Ethics





Ethics is most often defined as a branch of philosophy which studies
questions pertaining to right and wrong, good and bad. Philosophers often
call it the "science of morality" and emphasize its empirical character.
Non-philosophers usually use or interpret it to refer to elements of
professional practice that are part of dispute resolution or which have some
great potential for bodily harm: urban planning, medicine, law, politics and
theories of civics.

There is some tension between the notion of ethics as seeing, and ethics as
doing or solving disputes between those who are doing different things that
aren't compatible. It is, for further tension, inseparable from economics in
some theories, notably Marxism and social ecology, and from family duties
and gender roles in feminism. These are usually now integrated with
planet-wide, or "global" issues of human rights and conduct.

Also, ethics is considered a branch of theology, especially in Judaism,
Buddhism, Islam, Roman Catholicism and some Fundamentalist Protestant sects.
These will be dealt with below after introducing basics:

The first social science

Assumptions about ethical underpinnings of human behaviour are reflected in
every social sciences, including: in economics because of its role in the
distribution of scarce resources, in political science because of its role
in allocating power, in sociology because of its roots in family, in law
because of its role in codifying ethical constructs like mercy and
punishment, in criminology because of its role in rewarding ethical
behaviour and discouraging unethical behaviour, in psychology because of its
role in defining, understanding, and treating unethical behaviour or of
labelling it madness. It is also important in biology (as bioethics) and
ecology (as environmental ethics). As these fields become more complex, and
deal with more situations, ethics too tends to become complex.

This article will deal only with the most central and universal and practical
questions, linking to more detailed discussions of categories and subtheories.

Ethics vs. politics vs. religion vs. practice

Many questions in ethics are deeply concerned with the claiming of rights,
especially when authority is present. The potential to invoke authority and
force of arms lies heavy over all ethical decisions in all but an anarchy:

When balances between rights are considered, especially in public policy,
ethics becomes politics. When religious concepts are considered to dominate
over human conceptions of right and wrong, ethics are often presumed to
derive from a moral code - usually divinely inspired or revealed. See Ethics
in religion below.

Non-philosophers may wish to review the article simple view of ethics and
morals, which deals with ethics in much simpler language. That article
focuses on how people who make ethical decisions see things, while this one
focuses on how people who study ethical decisions see things. The two are
typically not the same, as much more doubt and deliberation is involved in
coming to agreement about principles that are to apply for a long time or
for a whole society, and those who make decisions see things more simply.

In analytic philosophy, ethics is typically broken into at least four
sub-disciplines, including meta-ethics and normative ethics which includes
value theory, the theory of conduct, and applied ethics - which is seen to
be derived, top-down, from normative and thus meta-ethics.

Four sources of descriptive ethics

However, some philosophers rely more on descriptive ethics and choices made
and unchallenged by a society or culture to derive categories, which
typically vary by context - leading to situational ethics and situated
ethics. These often view aesthetics and etiquette and arbitration as more
fundamental, percolating 'bottom up' to imply, rather than explicitly state,
theories of value or of conduct. In these views ethics is not derived from a
top-down a priori "philosophy" (many would reject that word) but rather is
strictly derived from observations of actual choices made in practice:

   * Ethical codes applied by various groups (parties, professions) in
     society, spiritual advisors, and the implicit and personal choice that
     defines relationships with nature, e.g. a land ethic, which is also
     often called an aesthetic - study of which is aesthetics. Some consider
     aesthetics itself the basis of ethics - and a personal moral core
     developed through art and storytelling as very influential in one's
     later ethical choices.

   * Informal theories of etiquette which tend to be less rigorous and more
     situational. Some consider etiquette a simple negative ethics, i.e.
     where can one evade an uncomfortable truth without doing wrong? One
     very notable advocate of this view is Judith Martin ("Miss Manners").
     In this view, ethics is more a summary of common sense social
     decisions.

   * Practices in arbitration and law, e.g. the claim by Rushworth Kidder
     that ethics itself is a matter of balancing "right versus right", i.e.
     putting priorities on two things that are both right, but which must be
     traded off carefully in each situation. This view many consider to have
     potential to reform ethics as a practice, but it is not as widely held
     as the 'aesthetic' or 'common sense' views listed above.

   * Observed choices made by ordinary people, without expert aid or advice,
     who vote, buy and decide what is worth fighting about. This is a major
     concern of sociology, political science and economics.

Those who embrace such descriptive approaches tend to reject overtly
normative ones. There are exceptions, such as the movement to more moral
purchasing.

