Yay for Texas!!!

[HAL 9000 96]

I'm going to have to agree with the definitions provided by Mr Pike.

Texas = Ethics

[DeadPoolX 9]

Here's a good summary about ethics.

Ethics is two things.

First, ethics refers to well based standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Ethics, for example, refers to those standards that impose the reasonable obligations to refrain from rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud. Ethical standards also include those that enjoin virtues of honesty, compassion, and loyalty. And, ethical standards include standards relating to rights, such as the right to life, the right to freedom from injury, and the right to privacy. Such standards are adequate standards of ethics because they are supported by consistent and well founded reasons.

Secondly, ethics refers to the study and development of one's ethical standards. As mentioned above, feelings, laws, and social norms can deviate from what is ethical. So it is necessary to constantly examine one's standards to ensure that they are reasonable and well-founded. Ethics also means, then, the continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs and our moral conduct, and striving to ensure that we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to standards that are reasonable and solidly-based.

You know that's not true for every culture and every nation in the world. What're we going to do? Go on a "crusade" to teach others what's "right and wrong?" Hey.. that sounds a lot like another institution. What's it called? Oh yeah: religion.

Well here's the rest of the article:

A few years ago, sociologist Raymond Baumhart asked business people, "What does ethics mean to you?" Among their replies were the following:

"Ethics has to do with what my feelings tell me is right or wrong."

"Ethics has to do with my religious beliefs."

"Being ethical is doing what the law requires."

"Ethics consists of the standards of behavior our society accepts."

"I don't know what the word means."

These replies might be typical of our own. The meaning of "ethics" is hard to pin down, and the views many people have about ethics are shaky.

Like Baumhart's first respondent, many people tend to equate ethics with their feelings. But being ethical is clearly not a matter of following one's feelings. A person following his or her feelings may recoil from doing what is right. In fact, feelings frequently deviate from what is ethical.

Nor should one identify ethics with religion. Most religions, of course, advocate high ethical standards. Yet if ethics were confined to religion, then ethics would apply only to religious people. But ethics applies as much to the behavior of the atheist as to that of the saint. Religion can set high ethical standards and can provide intense motivations for ethical behavior. Ethics, however, cannot be confined to religion nor is it the same as religion.

Being ethical is also not the same as following the law. The law often incorporates ethical standards to which most citizens subscribe. But laws, like feelings, can deviate from what is ethical. Our own pre-Civil War slavery laws and the apartheid laws of present-day South Africa are grotesquely obvious examples of laws that deviate from what is ethical.

Finally, being ethical is not the same as doing "whatever society accepts."In any society, most people accept standards that are, in fact, ethical. But standards of behavior in society can deviate from what is ethical. An entire society can become ethically corrupt. Nazi Germany is a good example of a morally corrupt society.

Moreover, if being ethical were doing "whatever society accepts," then to find out what is ethical, one would have to find out what society accepts. To decide what I should think about abortion, for example, I would have to take a survey of American society and then conform my beliefs to whatever society accepts. But no one ever tries to decide an ethical issue by doing a survey. Further, the lack of social consensus on many issues makes it impossible to equate ethics with whatever society accepts. Some people accept abortion but many others do not. If being ethical were doing whatever society accepts, one would have to find an agreement on issues which does not, in fact, exist.

Some examples please Mr Deadpool, rather than the usual round of non-specific relativisms.

So... who decides what is and what isn't ethical then? If ethics is not universally accepted (at least without some sort of bias), then it simply doesn't exist without societal intervention. When society takes ethics and bends it to work with whatever bias it has, whatever the original intent of ethics is rendered moot.

I'm not talking about the so-called "unaltered or perfect version of ethics." That would assume everyone thinks the same and thereby abides by the same rules. That's not the case. So whatever the original intent was, it's been changed over and over again due to how a culture or nation views it.

Edited July 23, 2009 by DeadPoolX

[mawilson 2,133]

Explain the bias of the premise that all humans are presumed to be born free and equal and maybe we have a basis for argument. Until then, we do not.

Equal in what sense?

[Peikko 1,575]

Deadpool, that's exactly the point. If you take the basic premise that all people are born free and equal there is no requirement for anyone to 'decide' what is and isn't ethical. It's the only position without bias, it's the only position without the requirement for someone to decide who does and doesn't belong in any predetermined quotient.

[HAL 9000 96]

Explain the bias of the premise that all humans are presumed to be born free and equal and maybe we have a basis for argument. Until then, we do not.

