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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

http://www.sulekha.com/chpost.asp...ilosophy&show=0&cid=92826

Sitaram asks:

Is there a difference between the word "ethics" and the
word "morality?"

What does it mean to speak of "ethics without morality?"

Is there such a thing as "moral progress?"

We so often hear the terms "morality" and "ethics" uttered in the
same breath, in the same sentence.

Biologist Peter Singer describes nature as amoral. There is a certain
species of bird which always lays two eggs, yet can only provide
enough food and care for one chick. In a regularly recurring drama,
enacted each breeding season, the stronger chick pushes the weaker
chick out of the nest while mother, a passive spectator, awaits the
outcome of this primordial struggle. Then the mother and her
victorious chick watch with disinterest as the helpless sibling
slowly dies alongside the nest.

Peter Singer, reckoned an atheist by many, is extremely ethical, a
vegetarian who speaks out against animal cruelty and practices which
damage the environment.

---------------------------------------

(excerpt):

http://www.psychologytoday.com/htdocs/prod/PTOArticle/PTO-19990101-
000037.ASP

According to Singer, religion's 2000-year domination of morality
ended early this decade, specifically in 1993, when British law ruled
that a comatose man named Anthony Bland could be killed by his
doctors. That decision, he maintains, dealt a "mortal" blow to the
unquestioned sanctity of human life.

Singer argues that ethics today should be guided by a particular
brand of utilitarianism: he calls himself a "preference utilitarian."
In classic utilitarianism, what is good is defined as what brings
happiness. But happiness is hard to measure. Singer proposes instead
that good be defined by "preference." Under this philosophy, moral
decisions are based on the most intense preferences of a given
individual or group.

Singer claims that many times animals will be more deserving of life
than certain humans, including disabled babies and adults who are
brain-injured or in vegetative comas. Presumably, a healthy chimp's
preference for life is more intense than a disabled infant's. This
philosophy would rule out most medical experimentation on animals, as
well as the breeding of animals to provide organs for human
transplants.
(end of excerpt)

-----------------------------------------------------

Sitaram continues:

There are everyday questions of right and wrong or better and worse
or harmful and helpful, and then their are universal abstract
philosophical questions regarding ethics and morality.

An example of an everyday practical and applied issue might be a
child in sixth grade who complains to her wealthy mother that all the
other children have cell phones while she has none. There is on the
surface nothing wicked about a cell phone. If a majority of children
own cell phones then it may be perceived as something normative. The
wealthy mother can easily afford to give her child several cell
phones without compromising the family budget for food and shelter.
But a broader principle may come into play in the mother's decision-
making process. What need does a 6th grader have for a cell phone?
Will that cell phone really become a distraction which erodes time
and energy which might better be spent on more beneficial activities
of learning or socialization or exercise?

If we are living in Nazi Germany, and hiding a Jewish family in our
basement, then, when the Nazi officers come to us and ask if we have
seen any Jews, we lie and say that we have not. Lying is considered
wrong, but in this particular circumstance we suffer the sin or
defilement of lying for the sake of a greater good, namely,
preserving an innocent lives. Yet we are committing an act of civil
disobedience and breaking the law of our society.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel in his book "The Prophets" comments that "few
are guilty but all are responsible." There are only a handful of
Hitlers and Goerings and Eichmanns and Goebbels in any epoch, the
guilty ones, but all of society shares responsibility for injustices
such as slavery or segregation. Rosa Parks was technically breaking a
local law when she sat in the front of the bus, yet decades later she
was presented with a Presidential medal for her act of defiance which
many consider the start of the civil rights movement.

By the way, then end of Abraham Heschel's book proposes that a
synthesis bethween "ethos and pathos", between justice and mercy, is
the final outcome of the Old Testament.

Technically, the ninth command of Moses' Ten Commandments does not
speak of lying but rather of "bearing false witness against thy
neighbor." I rather imagine that if Potiphar had asked Joseph whether
Mrs. Potiphar had ever propositioned him, Joseph would have been a
gentleman and lied. Had this occurred, it would have been a lie, but
it would not have been false witness. The accusation which Potiphar's
wife lodged against Joseph was both a lie AND an act of false
witness.