The analytic view

The descriptive view of ethics is very modern and in many ways more
empirical. But because the above are dealt with more deeply in their own
articles, the rest of this article will focus on the formal academic
categories, which are derived from Early Greek philosophy, especially
Aristotle. It will characterize each of the above variants and related them
to the formal 'applied ethics' in the terms that are developed using these
terms, which are closely tied up in language. One can almost view normative
ethics as part of linguistics:

First, we need to define an "ethical sentence", also called a normative
statement. An ethical sentence is one that is used to make either a positive
or a negative (moral) evaluation of something. Ethical sentences typically
use words such as "good," "bad," "right," "wrong," "moral," "immoral," and
so on. Here are some examples:

   * "Sally is a good person."
   * "People should not steal."
   * "The Simpson verdict was unjust."
   * "Honesty is a virtue."

In contrast, a non-ethical sentence would be a sentence that does not serve
to (morally) evaluate something. Examples would include:

   * "Sally is a tall person."
   * "Someone took the stereo out of my car."
   * "Simpson was acquitted at his trial."

Four branches of ethics

Now let's look at the four branches of ethics mentioned above.

1. Meta-ethics studies the nature of ethical sentences and attitudes. This
includes such questions as what "good" and "right" mean, whether and how we
know what is right and good, whether moral values are objective, and how
ethical attitudes motivate us. Often this is derived from some list of moral
absolutes, e.g. a religious moral code, whether explicit or not. Some would
view aesthetics as itself a form of meta-ethics.

2. The theory of value, asks: "What sorts of things and situations are
good?" For example, the following would be questions in the theory of value:
"Is pleasure always good?", "Is it good, ceteris paribus, for people to be
equally well-off?", "Is it intrinsically good for beautiful objects to
exist?" If value can be quantified at all, it is implied that tradeoffs are
at least possible - Kidder would say implied.

3. The theory of conduct studies, on a general level, what sorts of actions
are morally wrong, permissible, obligatory, and supererogatory (beyond the
call of duty). So theories of conduct propose standards of morality, or
moral codes or rules. For example, the following would be the sort of rules
that a theory of conduct would discuss (though different theories will
differ on the merit of each of these particular rules): "Do unto others as
you would have them do unto you"; "The right action is the action that
produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number"; "Stealing is
wrong." Here is where it is difficult to distinguish a theory from practice
of etiquette.

4. Applied ethics applies ethical theories to particular ethical problems.
Many of these ethical problems bear directly on public policy. For example,
the following would be questions of applied ethics: "Is getting an abortion
ever moral?"; "Is euthanasia ever moral?"; "What are the ethical
underpinnings of affirmative action policies?"; "Do animals have rights?"
Without these questions there is no clear fulcrum on which to balance law,
politics, and practice of arbitration - in fact no common assumptions of all
participants - so the ability to formulate the questions are prior to rights
balancing.

But not all questions studied in applied ethics concern public policy. For
example: Is lying always wrong? What about blaming? If not, when is it
permissible? Clearly, it is permissible in some situations, at least by
default, as research in anthropology shows that humans typically lie several
times per day. Underlying patterns must somehow be detected by ourselves
before we decide how truthful to be - else we could not manage the many and
varying situations outlined in any social etiquette - so the ability to make
these ethical judgements is prior to any etiquette.

Applied analytic ethics

There are several sub-branches of applied ethics examining the ethical
problems of different professions, such as business ethics, medical ethics,
engineering ethics and legal ethics, while technology assessment and
environmental assessment study the effects and implications of new
technologies or projects on nature and society.

Each branch to characterize common issues and problems that arise in the
ethical codes of the professions, and define their common responsibility to
the public, e.g. to preserve its natural capital, or to obey some social
expectations of honest dealings and disclosure.

Ethics by cases

By far the most common way to approach applied ethics is by resolving
individual cases. This is, not coincidentally, also the way business and law
tend to be taught. Casuistry is one such application of case-based reasoning
to applied ethics.

Bernard Crick in 1982 offered a more socially-centered view, that politics
was the only applied ethics, that it was how cases were really resolved, and
that "political virtues" were in fact necessary in all matters where human
morality and interests were destined to clash. This and other views of
modern universals is dealt with below under Global Ethics.

Is ethics futile?

The whole assumption of the field of ethics is that consistent description,
consistent deliberation, and consistent and fair application of authority is
possible. However, the more case-based views seem to suggest that a great
deal of judgement is required, and that for instance one could never train a
robot to do ethics, as it requires empathy and wisdom.

