends of an action justify the means, others say the means are the only end. Some tell us that we should think first of our own well-being, while others say that we should put all other living things before ourselves, and still others calim that nothing matters at all (which, by the way, is self-defeating in the same way certain adolescents go "alternative" in an effort to be patently individual and just end up joining a new clique).
I am an atheist myself, and I feel I have strongly compelling reasons for striving for a high ethical standard. A few of those would be:
1. A compassionate concern for other people. The good old golden rule.
2. The social contract. Basically we're all in the same or similar situation, if we all respect each other, we can all be happy, and I want to be happy.
3. Pride. Pure, unabated ego. I need no god, no fire and brimstone, no 1000 virgins, no mythology to scare me into doing my best, I do it because I am above all of those things, and I believe the human race can transcend the need for the supernatural and be better for it. I don't need god, because I have faith in potential of the human spirit. I worship nothing, for I am my own superhero.

And yet if you don't believe in Him then you believe that those rules are man-made. If you believe they are man-made why would you put more faith into rules invented by someone else over your own moral code? Also I assume we are talking about personal morals and ethics as opposed to following the laws of government.

How is that a fallacy? The only motivation that drives people to do anything is if it pleases or benefits them, be it directly or indirectly.


As are those who follow some arbitrary "god" created by other people to controll them. Keep in mind that VAST, VAST majority of rapists, theives, and murderers in this country are Christian.



That's all well and good, but how exactly, if such a being existed at all, would humans obtain such a set of rules? Via what other humans wrote down? Accept a code written by another human full of the exact same pettiness? What does that possibly accomplish above what one would accomplish on their own? Nothing. What it does do is remove personal responsibility from the equation so that people have an excuse to behave in ways that are petty and self serving "because God said it must be". It allows them to fly airplanes into buildings, burn people at the steak, and consider amending the Constitution to specificially descriminate against a certain group of people. All things that would require a great deal more dificulty accepting if people had to take personal responsibility for the genesis of those beliefs. They'd have to admit to themeselves that they were murderers, bigots, or fools.



Him? It's good that a supreme being would apparently have a *****, because clearly that would be the focus of all of his decion making and moral codes. What an odd coincidnece that those who write his codes down have one too. I think if you examine the codes you speak about, be they Christian, Muslmim, Hindo, whatever, they all have a surprising thing in common. The supreme being is inevitibly astonishingly simmilar to those who write his beliefs down for others to follow. Imagine that. Also, shockingly the codes in question funnel power and influence to those who write them down by virtue of preventing others from acting in ways in which the leaders of whichever religous sect in question are free to act. It's the oldest con in the book.

As to having to abide to them, I'm afraid not. It's only the sheep that have to abide to them. Only those who aren't sufficently sophisticated to realize they've been duped and free themselves from teh mental schackles of someone elses attempt to controll them. If you choose to live your life in a way that doesn't match the way you'd live if it someone else didn't tell you to, that's your choice. Personally I'll make my own decions about right and wrong, without arbitrarily ascribing to a certain set of them because in the Geographic reigon of the world where I was born someone told me to.

Would that you were born in Saudi Arabia you'd be happily stoning people to death for exposing their faces in public. There but for the grace of random luck in where you born go you.



Edited, Tue Mar 23 12:37:29 2004 by Smasharoo

Well, you're the closest thing to an expert then, so I'll bow to your superior education on the subject. Would you consider ethics to be an absolute then, and if so, why is that we have specefic sets of ethics by profession. Ie: It's ethical for a soldier to drop Napalm on children, but not for me to set my kids on fire?

Oh no! I've been lured into stating what I beleive to be true by someone else posting something they believe to be true. How could I have been so foolish as to be duped!!

/yawn. If I, or anyone else actually, didn't respond to things that were obviously intentionally inflamatory there'd be about three posts on this board.

I am an agnostic (that means I am an atheist with an open mind, if GOD speaks to me in person like to George Burns in the movie, or if real "proof" is ever found I will look at it, and NO you do not have any so don't bother me with bible proof).

I am a very ethical person. Doing it without rewards, not sure, because I am staying out of jail by not maiming, raping and stabbing others, so that is a reward.