Equal in what sense?

A tabula rasa sort of thing. Dump unto that all kinds of perversions of the classical definitions of ethics that are warped and biased by external factors- not the other way around as is erroneously claimed above. Ethics in itself is of neutral value, but subject to biased application and interpretation.

[Peikko 1,575]

Explain the bias of the premise that all humans are presumed to be born free and equal and maybe we have a basis for argument. Until then, we do not.

Equal in what sense?

Once born, we all have an equal right to existence.

[DeadPoolX 9]

Deadpool, that's exactly the point. If you take the basic premise that all people are born free and equal there is no requirement for anyone to 'decide' what is and isn't ethical. It's the only position without bias, it's the only position without the requirement for someone to decide who does and doesn't belong in any predetermined quotient.

Yeah, but that's assuming we live in a vacuum. Whatever the original purpose of ethics was and however it should be is fairly irrelevant BECAUSE humans take it and pervert it to mean whatever they want.

It's a lot like religion. The original message of Christianity was a good one. But then humans come along and decide to alter the message for their own purposes. Attempting to speak of religion without mentioning how it's been changed is useless since that's using the premise that everyone follows the original message. We know they don't and no matter what it should be, the fact remains that it isn't today.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Which is why ethics is (basically) a pure set of fundamental values - its supposed to be. Read the article.

[DeadPoolX 9]

Which is why ethics is (basically) a pure set of fundamental values - its supposed to be. Read the article.

I did. What's "supposed to be" doesn't take into account the human factor.

[HAL 9000 96]

Deadpool, that's exactly the point. If you take the basic premise that all people are born free and equal there is no requirement for anyone to 'decide' what is and isn't ethical. It's the only position without bias, it's the only position without the requirement for someone to decide who does and doesn't belong in any predetermined quotient.

Yeah, but that's assuming we live in a vacuum. Whatever the original purpose of ethics was and however it should be is fairly irrelevant BECAUSE humans take it and pervert it to mean whatever they want.

It's a lot like religion. The original message of Christianity was a good one. But then humans come along and decide to alter the message for their own purposes. Attempting to speak of religion without mentioning how it's been changed is useless since that's using the premise that everyone follows the original message. We know they don't and no matter what it should be, the fact remains that it isn't today.

That's why we have ethical standards to remind ourselves that, either side of a fence one lies on... its a side based on an ethical premise. Sure- some folks would rather push the fence to either side.

[Peikko 1,575]

Deadpool, that's exactly the point. If you take the basic premise that all people are born free and equal there is no requirement for anyone to 'decide' what is and isn't ethical. It's the only position without bias, it's the only position without the requirement for someone to decide who does and doesn't belong in any predetermined quotient.

Yeah, but that's assuming we live in a vacuum. Whatever the original purpose of ethics was and however it should be is fairly irrelevant BECAUSE humans take it and pervert it to mean whatever they want.

It's a lot like religion. The original message of Christianity was a good one. But then humans come along and decide to alter the message for their own purposes. Attempting to speak of religion without mentioning how it's been changed is useless since that's using the premise that everyone follows the original message. We know they don't and no matter what it should be, the fact remains that it isn't today.

The ethical standards do not change because humans have a hard time living up to them. That is equally true of religion. For the record, the only part of religious belief I have a problem with is the idea that our decisions are not really ours, but are in fact a product of external good/evil influences. Well, that's the premise that I have a problem with, there are of course rules that stem from that premise that prove difficult.

Edited July 23, 2009 by Madame Cleo

[DeadPoolX 9]

Deadpool, that's exactly the point. If you take the basic premise that all people are born free and equal there is no requirement for anyone to 'decide' what is and isn't ethical. It's the only position without bias, it's the only position without the requirement for someone to decide who does and doesn't belong in any predetermined quotient.

Yeah, but that's assuming we live in a vacuum. Whatever the original purpose of ethics was and however it should be is fairly irrelevant BECAUSE humans take it and pervert it to mean whatever they want.

It's a lot like religion. The original message of Christianity was a good one. But then humans come along and decide to alter the message for their own purposes. Attempting to speak of religion without mentioning how it's been changed is useless since that's using the premise that everyone follows the original message. We know they don't and no matter what it should be, the fact remains that it isn't today.

The ethical standards do not change because humans have a hard time living up to them. That is equally true of religion. For the record, the only part of religious belief I have a problem with is the idea that our decisions are not really ours, but are in fact a product of an outside influence. Well, that's the premise that I have a problem with, there are of course rules that stem from that premise that prove difficult.