We read in the Old Testament about the two Egyptian midwives,
Shiphrah and Puah, who both disobeyed the command of the Pharaoh and
also lied. The Pharaoh commend that all Jewish infant born be killed.
These two midwives allowed the infants to live. When the Pharaoh
questioned them, they lied and said "the Jewish women are too lively,
and give birth before we can arrive." We are told that God looked
favorably upon the civil disobedience of those two midwives and
rewarded them accordingly.

The Old Testament story of Balaam and his donkey is very instructive,
and opens the way to many puzzling and controversial issues. Balaam
is apparently a holy man who speaks with God, and yet Balaam seems
not to be a Jew but a Midianite, which may be construed as an
interfaith sentiment, that the divine is not necessarily restricted
to a particular race or creed.

The Moabites are actually related to the Israelites because they were
descendants of Lot, the nephew of Abraham, through his incestuous
relationship with his oldest daughter. The son of that union was
named Moab. The descendants of Lot's union with his youngest daughter
were the Ammonites. The Midianites were also related to the
Israelites because Midian was the son of Abraham through Keturah whom
he married after Sarah's death. Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, was
the high priest of the Midianites and came to worship with Moses in
the wilderness, another interfaith touch.

Balaam comments that he has no sword, with which to slay the donkey,
which may be construed as a form of pacifism.

I once used a bible search engine to locate the parable about
the "straight and narrow" in the New Testament. I was surprised to
learn that the only other place where one encounters this image
of "straight and narrow" is in the story of Balaam and the donkey.

"Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way
that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.
Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to lie, and
there are few who find it." Matthew 7:14-15

Numbers 22:26 And the angel of the LORD went further, and stood in a
narrow place, where was no way to turn either to the right hand or to
the left.

The angel's defense of the donkey resembles Peter Singer's defense of
animals' rights.

Balaam is truly ignorant of the moral impact of his actions, and yet
he is very nearly held accountable for his "unknown transgression"
commited in ignorance. Ignorance seems to be no excuse in this
situation. Ancient eastern orthodox Christian prayers ask daily for
forgiveness of sins "both known and unknown."

Camus commented that perhaps the greatest sin of all is to hanker
after some future life and ignore the implacable grandure of the life
which we already have.

The mother of many children, being only human, cannot help but find
certain children more lovable than others. But if her least favorite
child came to her and asked, "Mommy, do you love all the others more
than you love me?" then what should be that mother's answer be? If
she speaks the truth, for the sake of not lying, then she forever
wounds that child, perhaps inflicting a damage which will alter the
remainder of the child's life in a fashion which will prove
destructive both to the child and to society.

If one lone camper in the wilderness peels a potato and disposes of
the peelings in a river, we might not consider it an ethical issue.
But if a nation of people do the same thing daily then this
universalized practice becomes an ethical issue regarding water
pollution and environmental conservation.

Emmanuel Kant was prescient in his catagorical imperative, which
demands that we universalize something first and only then evaluate
the consequences.

I have worked for several years in an office with a young woman who
is a very religious. We do not have inappropriate feelings for one
another but rather we get along like brother and sister. Yet,
sometimes, I muse about the odd turns which morality and ethics might
take in certain situations. Imagine a scenario where some cataclysmic
event annihilates all people upon the earth EXCEPT for myself and my
co-worker. Now, we are the last surviving human beings. Is there any
moral imperative upon us to attempt produce offspring in an desperate
effort to perpetuate the human race? The morality of our everyday
circumstances demands that we never behave towards each other in a
sexual fashion. But there might be a circumstance where sexual
relations becomes a moral imperative, a duty? We are reminded of the
circumstances of Lot's daughters in the wilderness, who contrive to
have a child by their own father, for fear that they shall be
childless. The first mitzvah or commandment of the Torah (Genesis) is
a positive one, "Be fruitful and multiply," but we are not meant to
do so by any and all means.

If one person in the world decides to make a religious vow of
celibacy then we might not consider it to have moral implications.
But if every human being on the face of the earth decided embrace the
Shaker faith and live a life of celibacy, then we might view this as
an act of suicide on the part of the species as a whole.