However I grew up in a Christian home, and absorbed much of it. I see a huge difference though in what I consider religious things (no gay sex, no ************* no missing church, no blasphemy) and golden rule type things, like being mean or cruel to people.

This is a very interesting discussion. Keep it going.

Kelti, I believe you've got that backwards - George Burns was God, he was talking to John Denver.

I try to live by something resembling the Golden Rule, meaning that I will generally be polite, unoffensive and forgiving to others, because I would like to be treated that way; I try to help others when I can because I know that at some point I may need help myself. I'm not looking out for my afterlife or garnering spiritual karma; I'm interested in current, living karma (so to speak). Self-serving? Maybe, but I never claimed to be a missionary or a saint.

As to the religious aspects, I grew up in a loosely United Methodist house, which to my limited experience seems to follow the same code: to be a good neighbor and helpful member of the community.

Debalic

Debalic, you are SO right. I do remember how great GB was as God. Just stated it wrong (why does my mind do that to me -another issue for another day).

I would not consider ethics to be an absolute set of rules as in "it is always wrong to be dishonest." The only place such absolutes could come from would be supernatural, and I don't believe in the existence of anything supernatural to begin with. However, I do believe that we can come up with something similar in the natural world, in the same way we come to understand laws of physics.

Laws of science are not laws we came up with, but rather just observed. Gravity is an example. Newton in no way created the forces of gravity, he just observed them. This and other laws in science and mathematics are reasoned out by people after observation of the way things work.

The big diffference between laws of nature and ethics is that ethics attempts to give guidelines for choices. An apple doesn't get to decide to fall from the tree, it is acted on by gravity. People, on the other hand, have some degree of choice in their actions. The idea of ethics is to understand which of those choices will lead to positive outcomes, and which to negative. The generally accepted notion is that ethics strives to increase pleasure and reduce pain in the world, and I do believe we can reason out some absolute guidelines that we may apply to all situations.

Basically here is my philosophy in a nutshell:

> We, as human beings, have a common set of physical, mental, and emotional needs. This do vary, but we are generally quite similar.

> Individuals have a desire to have certain rights granted them--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for example.

> We also inhabit the same planet, and often require that which other human beings have to offer to meet our needs and desires.

These three things make up the "human condition," and that is as much as I would be willing to call absolute. From the human condition, I would reason that:

> I want certain rights
> I am in the same condition as other humans
Therefore, other humans want similar rights.

> We all want similar rights
> If these are infringed upon by others, we don't get to exercise them.
therefore, We all want our rights to not be infringed upon

And here comes the social contract:

> By benefitting from society and exercising rights, you are implicitly agreeing that you want those rights.
> Society's smooth functioning depends on respecting the rights of others.
Therefore, any right that you exercise is granted to you only in exchange for a responsibility to respect the same rights for others.

That is my attempt at an absolute law of ethics, and we must apply that template to a given situation to determine the ethical course of action. In response to your question about using human beings as combustibles, I would first explain the only possible justification I would allow for military action-- self-defense.

According to the above stated philospohy, criminal justice and/or violence are deemed appropriate, and in fact necessary, in order to remove a determined threat to society. Basically, if you breach the contract, you get a time-out (prison) until it can be determined that your no longer a threat. If that isn't strong enough, and there is no possible way that you will ever cease to be a threat, then you should be permanently removed from society in the most efficient manner possible. That is the theoretical justification for killing, however I have a hard time seeing a real-life situation where either strangers or your own children being set aflame would meet these criteria.

The concept of collateral damage in military action comes to mind, but in reality, there have been few, if any, military campaigns in human history that meet strict ethical scrutiny as a "just war," but if they did, and the only way to protect society was napalmng those kids, and the benefit was significantly greater than the damage done, it could be justified.

I don't have the answers to the finer points of such justification, or how we determine something a permanent threat, and even am not sure of exactly which rights we should be entitled to or exactly how many human beings should be included in these judgements, but only offer a vague theory. I wouldn't say I'm an expert, I've just studied enough to be bitten by the bug.