I think we're talking about a different type of "change" here.

You're saying that despite whatever humans do or however they interpret it, the basic idea behind ethics do not change.

That's a nice idea, but... whether or not the basic premise of ethics change, how it's interpreted does change and that makes the difference. How people view it is what decides how ethical standards are created and enforced in different cultures and countries.

[Peikko 1,575]

Which is why ethics is (basically) a pure set of fundamental values - its supposed to be. Read the article.

I did. What's "supposed to be" doesn't take into account the human factor.

You are misinterpreting 'supposed' in this sentence.

Deadpool, that's exactly the point. If you take the basic premise that all people are born free and equal there is no requirement for anyone to 'decide' what is and isn't ethical. It's the only position without bias, it's the only position without the requirement for someone to decide who does and doesn't belong in any predetermined quotient.

Yeah, but that's assuming we live in a vacuum. Whatever the original purpose of ethics was and however it should be is fairly irrelevant BECAUSE humans take it and pervert it to mean whatever they want.

It's a lot like religion. The original message of Christianity was a good one. But then humans come along and decide to alter the message for their own purposes. Attempting to speak of religion without mentioning how it's been changed is useless since that's using the premise that everyone follows the original message. We know they don't and no matter what it should be, the fact remains that it isn't today.

The ethical standards do not change because humans have a hard time living up to them. That is equally true of religion. For the record, the only part of religious belief I have a problem with is the idea that our decisions are not really ours, but are in fact a product of an outside influence. Well, that's the premise that I have a problem with, there are of course rules that stem from that premise that prove difficult.

I think we're talking about a different type of "change" here.

You're saying that despite whatever humans do or however they interpret it, the basic idea behind ethics do not change.

That's a nice idea, but... whether or not the basic premise of ethics change, how it's interpreted does change and that makes the difference. How people view it is what decides how ethical standards are created and enforced in different cultures and countries.

Again, you go back to this idea that there are several ethical standards which depend on different cultural norms. There are not, there is one set of ethical standards that is based on an irrefutable premise. Again, until you can explain where you perceive the inherent bias in the basic premise, you are arguing in circles.

[DeadPoolX 9]

Which is why ethics is (basically) a pure set of fundamental values - its supposed to be. Read the article.

I did. What's "supposed to be" doesn't take into account the human factor.

You are misinterpreting 'supposed' in this sentence.

Deadpool, that's exactly the point. If you take the basic premise that all people are born free and equal there is no requirement for anyone to 'decide' what is and isn't ethical. It's the only position without bias, it's the only position without the requirement for someone to decide who does and doesn't belong in any predetermined quotient.

Yeah, but that's assuming we live in a vacuum. Whatever the original purpose of ethics was and however it should be is fairly irrelevant BECAUSE humans take it and pervert it to mean whatever they want.

It's a lot like religion. The original message of Christianity was a good one. But then humans come along and decide to alter the message for their own purposes. Attempting to speak of religion without mentioning how it's been changed is useless since that's using the premise that everyone follows the original message. We know they don't and no matter what it should be, the fact remains that it isn't today.

The ethical standards do not change because humans have a hard time living up to them. That is equally true of religion. For the record, the only part of religious belief I have a problem with is the idea that our decisions are not really ours, but are in fact a product of an outside influence. Well, that's the premise that I have a problem with, there are of course rules that stem from that premise that prove difficult.

I think we're talking about a different type of "change" here.

You're saying that despite whatever humans do or however they interpret it, the basic idea behind ethics do not change.

That's a nice idea, but... whether or not the basic premise of ethics change, how it's interpreted does change and that makes the difference. How people view it is what decides how ethical standards are created and enforced in different cultures and countries.

Again, you go back to this idea that there are several ethical standards which depend on different cultural norms. There are not, there is one set of ethical standards that is based on an irrefutable premise. Again, until you can explain where you perceive the inherent bias in the basic premise, you are arguing in circles.

Bias is based upon the individual, the culture and country. Once again, whatever the original intent was behind a standardized set of ethics is irrelevant because it gets changed by others. This change is what's important, not what it should be.

[Peikko 1,575]

More circles. The ethical standards are immutable there is no necessity for cultural interpretation.

As I said, unless there is a bias in the actual basic premise (which there is not when it comes to ethics, but there is in all other systems of 'right' versus 'wrong') then you have no argument, the actions of individuals the influence of culture is all totally irrelevant.

Edited July 23, 2009 by Madame Cleo