Best Theory of Ethics?

[2PhiloVoid]

Wasn't Hume the grand-daddy of emotivism?

Hume kind of got emotivism kicked-started, in a sense, but it was the Logical Positivists like A.J. Ayer who put the icing on the cake for it.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

Yeah, but people have to actually 'care' that some form or degree or priority of duty, to someone, is a moral prescription. Otherwise, it's just one person's estimation as to what he/she thinks should work ethically in society over and against what someone else thinks should work.

The topic is ethics.

 

[FireDragon76]

Personally... I have always said that ethics cannot be done in the abstract. I suspect I would resonate alot with the "ethics of care".

 

[2PhiloVoid]

The topic is ethics.

What I said comes out of the field of ethics. Remember, Social Philosophy was my forte in college. This isn't to say that I know everything there is to know about Ethics; no, but it is to say that I had a lot of professors who did, and I had both atheists and Christians as teachers.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Personally... I have always said that ethics cannot be done in the abstract. I suspect I would resonate alot with the "ethics of care".

Despite one some may think of my disposition, Ethics of Care resonates with me, too.

 

[OldWiseGuy]

What I said comes out of the field of ethics. Remember, Social Philosophy was my forte in college. This isn't to say that I know everything there is to know about Ethics; no, but it is to say that I had a lot of professors who did, and I had both atheists and Christians as teachers.

I'm trying to approach it from a practical point of view, not discuss the nature of ethics. That's just navel gazing to me.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I'm trying to approach it from a practical point of view, not discuss the nature of ethics. That's just navel gazing to me.

That's understandable, but the ethical system of thought which one chooses THEN bears out into one of a few possibly different modes of moral decision making and/or moral [immoral?] acts. So, in Ethics, one has to come to realize that we can't really get away from the 'theoretical' aspects of making moral decisions. It's all tied up together.

 

[public hermit]

In looking to see what a Pragmatic ethic might be I figured I would begin with Dewey:

"Dewey’s ethics replaces the goal of identifying an ultimate end or supreme ethical principle with the goal of identifying a method for improving our value judgments. Dewey argued that ethical inquiry is the use of reflective intelligence to revise our judgments in light of the consequences of acting on them. Value judgments are tools for satisfactorily redirecting conduct when habits fail. As tools, they can be evaluated instrumentally. We test our value judgments by putting them into practice and seeing whether the results are satisfactory — whether they solve our problems with acceptable side-effects, whether they enable successful responses to novel problems, whether living in accordance with alternative value judgments yields more satisfactory results. We make moral progress by adopting habits of reflectively revising our value judgments in response to the widest consequences for everyone of following them. The conditions of warrant for value judgments lie in human conduct, not in any a priori fixed reference point outside of conduct, such as God’s commands, Platonic Forms, pure reason, or nature. Dewey offers a naturalistic metaethic of value judgments, grounded in developmental and social psychology."

Dewey’s Moral Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[Pavel Mosko]

What do you think is the best (most effective?) approach to ethics? There are generally three schools of normative ethical theories (taken from IEP article linked below):

1. Virtue Theories: Stress the importance of developing good habits of character, such as benevolence (e.g. Aristotle).

2. Duty Theories: Base morality on specific, foundational principles of obligation (e.g. Kant).

3. Consequentialist Theories: Correct moral conduct is determined solely by a cost-benefit analysis of an action's consequences (e.g. Bentham)

You may have another theory or approach in mind, or some combination. What is the best theory and why? What is wrong with the ones you didn't choose?

Ethics | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

I suppose I'm in the virtue camp since I tend to think of ethics from the angle of the Jews, and Christian Hellenism especially the Stoics and Platonism. I also like some Utilitarianism etc. which I suppose might be consequentialism, but in many ways Utilitiarianism can lead people astray because people can be thinking of the very short term and immediate, rather than something that is much more long term and spread across society in general e.g. - Situational Ethics etc.

 

[public hermit]

I don't think a deontological approach is a very good one, if rigidly held. If I have rule that says I should never lie, and a situation arises where a life is saved by my lying, then it seems lying is called for. I suppose one could take a deontological approach with the assumptuon that some rules can overide others, given the situation and the rules at play. The rule to always save a life overides the rule to never lie when the two come into conflict.

The other issue with a duty based, or rule based, ethic is there are just not enough rules to cover all possible situations. What do I do when I encounter a situation where my duty is not clearly in view?

 

[public hermit]

I suppose I'm in the virtue camp since I tend to think of ethics from the angle of the Jews, and Christian Hellenism especially the Stoics and Platonism. I also like some Utilitarianism etc. which I suppose might be consequentialism, but in many ways Utilitiarianism can lead people astray because people can be thinking of the very short term and immediate, rather than something that is much more long term and spread across society in general.

That's a good point. How far out should one be looking when acting based on consequences. How does one avoid being myopic?