A documentary on the American Revolution reckoned it as the first war
ever to be fought over an idea, or ideal or principle, rather than
over material gain. Is it moral progress that we now see wars waged
in defense of human rights of a foreign people in a distant land? Is
it moral progress on the part of mankind that wars are waged to bring
those guilty of genocide or ethnocide to justice? Is it moral
progress that we now bomb our enemies with packages of medicine and
food.

Is the relatively recent development of democratic forms of
government, where authority flows from the grass roots majority
populace upwards to an elected polity subject to a constitution, an
example of moral progress over the monarchies of antiquity, where
power flows downward from a royal family to the subjects who have
been subjugated?

-----------------------------------------

(excerpt):

http://www.uno.edu/~rstuffle/pages/courses/phil101/notes/PART_1.html

An example of universal questions of ethics might be, "Is morality
relative or absolute?" "Is there a natural ethics?"

First-order questions (practical questions about what is to be done
or avoided)

Should Bill Clinton have told the truth about his affair with Monica
Lewinsky?

Should a job applicant lie about his experience during his job
interview?

Should an unwed teenager get an abortion?

Second-order questions (metaquestions about the nature of the
ethical/moral)

Is lying ever morally permissible? Abortion? Euthanasia?

What is morality?

How does morality relate to religion, to law?

What is a person?

-----------------

Sitaram comments:

We may note that a corporation is a legal fiction for a person. Some
legal agreements attempt to "pierce the corporate veil" and force the
principal to be personally liable for the debt which he incurs.

One soon discovers that every church and synagogue and mandir and
mosque is incorporated, even though the the collective scriptures of
the worlds religions make no mention of the legal concept of a
corporation.

-----------------------------

http://www.free-definition.com/Ethics.html

'The goal of a theory of ethics is to determine what is good, both
for the individual and for the society as a whole. Philosophers have
taken different positions in defining what is good, on how to deal
with conflicting priorities of individuals versus the whole, over the
universality of ethical principles versus "situation ethics" in which
what is right depends upon the circumstances rather than on some
general law, and over whether goodness is determined by the results
of the action or the means by which results are achieved.'

Metaethics is the investigation of the nature of ethical statements.
It involves such questions as: Are ethical claims truth-apt, i.e.,
capable of being true or false, or are they, for example, expressions
of emotion? If they are truth-apt, are they ever true? (The position
that all ethical statements are false is known as moral nihilism.) If
they are ever true, what is the nature of the facts that they
express? And are they ever true absolutely, or always only relative
to some individual, society, or culture? (See moral relativism,
cultural relativism.) Metaethics is one of the most important fields
in philosophy.

Metaethics 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.

Ethics has been applied to economics, politics and political science,
leading to several distinct and unrelated fields of applied ethics,
including: Business ethics and Marxism

Ethics has been applied to family structure, sexuality, and how
society views the roles of individuals; leading to several distinct
and unrelated fields of applied ethics, including feminism.

Ethics has been applied to war, leading to the fields of pacifism and
nonviolence.

Ethics has been applied to analyze human use of Earth's limited
resources. This has led to the study of environmental ethics and
social ecology. A growing trend has been to combine the study of both
ecology and economics to help provide a basis for sustainable
decisions on environmental use. This has led to the theories of
ecological footprint and bioregional autonomy. Political and social
movements based on such ideas include eco-feminism, eco-anarchism,
deep ecology, the green movement, and ideas about their possible
integration into Gaia philosophy.

Ethics has been applied to criminology leading to the field of
criminal justice.

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 characterizes common issues and problems that may arise,
and define their common responsibility to the public, or to obey some
social expectations of honest dealings and disclosure.

An ethical sentence is one that is used to make either a positive or
a negative (moral) evaluation of something. Ethical sentences 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."

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.

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.

The political virtues were listed by Bernard Crick "In Defense of
Politics," 1982. They included but were not limited to:
prudence,
conciliation,
compromise,
variety,
adaptability, and
liveliness.

----------------------

Sitaram comments:

Certainly, such politicians as Regan and Schwartznegger and Buono
bear testimony to the virtue of liveliness among contemporary
politicians. No one is more lively than an actor and Americans love
drama and entertainment in their politics.

"If actors become politicians, then why can't politicians become
actors?" said President Arroyo of the Philippines..

"Tough times call for tough acting."

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