Is each case unique? Possibly. The view that ethics is innate and tied to a
personal moral core or aesthetics is harder to relate to the formal
categories above other than as a meta-ethics in itself.

It is considered by some ethicists to be just a variant of mysticism or
narcissism, permitting those who avow aesthetic choices as being 'above
ethics' to justify anything.

However, the term ethics is actually derived from the ancient Greek ethos,
meaning moral character. Mores, from which morality is derived, meant social
rules or etiquette or inhibitions from the society. In modern times, these
meanings are often somewhat reversed, with ethics being the external
"science" and morals referring to one's inmost character or choices. But it
is significant that the origins of the words reflect the tension between an
inner-driven and an outer-driven view of what makes moral choices consistent.

Ethics in religion

The classical Greek and Roman notions of ethics heavily influenced the Greek
and Latin language in which such notions were universally debated in the
Mediterranean world until the Renaissance. Plato and Aristotle introduced a
great deal of ethical terminology which remains current today.

The ethical traditions of Stoicism and the cultural norms of the Celts and
other prominent peoples such as the ancient Egyptians played a major role in
the early evolution of classical European ethics and religion.

Those traditions are not however practiced exclusively today, so they are
not dealt with within this article, except for their influence on other
traditions. Of which the most notable is:

The Judeo-Christian tradition

Early Christian ethics evolved entirely under the Roman Empire within its
systems of law. Christians eventually took over the Empire itself, retaining
all of its forms. This success seemed to validate both the faith and the
imperialism which retained its power. Augustine adapted Plato, and later,
after the Islamic transmission of his works, Aquinas adapted Aristotle, to
Christian norms.

Western philosophical works on ethics were (and many still are) written in a
culture whose literary and religious ideas were based in the Hebrew Bible
(Old Testament) and the New Testament chronicling the teachings of Jesus.
Along with the imperial tradition, this had a profound and undisputed effect
on categories, rules of procedure, and all practices that were defined in
Europe and enforced on North America via colonialism.

In some ways the futility question is illustrated well by this situation: as
Catholic philosophers debated and deplored the rape and extermination and
enslavement of the peoples of the New World, it continued without limit,
especially in South America, often with the participation of the Church. Of
course, it very often protected native converts and shielded them from harm,
where it could. See Roman Catholicism's relations with governments. A
particularly harsh critic, Friedrich Nietzsche, called the Christian ethics
a "slave ethics" for counselling submission to enslavers, invaders,
authority.

This reflects the reality that even millenia later, a deep connection exists
between the ethics of the Bible and the ethics of the great western
philosophers. As Nietzsche's example shows, this is not always a direct
connection - it may be reactive or even dismissive. However, even among
religious scholars, significant differences of opinion in the applicability,
or how to interpret and apply passages in the books of the Bible lead to
different understandings of ethics. Thus, one should not expect to find any
direct correlation between Biblical ethics and post-Enlightenment
philosophical study of ethics, nor should one find no correlation at all,
either. Ethics in the Bible is a survey of ethics in the Hebrew Bible and in
the New Testament.

The Mussar Movement is a Jewish movement to revive this scholarly tradition.
There is also a distinct modern study of ethics from the Bible which are not
there directly stated, but implied or suggested. See the article on Genesis
of Ethics for this view, and the section below on Global Ethics.

Christian ethics in general has tended to stress grace, mercy, and
forgiveness, and doubt in human (as opposed to divine) judgement. It also
codified the Seven Deadly Sins. For more see Christian philosophy.

The Hindu tradition

In India, the riot of stories and colourful gods and goddesses in Hinduism
could be interpreted with a wide variety of ethical meanings.

However, some universal principles of ethics are clearly visible in Hindu
traditions. Of all religions, Hinduism is among the most compatible with the
view of approaching truth through various forms of art: its temples are
often garishly decorated, and the idea of a guru who is both entrancing
entertainer and spiritual guide, or who simply practices some unique
devotion (such as holding up his arm right for his whole life, or rolling on
the ground for years on a pilgrimage), is simply accepted as a legitimate
choice in life.