 

[FireDragon76]

I suppose I'm in the virtue camp since I tend to think of ethics from the angle of the Jews, and Christian Hellenism especially the Stoics and Platonism. I also like some Utilitarianism etc. which I suppose might be consequentialism, but in many ways Utilitiarianism can lead people astray because people can be thinking of the very short term and immediate, rather than something that is much more long term and spread across society in general e.g. - Situational Ethics etc.

That's all well and good sounding but it all comes down to the question of whether society is worth saving. I might care about society more if it weren't so insufferably rotten, petty, and seemingly irredeemable.

So as it is, I think Jesus' advice to spend wisely our ill-gotten mammon is sound. And I think that fits with an ethics of care just fine, rather than worrying about making the world, in the abstract, a better place, we focus on responding to the neighbor that we actually encounter.

 

[FireDragon76]

I don't think a deontological approach is a very good one, if rigidly held. If I have rule that says I should never lie, and a situation arises where a life is saved by my lying, then it seems lying is called for. I suppose one could take a deontological approach with the assumptuon that some rules can overide others, given the situation and the rules at play. The rule to always save a life overides the rule to never lie when the two come into conflict.

The other issue with a duty based, or rule based, ethic is there are just not enough rules to cover all possible situations. What do I do when I encounter a situation where my duty is not clearly in view?

Deontology can be a good start, but unlike Jesus, some people never articulate a hierarchy for their duties through meta-ethical reflection, and use them in a self-serving manner, reducing a seemingly lofty principle to a self-serving justification glossing over the real motivations that betray dark impulses within the human psyche. Jesus was very good at pointing this out, much to the ire of his critics.

 

[public hermit]

Deontology can be a good start, but unlike Jesus, some people never articulate a hierarchy for their duties through meta-ethical reflection, and use them in a self-serving manner, reducing a seemingly lofty principle to a self-serving justification glossing over the real motivations. Jesus was very good at pointing this out, much to the ire of his critics.

That's an interesting point. For some reason I hadn't thought of Jesus as having a deontological approach, but now that you point it out it seems kind of obvious, haha. Really, I was thinking about Kant.

 

[FireDragon76]

BTW, I really appreciate the discussions I have been having with @2PhiloVoid and @public hermit. I have mostly given up hope engaging Christians in any kind of meaningful, existentially satisfying discussions about ethics or philosophy, but you guys remind me that there is a way of being Christian that isn't intellectually bankrupt. Just because churches are rotten and the pews full of intellectually lazy existential cowards doesn't mean there aren't people there keeping the flame burning.

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

What do you think is the best (most effective?) approach to ethics? There are generally three schools of normative ethical theories (taken from IEP article linked below):

1. Virtue Theories: Stress the importance of developing good habits of character, such as benevolence (e.g. Aristotle).

2. Duty Theories: Base morality on specific, foundational principles of obligation (e.g. Kant).

3. Consequentialist Theories: Correct moral conduct is determined solely by a cost-benefit analysis of an action's consequences (e.g. Bentham)

You may have another theory or approach in mind, or some combination. What is the best theory and why? What is wrong with the ones you didn't choose?

Ethics | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

I think a situational ethic is needed which takes into account the context surrounding the act instead of an absolute moral standard.

 

[FireDragon76]

That's an interesting point. For some reason I hadn't thought of Jesus as having a deontological approach, but now that you point it out it seems kind of obvious, haha. Really, I was thinking about Kant.

I thought of that as Jesus response to the question of what is the greatest commandment.

Now, alot of modern evangelicals would say "All the commandments are important". And that's really a cop out. Because duties are dealing in abstractions, and the real world is not an abstraction. The Evangelical likes to spite the world-as-it-is and just attribute this problem to sin, but that kind of resentment is really nothing more than a sanctimonious, life-denying vice that Christians would do well to get rid of.

 

[FireDragon76]

Jesus is actually more Nietzschean than people realize, because he really sees sin and truth in a different way than many religious people have. Sin is what keeps us away from the Kingdom vision he articulated in the Sermon on the Mount. It's not breaking rules drawn up by an authoritarian sky-daddy giving us small comfort that confirm us in our finitude, but it's more like what some modern liberal Protestants have said, it's something that keeps us from recognizing, celebrating, and nurturing the good we encounter in our lives, as "good gifts from God".

 

[public hermit]

Now, alot of modern evangelicals would say "All the commandments are important".

They seem to forget that Jesus said, "You have heard it said, 'an eye for an eye,' but I say to you...." I think he is clearly abrogating a command found numerous times in the OT. The most brutal form being, "Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." Deut. 19:21. Of course, some will do back flips trying to argue he isn't abrogating that command, but that (imo) is simply their tendency to treat the book as an idol, I mean as inerrant. But, that's just me.

 

[public hermit]

esus is actually more Nietzschean than people realize, because he really sees sin and truth in a different way than many religious people have.

I've never seen anyone say that Jesus was Nietzchean, haha. Honestly, I only have a survey understanding of Nietzsche, so I'm not sure what you mean. I'm thinking 'Will to Power,' but I doubt that's what you're getting at.