Talk:Ethics/Archive 1

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The whole series on ethics has really impressed me. Kudos to Larry Sanger for a lecture well done. -Peter Sjoholm

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It was claimed that "political economy law enforcement, tax... policy", which is incorrect. Political economy studies these policies, politicians set the policies.

true. thanks. I'll fix that.

Furthermore, law enforcement is only marginally an issue of economy.

untrue. law enforcement is fundamental to economy in all views except the libertarian. Property instruments are hardly "marginal".

I removed the "moral core" paragraph, since it didn't give a proper characterization of "theory of conduct".

"proper"? care to rewrite? There are two major competing theories of theories of conduct. One is that "moral codes" actually work, i.e. prescriptions of "shalt nots" actually do affect human behavior. The opposing theory is that they don't, and that "moral core" (or moral fiber or moral instinct) must be raised, trained, and conditioned by example. In that theory, all a moral code does is justify punishment - and is thus destructive, since punishment is a form of social revenge, and not effective except insofar as it may prevent a future violation, e.g. cutting off the hand of a thief or jailing a burglar does remove their dexterity and mobility which are tools of their trade, but doesn't change their desire or 'moral core' at all.

Ethics is only the *science* of morality - there is plenty to morality that is plain aesthetics, anthropology, biology and instinct. What should be said here is that there are competing theories regarding the moral nature of man, and lay out this debate, linking off to politics and justice where required

I removed the mention of "theory of etiquette" since that field doesn't seem to exist,

I've seen it used to describe Ann Landers, Judith Martin, etc., and even the influence of fringe figures like Howard Stern or Spike Lee or Larry Flynt. It may be obscure. The concept of etiquette itself, however, is not obscure.

and, if it existed, were too narrow to discuss the ethics of lying.

that's in general not part of philosophy - more part of sociology which describes social circumstances in sharable ways - and yes etiquette is a very narrow concern with lying, only with what we would call "little white lies" - consensus is that there is no "ethics of lying" other than etiquette, i.e. there is some discussion about when to lie, but the criteria people use to decide when to lie seem to be part of the moral core and thus impossible to characterize in any shared way, other than "fear" perhaps. Best sources on this are all psychologists and sociologists: Goffman notably, but Kohlberg, Gilligan's debates are best known. AxelBoldt, Sunday, April 7, 2002

thanks for the specific feedback - it helps improve the article. Whereas, the older version of "ontology" is simply unreadable to the layman, and needs more input from you than simply to disregard my rewrite. Surely there was one sentence over there that worked better than Larry's.

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Points above are mostly valid. Yes Kohlberg and Gilligan deserve mention. Not on this pass.

They're both on the list of ethicists

For now, just concentrated on non-controversial statements and a closer relationship of the formal 'science of morality' and the informal ways in which ethics is understood. A strictly academic view of this don't cut it.

Right, so, simple view of ethics and morals is also being developed. And probably something in Simple English later on.

There's an argument that the applied ethics article, which is mostly about casuistry or ethical case-based reasoning, ought to include much of what's now here. However, there's an even more potent argument for leaving it as it is: the etiquette, aesthetics, arbitration and politics centered views of ethics are now placed in the context of the academic categories Larry used. The article outlines these first, then explains the categories, then explains these other views as related to those categories.

That part is fine. But there's not enough on religion.

It's also probably time to move the meta:Simple View of Ethics and Morals to the main wikipedia, as it has sat there for a long time with no updates - and no serious objections. That would complement these more rigorous articles.

Being done - see simple view of ethics and morals. There is some suggestion to make *that* into the ethics article, and this into ethics (philosophy).

Finally, some concepts like business ethics are closely related to other ideas like Trader Ethic, and ethics of each profession needed some way to characterize how they are transmitted in the profession itself, standardized, and treated by law. That is now clearer in ethical codes and to some degree in legal codes. The idea of a moral code is now also clear, rather than being fuzzily associated with law, philosophy, religion, or etc.

By Trader Ethic I presume you mean the moral syndrome? Presently a redirect. Needs to be better developed, with more ideas than just Jacobs'.

These are distinct ideas, the three types of code, and now they're articles in their own right, so that you need not invoke all of law/ethics/morality just to make reference to a list of rules of right and wrong, a set of laws, or ethical guidelines. The approach Larry took was far too likely to force people to conclude that their ordinary ideas of ethics and morals were just discarded by academics, which they aren't. They are treated seriously, and integrated into most academic discussions, and now the articles themselves reflect that well.

Big lacks now are:

• inadequate statement of relationship between ethics and politics
• political virtues not there yet, and not listed as matters of ethics in themselves

Both much better hnadled in simple view of ethics and morals

• no incorporation of psychology based theories of Kohlberg or Gilligan
• no serious dealing with sociology of lying, blame, or formal ideas of etiquette, e.g. TitForTat, etc., which is definitely relevant to ethics

These all still look like serious lacks as of end of August 2003.