Ethical traditions in Hindusm have been heavily influenced by caste norms.
In the mid-20th century, Mohandas Gandhi, a Jain, undertook to reform these
and emphasize traditions shared in all the Indian faiths:

   * vegetarianism and an ideology of harms reduction leading ultimately to
     nonviolence
   * active creation of truth through courage and his 'satyagraha'
   * rejection of cowardice and concern with pain or indeed bodily harm

After his profound achievement of forcing the British Empire from India,
these views spread widely and influence much modern thinking on ethics
today, especially in the peace movement, ecology movement, and those devoted
to social activism.

Many New Age traditions also derive from his thought and other Hindu
traditions such as acceptance of reincarnation, which is a way of expressing
the need for reciprocity, as one may end up in someone else's shoes "in a
future life". However Hindu beliefs may help excuse not helping someone in
distress, due to both fatalism and the teaching that one deserve's the life
one gets. In part to compensate for this, a cardinal virtue in Hindusim is
kindness.

More emphasis is placed on empathy than in other traditions, and women are
sometimes upheld not only as great moral examples but also as great gurus.
An emphasis on domestic life and the joys of the household and village may
make Hindu ethics a bit more conservative than others on matters of sex and family.

The Buddhist tradition

Gautama Buddha adopted some elements of Hindu practices, notably meditation
and (within limits) vegetarianism. Like Aristotle among the Greeks, who
emphasized a "Golden Mean" or moderate choice in ethical matters, the Buddha
advised moderation in all things, even moderation itself.

The Noble Eightfold Path is (except perhaps for understanding the Four Noble
Truths, that being the first step on it) quite self-explanatory and still
serves as the most important guide to Buddhist ethics.

Calm is a cardinal virtue of Buddhism, and is believed to lead to enlightenment.

The Chinese tradition

In China, the defining ethical figures are Confucius, Buddha, Lao Zi, Sun
Yat-Sen and Mao Zedong. Their influence was so profound, especially that of
Confucius, that it is not reasonable to think of any Chinese ethical
tradition without giving their ideals full weight. Of these, the earliest
and most long-lasting influence was clearly that of Confucius, who in many
ways defined everything that is today thought of as uniquely "Chinese":

Confucius stressed honesty above all. His concepts of li, yi and ren can be
seen as deeper expressions of honesty, and fidelity to the ones to whom one
(honestly) owed one's existence (parents) and survival (one's neighbours,
colleagues, inferiors in rank). He codifed traditional practice and actually
changed the meaning of the prior concepts that those words had meant. His
model of the Confucian family and Confucian ruler dominated Chinese life
into the early 20th century. This had ossified by then into an Imperial
hierarchy of rigid property rights, hard to distinguish from any other
dictatorship. Traditional ethics had been perverted by legalism.

Taoism and Buddhism played major roles also in Chinese ethics. See the Three
Vinegar Tasters.

When the Dynasty fell, Sun Yat-Sen, a Nationalist Chinese reformer who
introduced the modern notions of ethics and democracy. He remains the only
20th-century figure respected by Nationalist, Communist and modernizers.

Mao Zedong combined these with the Marxist-Leninist emphasis on the role of
economics in determing ethical relations. His Quotations of Chairman Mao
were mandatory reading, and perhaps a billion copies are in existence. He
emphasized the relation between power and the "mass line" of choices made by
ordinary people in real life. Maoism is not very popular today, but his
absolute rule of China made it impossible to avoid this strict bottom-up,
agrarian, concept of ethics. In practice, of course, power flowed from the
top. Ethical discourses are still viewed with suspicious in most of China
today, as the behaviour of power seems rarely to be actually motivated by
ethical norms.

Still, honesty and fidelity remain central to Chinese ethical thought. Mao
is poorly remembered less for his brutality than for not doing as he said.

The Islamic tradition

Islam is monoetheistic and emphasizes submission to Allah (God). It sees all
of natural law, including that revealed by science, as an aspect of that
law. Indeed, everything in the universe "is Muslim" but does not necessarily
know it. This tradition gave rise to most of modern science.

Muhammad founded a tradition of ethics built on knowledge and the active
investigation of alternatives, the "ijtihad". Early Muslim philosophy
applied it with decreasing diligence, eventually ossifying into a legal
code, the fiqh, that served the purposes of the Ottoman Empire. A
five-century gap followed while ethics as such was seen only as blind
mimicry, or taqlid, using these traditional schools and categories. The
hadith, the sayings of Muhammad, filled a popular role in ordinary ethical
disputes, and in the mosque where they were usually resolved by a shaikh
("judge").

The Shia branch of Islam built a hierarchy and rigid ethical codes, while
Sunni Islam did not, and relied much more on local figures and traditions.
It is critically important in Islam to develop an al-urf, or "custom", to
adapt Islam to local conditions, leading to situated ethics.

