What is ethics?
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Ethics is a compass that tells you what is right and wrong. It exists because self-interested humans need rules to cooperate with each other. At its core, ethics deals with questions of harm and care. While related to laws, customs, and emotions, ethics is not defined solely by any single one of these. There is no clear universal definition of ethics, but it generally guides judgments of moral and immoral behavior.
What is ethics?
- 1. 😇 😈 What is ETHICS Alexei’s Primer on Ethics | Part 1
- 2. 🤰 Abortion 🐂 Animal rights 🏳🌈 LGBT+ rights 🌡 Climate change 👬 Cloning 🧬 GMO 🤖 AI & Robotics 📸 Surveillance Most of today’s ⚠important issues seem to be the issues of ethics:
- 3. ETHICS But what is ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
- 4. Very broadly, ETHICS is a 🧭compass that tells you what’s 😇right and 😈wrong
- 5. ETHICS MORALITY In most cases, is the same as
- 6. Ethical = moral. I know, some people would 🙅disagree, and perhaps there are situations where these are not the same REALLY? YES.
- 7. Like, when a 👨💼public of fi cial sleeps with a 💋sex worker it’s immoral, but if he hands a contract to his cousin’s 🏗company, that’s unethical
- 8. Right? No.This makes no sense! Both behaviours are 😈bad and describe the same phenomena, even though one is about 💰money and the other is about 💃sex.
- 9. Non-experts often claim that ethics is 🏟communal, while morality is 🧍private*. But 🎓professionals mostly use these terms interchangeably. * For some bizarre reason the claim is reversed in Russian
- 10. The word moralis was invented by Cicero when he was trying to translate the Greek word ethics to Latin. They both meant the same: manner, custom, law.
- 11. Generally, the terms ethics and morality are used interchangeably. https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-between-morality-and-ethics Encyclopedia Britannica
- 12. DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS Non-judgementally studies morality in human communities Here’s a really ⚠important distinction: NORMATIVE ETHICS Passes moral judgement and tells what’s good, bad or non-moral 🔬 ⛔
- 13. Moral Philosophy Moral Psychology HOW MORALITY ⚙WORKS WHAT’S 😇GOOD OR 😈BAD So, if you want to study Moral Theology Moral Anthropology DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS NORMATIVE ETHICS The Discipline of Ethics
- 14. QUESTION: How do you draw the line? 😇 Moral 😈 Immoral 😐 Amoral or non-moral Ethics: Not ethics:
- 15. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/ fi gure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0231794.g002 OPINIONS OF 🟥REPUBLICANS AND 🟦DEMOCRATS ON ABORTION AND ALCOHOL BAD NEWS: THERE IS NO CLEAR LINE Believe it or not, a substantial minority of republicans (yes, republicans!) think that 🤰abortion is 😐non-moral
- 16. If you ask 🧐philosophers, the situation, quite predictably, is even more 🤔confusing.
- 17. In the 1970’s they published a 272-page book, containing various de fi nitions of morality.
- 18. There does not seem to be much reason to think that a single de fi nition of morality will be applicable to all moral discussions. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-de fi nition/
- 19. We don’t know what ethics is, but there is some consensus on what it’s 🎯for, what it 📦contains and what it is probably 🚫not GOOD NEWS
- 20. Morality is a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise sel fi sh individuals to reap the bene fi ts of cooperation Joshua Greene In fl uential moral philosopher
- 21. So, morality evolved to foster 🤝cooperation. Some people disagree but there seems to be a lot of consensus on this.
- 22. Theory of ☯dyadic morality suggests that what makes judgements moral is perceived 👊harm or 🍼care.
- 23. A man intentionally gished a little girl, who cried. Is the man good or bad? This man is unmistakably 😈bad, even though to gish is not a real verb. We are attuned to sensing harm.
- 24. Also, we know that ethics is not the same as 👨⚖ law, 🏟 customs or 🤮 emotions
- 25. ETHICS IS NOT LAW 👨⚖ Although law is based on morality, it doesn’t prohibit all immoral acts, lying is one example. Laws can also be immoral, Nazi laws most certainly were.
- 26. 🏟 ETHICS IS NOT CUSTOMS The word ethics originally meant customs, but customs can be barbaric. Ethics is not whatever the crowd says. In the Soviet Union going against the crowd was often the hallmark of moral behaviour.
- 27. 🤮 ETHICS IS NOT EMOTIONS “These people are just disgusting to me!” A lot of morally wrong acts are disgusting, but not all disgusting acts are wrong. What disgusts people varies from person to person and from culture to culture.
- 28. 🤮 emotions 👨⚖ written law 🏟 community opinion ETHICS is not any of these things, but there’s a considerable overlap
- 29. 1 Is a 🧭compass that tells you what’s 😇good, 😈bad or 😐non-moral 2 Exists because 🤑self- interested 🧍humans need to 🤝cooperate WHAT IS ETHICS? 4 Not de fi ned solely by 🏟community opinion, 👨⚖law or 🤮emotions but probably has something to do with all of these things 3 Deals with questions of 👊harm or 🍼care Ok, let’s do a quick recap
- 30. Next: why ethics becomes particularly important TODAY Spoiler: it’s because of rapidly disintegrating religion