• a lack of ethics in the process of editing these articles - evidently some prior work had existed on ethical code and moral code but those were deleted by Larry - hard to deny that these concepts exist at least in the concrete, so this seems unjustifiable.

LOL. You are confusing ethics with Ethics. LOL.

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Question: is there a difference between value theory and normative ethics? Pde 13:56 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)

Yes. Normative ethics is all the judgemental statements in ethics, unlike meta-ethics which is the framework and etiquette which is about *avoiding* statements, and instinctive morality which is also unstated. Value theory is a very narrow and often quantitative or ordinal aspect of normative ethics - it's fair to ask if value theory is really very similar to ideals which needs a link to it actually. But it's not as wide as all of normative ethics.

Remark: there is a very good article in the wikipedia on 'Goodness', have you considered a link to that enry, given how important the word 'good' is in this article?

Yes. It should be there. This article is hardly perfect. Also simple view of ethics and morals could use such a link.

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All this article is a confusing mish-mash of various points of view on ethics. The article ought to be reduced to a simple, to-the-point definition, and links to other articles that each develop a particular well-defined point of view. 80.65.225.191 14:02 Apr 25, 2003 (UTC)

Err, ethics itself is "a confusing mish-mash of various points of view". To do as you ask is to confine the subject to a single profession or field, and it's just not ethical do that. This article, if you look at its history, started as just such a "simple, to the point definition" and had to become a mess because that wasn't adequate. That said, if you want to jam in that all purpose sentence from simple view of ethics and morals, "Ethics is the science of morality", no one will object I suspect.

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If you think that a part of this article should be spun-off into its own free-standing article, fine. Then propose that, or do it. But don't just make a massive deletion and walk away. That's rude. RK 03:07, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Look, sorry if you were offended, but it's also against protocol to jam an obviously-separate article, and a seriously out of date one at that, into what is supposed to be a survey article.

I'm not saying your text was bad as what it is, which is, one Judaic perspective on Biblical ethics. But there are recent texts on this your work didn't reflect, like Genesis of Ethics and other such modern thinking about it. If you want to write on this, there's reading to do.

Sorry, but reviewing the revision you made I don't see more than a paragraph and a half (at the beginning) that is less than hopelessly POV. Yes, it's relevant that monotheistic faiths like Judaism, Christianity and Islam see man as made in God's image and therefore can use him as a moral example. Yes, it's important that the moral core of each person is united by empathy and mutual understanding of each other so as to form one big fuzzy ball of humanity and help them fulfil some ideals or purpose or mission. Yes, it's important that the Bible has both unclear good and very clear bad examples of people (who knows why Enoch was so great? But we all know why Cain was bad). But that can be said in three sentences just like I did. The rest has to go to History of Jewish ethics or something. Have you read Larry's piece on the Mussar Movement? Or anything by Kohlberg? He had some students who were Rabbis, one of which wrote Genesis of Ethics. Great book. He used to run Bible study seminars in Manhattan with a lot of bigwigs. Maybe you could go to one, if he's still doing it.

This can go under The Judeo-Christian Tradition when I get around to it. Also Northrop Frye should be mentioned as the pre-eminent scholar of the Bible's influence on literature and thus on popular moral stories/tales.

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OK, this is starting to take final form. There are empty sections on the traditions that each need two or three paragraphs. Also a section on the Animist tradition (including Shinto and most New Age and shamanic and aboriginal beliefs) could be added, as it definitely is a distinct view that in many ways ties in nicely to the postmodern/queer/activist/naturist view.

Under Global Ethics there needs to be Feminist, Marxist and Queer sections. These are sort of halfway to being religions, but, they don't think they are. So, put 'em under Global - there are women, commies and queers everywhere, much to the horror of User:JoeM.

Also, emphasis of Taoism and especially Buddhism on China is drastically understated. A list of minor religions like Zoroastrianism and Tibetan Buddhism and Sikh and Baha'i needs to be there too. Some Christians like Mennonites and Amish have interesting things to say about ethics of technology, a very modern topic. American Indians and restorative justice, Quakers and transformative justice could be there, too.

The rest of it, prior to "ethics in religion", can be compared now in some depth to simple view of ethics and morals. What is in both should go into the Simple English version. We'll end up with three articles, one in Simple English, the simple view either under that name or as ethics, and this one either under its present name or ethics (philosophy). It could also be two articles with ethics (religion) as a separate one, but, that's not ideal, as then people will read about the traditions without necessarily understanding the analytic and descriptive categories. So I'm against that, but I note it as an option in any case.

Keep it together. No one should be able to claim a monopoly on ethics, unless, of course, they *are* the planet.

The structure of this article is pretty good now. It could demonstrate an "evolution" from seeing the holy books or sacred stories as the source of ethics, to seeing the material limits of the planet we live on as the source. But the Animists, who always ritualized the limits to keep people from over-stepping them, would just laugh and say "we told you so, it's a cycle". Hmm.