Also important is neighbourliness and khalifa, or "stewardship" as a a land
ethic. This tradition continues in modern Islamic philosophy.

The Animist traditions

Shinto and many Animist, shaman and aboriginal religions (and also to a
degree Taoism) share certain common traits that influence their view of
ethics and dispute resolution. Among these are a ritualization of sex and
food and territory and rank relationships that might lead to conflict if not
appropriately anticipated and managed. This can be considered a sort of
"pre-emptive ethics" which separates people or concerns liable to come into
conflict, at the expense of dogma which is sometimes insensible, but rarely
relevant to make actual decisions.

Proponents of these traditions often claim that they have the ability to
actually transform conflict, say to turn what might otherwise be a fight
into a dance, with strong social support for such a ritual. In many of these
traditions, to shun or exile offenders is the most serious penalty:

Given the relatively loose controls on movement in many tribal cultures,
offenders were free to find another village where some more compatible set
of ethics is practiced, and where they were less likely to come into
conflict. A highly mobile modern technological society offers some similar potentials.

Global ethics

The last half of the 20th century was a time of serious fusion of ethical
ideas from all over the world. There was literally no choice, as traditions
and cultures were so seriously clashing as to create such global conflicts
as World War II and the Cold War - threatening human existence itself.

Ecumenism

The ecumenical movement had begun to unite Catholic and Protestant thinkers
but eventually grew to include first Jewish, then Islamic, then every other
tradition. The Parliament of World Religions seek what it calls a "Global
Ethic" which would incorporate the best analytic, social and religious norms
into a single expression of goodness which can be agreed by all peoples.

Psychology

By the 1960s, also there was renewed interest in moral reasoning.
Psychologists Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Lawrence Kohlberg, Carol Gilligan
and others began to seriously codify rational ethics, relationship ethics
and try to express, as Confucius had, some universal levels of moral
awareness and capacity. It became obvious that some viewed rational
principles as 'higher' than relationships, but others did not:

Marxism, Feminism and Queer studies have also have much influence on the
study of modern universals and how they are derived from relationships.
Feminism for instance focuses on the universal experience of motherhood and
resolution of sibling rivalry. Ethical lessons are drawn from weaning,
toilet training, and similar universal experiences of first love, eventual
alienation, work.

Politics

Often, such efforts take legal or political form before they are understood
as works of normative ethics. The UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights
of 1948 and the Global Green Charter of 2001 are two such examples.

However, as war and the development of weapon technology continues, it seems
clear that no non-violent means of dispute resolution is accepted by all.

The need to redefine and align politics away from ideology and towards
dispute resolution was a motive for Bernard Crick's list of political virtues.

Ecology

A key trend in global ethics is to incorporate ecology and economics into a
single structure where resource extraction, consumption, use, waste disposal
and downstream consequences (for say environmental health) are taken as the
basis for all ethical decisions. This has led to the theories of
environmental ethics, Ecological Footprint, bioregional autonomy, animal
rights and their integration into an integrated Gaia philosophy.

Increasingly, these also influence theories of civics: bioregional democracy,
social ecology, eco-feminism, eco-anarchism, and the green movement.

One way to summarize these is to say that the material limits of Earth, it's
carrying capacity in particular, alters what is right and wrong as they are
approached. Deep ecology is a quite complete expression of that idea but is
considered very radical: In effect, it argues that humans must do what is
good for the Earth's biosphere not what is good for humans. Only by doing so
can they survive. There is some basis for this in biology which often
observes that animals tend to compete more with their own species than with
all others - thus, to wait until all disputes between humans are settled
before dealing with their overconsumption and waste, and such matters as
biodiversity, can only guarantee disaster. It is only effective to start
with the biosphere and reduce conflict by making it richer, or humans less numerous.

Ethics without politics

Of course, ecology and biology are sciences, as is chemistry on which they
are based. So to view these as an objective basis for ethics may be seen, by
the optimist, as a first step to a formal method for evaluating and
quantifying ethicality and morality of human actions. However, the idea of
making ethics a numerical "hard science" is unusual and elusive - it will
not replace politics and conventional ethics any time soon. Some view such
attempts to integrate ethics using science and mathematics as a plain play
for authority: scientism.

Ethics will probably always involve many debates, not all of which can be
resolved by referring to empirical evidence, and some of which will always
require difficult choices, and thus to bring people into serious conflict.