RCSaunders wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 11:56 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 7:49 am
The problem is you did not define what you meant by 'ethics' thus the responses will fly all over the place. 'What is Ethics?" should be the first question of Morality.
I'm sorry VA. The question is only for those who have already passed Philosophy 101. If you don't know what ethics pertains to the question is not for you.
This reflect badly on your ignorance of philosophy.
Note this thread I raised.
Is There a Definitive Definition of Morality?
Therein I linked this;
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/
.. two distinct broad senses:
a descriptive sense and a
normative sense.
More particularly, the term “morality” can be used either
- descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or
normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.
This too broad categories are very contentious and each will insist the other is wrong.
If you'd like to participate, here's the issue in simple form.
Whatever ethics means to you: what is the point of ethics if human beings do not consciously choose their behavior. If anything other than one's own conscious choice determines what they do, ethics cannot possibly matter, because they are going to do whatever they do, whether there are or are not any ethical principles.
Both intuitive and consciously reasoned-actions are necessary in ethics.
Your thinking is too narrow and shallow.
It is even practical and rational to pause and consciously choose
every action that is supposedly moral or ethical? Note the effort and stress involved, not to mention it is a stupid and ineffective thing to do.
A morally competent person will
spontaneously help an injured person without pausing to decide whether he should help the person or not. He will do the same for every moral act.
A morally competent person will do what it takes to be done spontaneously but it is not a matter of doing things blindly but rather the wisdom and moral competence is already developed in the morally competent person via theory and effective practices and exercises.
Even if he do not consciously choose his moral actions, Morality and Ethics for the morally competent person matters is very critical in the sense he need to understand the
principles and
mechanisms entailed within morality and Ethics. This is very necessary so that he can enhance himself with all the necessary and practice to be potentially morally competent.
As such, when there is 'need' for moral actions, the person will just do what it takes without pausing to choose what actions to take.
It is only an exception that a moral competent person has to pause to think and consciously choose what moral actions to take, i.e. when he faces certain rare and complex moral dilemma. In this case, post hoc and on hindsight, the moral competent person will take this as a lesson and reflect on it so that should the same moral event arises, he will just act spontaneously.
Even simpler. If you don't choose what you do, what do you need ethics for?
This is why we need a definition first to understand its essence before to get to the objectives of ethics.