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We need to nip a problem in the bud: This article is not about every subject in the world that has the word "ethics" in the title. That's just chaos. This article has always been about ethics, the science of morality, as understood and described by philosophers. In this sense, ethics is a universal set of truths that need to be described and applied, and (in theory) should equally be true for all humans. RK 17:21, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The article isn't chaotic at all. It lists the various grounds for ethics to treat them fairly: arbitrator of the social sciences, abstraction of spritual or religious principle, and expression of species-or-planet-wide constraints that have impact on individuals' choices. And, the fourth ground, simple on-the-ground dispute resolution, is referred off to simple view of ethics and morals. (unsigned)

I think you missed my point. First off, I am merely asking that we use accurate titles for our entries; this is not censorship. Secondly, the description you give above is unworkable. The huge list of topics you describe will soon take at least pages to describe. Detailed treatments of all these topics will take several hundred pages. Perhaps we need a disambiguation page, like the one we have for Knowledge. Unfortunately, there was a series of fights about that article, because one person couldn't understand that the article we had written was specifically on the problem of knowledge as discussed by Western philosophers. He demanded jamming in every topic that had the word "knowledge" in it. Fortunatly, the majority of contributors were able to set him straight, and we also developed a good disambiguation page. RK 17:21, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)

In my opinion, the problem is a poor definition of cognition, which is the process by which experience becomes knowledge. Without that correctly defined, it is not going to be possible to get a good knowledge article. The present one is not very good. It fails to note that experience in some environment is required to acquire knowledge, which is then shared (the key attribute, most would say it is not knowledge unless it is sharable) socially, typically using some language like mathematics (in science). So that whole set of articles must be revisited where there is better material on cognition and experience and language here. The present disambiguating page is quite confusing. And this encyclopedia is not to describe things only "as discussed by Western philosophers", even if it is using Western languages and categories, it must admit challenges to those categories where they are coherent. EofT

Well, "in theory" isn't good enough. *WHERE* do the "universal set of truths" come from? Some think they are in the social sciences that study humanity, others think they are religious truths, and still others think they are derived from more material constraints that arise from competing sexual and economic beings on a limited planet. Yes, that could be better said at the beginning. But, it can't be avoided, and all three views must be treated in some depth. No one thinks ethics derives from categories used by scholastics in the philosophy department. Nor does the majority of people on this planet see ethics that way. (unsigned)

I agree with you. RK 17:21, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Great, then, "Some think... [to] ...limited planet." can be included up front? EofT

Ethics, as discussed by philosophers, is a very different subject from what one finds in books and articles on "Global Ethics", "Feminist ethics", "Marxist ethics" and "Queer ethics".

No, it's not different. The Feminists, Marxists, Queers are all in academia now, all over the world, and their views are just as valid as that of old white men from the 19th century. Is that bigotry? The 19th century was wrong about F=MA being "true", and they were wrong about other things too. Categories from then are not trustworthy, and not used in a great many academic departments.

Please stop accusing me of being bigoted against women and gays. These false and off topic claims make it look like you totally don't get what we are doing here. We are not here to push your political agenda. lte me try it one lats time - the study of ethics in philosophy has nothing to do with homosexual sex, or being a woman instead of being a man. You are talking about a different topic. RK 17:21, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Those are at least perspective problems, I think. The fact that it is in general old Judeo-Christian white men writing these definitions is itself very often considered an ethical problem, and there are aspects of being a woman, like pregnancy and motherhood, that simply alter one's perspective on ethics. That's all I have to say about that. Perspective creates ethics. EofT

Global Ethics is a formal study of its own, but, it cannot be segmented, as there are things we know about life on this planet that affect how we all live everywhere. If there's going to be one neutral starting point it's going to be this one - we are humans living on Earth, and this puts certain constraints on our behaviour. (anonymous)

What in the world does this political statement have to do with the philosophical study of ethics? Nothing. Again, you can't just jam in every topic under the sun, because you see the word "ethics" in it. Please look again at the history of this article. You misunderstand what we are writing about. RK 17:21, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)

"we are humans living on Earth, and this puts certain constraints on our behaviour." -(anonymous) "What in the world does this political statement have to do with the philosophical study of ethics? Nothing." - RK. I will hope you clarify that, because as it stands that statement is insane. You are a human, you live on Earth, and that has ethical implications. If the constraints life, humanity and Earth put on our behaviour count for nothing in "the philosophical study of ethics", then that study would be at best a pointless distraction, at worst a biohazard endangering us all by teaching us to make decisions based on criteria that are according to you "only political". It is precisely this kind of insanity that must be excised from the Wikipedia everywhere. It seems only in a few English-speaking countries can one actually get away with such statements as this and be considered to be sane. I think it was User:AxelBoldt that used a different word: he said that anything that was based on a logical fallacy was in fact a POV, that being, the POV of "the stupid". I submit that you have fallen prey to a logical fallacy, and you can decide for yourself if AB's maxim applies.