Philosophy includes study of morals {ethics}.
questions
What is the best living style? What are good and evil? What responsibilities do people have? Which rewards and punishments work? Are thoughts and behavior determined by genetics and environment only, or can will, emotion, and thoughts operate independently when choosing? What effects do people have on universe and other people? What values do things and events have?
principles
Ethical theories can use "golden rule" or "categorical imperative". They can be about utility, such as "utilitarianism" with "greatest good for greatest number". They can be about what works best, such as "pragmatism", to make practical and effective decisions. They can depend on physical law, natural law, or "God's law". They can be about personal fulfillment or knowledge, such as "existentialism". They can depend on moderation or harmoniousness.
ethical development
Ethics develops as cognition develops. People first obey rules and authority, to avoid punishment. Then they conform, to get rewards and exchange favors. Then they conform, to avoid dislike and rejection or to be good. Then they conform, to avoid censure by authority, maintain order, or do duty. Then they follow shared rules and respect others' rights or follow required rules. Then they follow principles, standards, or conscience.
education
Education is necessary for effective ethics. People must know general principles by which to act. To understand action consequences and be aware of alternative actions, people must know world and people facts. People need to practice decision-making to apply facts and principles to situations correctly.
purpose in ethics
People do not necessarily know their purposes. They can have conflicting purposes. People can act to avoid pain, not to gain happiness. Accidents, body failures, or sickness can cause bodies to fail to take actions ordered by wills. Opposite courses can reach goals indirectly. Immediate goals can contradict farther goals.
time
Time affects ethics. One must act after short time. Taking too much time changes act. Taking too little time is irresponsible. Time does not allow thoroughly considering all factors and consequences. Therefore, time to decision must relate to action nature and importance.
values
Goods include order, experience intensity, security, variety, intelligence, wisdom, activity, peace, power, love, holiness, patience, calmness, unhurriedness, caring, oneness, enthusiasm, low anxiety, low egoism, worthy purpose, intimacy, and success. Values relate to emotions, such as pleasure. Values relate to personality and character. People can accept responsibility, be honest, be punctual, be objective, be tolerant, be open to new things and ideas, be creative, have self-respect, be self-confident, care for others, respect others, and have interest in others.
People typically agree about items to optimize, but differ on amounts, because they can conflict or compete for resources.
Minimize pollution. Maximize recycling and reuse. Minimize resources used. Minimize population level.
Maximize invention. Maximize diversity. Minimize extinction.
Maximize wealth and income. Maximize justice. Maximize equity. Maximize education. Maximize employment. Maximize health. Maximize nutrition. Maximize safety. Maximize security.
Minimize housing, food, health, heating, cooling, education, security, transportation, utilities, and insurance costs. Transportation is roads and cars. Utilities are water, sewer, trash collection, gas, electricity, and telephone. Insurance is for health, car, house, life, disability, liability, and old age. Minimize taxes.
Minimize interference with other people. Minimize crassness. Minimize greed. Minimize violence. Minimize prurience. Minimize psychologically damaging ideas and actions. Maximize compassion. Maximize tolerance. Maximize respect for others. Maximize openness. Maximize opportunity. Maximize cooperation.
Maximize happiness. Minimize sadness. Maximize pleasant experiences. Minimize unpleasant experiences. Maximize meaning in life. Maximize hope. Minimize hopelessness. Maximize love, intimacy, friendships, companionship, affection, and sexual pleasure.
Minimize anxiety and fear. Minimize hate and anger. Minimize frustration. Minimize irritation. Minimize conflict. Minimize crime.
Minimize boredom.
Maximize freedom. Minimize action restrictions. Minimize religion in government. Minimize government secrecy. Maximize peace.
Maximize transportation ease.
Maximize market fairness.
Cultures, systems, behaviors, and theories have equal value {cultural relativism}| {post-modernism, ethics}. None is more rational than others. Knowledge and opinion depend on society in general, rather than elite groups.
Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it {Euthyphro problem}? Either piety has no reason or has reason, but authority does not apply in either case.
Group customs, traditions, and conveniences {morals} relate to basic human drives and needs. Sexual and other morality {morality} can be about duty, care, virtue, or consent. Duty is no extramarital sex and no homosexuality. Care is no casual relations and no prostitution. Virtue is to relate to people as persons, not objects. Consent is no relations with children or people with mental illness or deficiency. Religion closely links with morality.
Indexes {quality of life} (QOL) can account for met needs, satisfaction, happiness, and social factors, such as nutrition, air pollution, water pollution, disease rates, crime rates, health, education, divorce rate, unemployment, income, and savings.
Actions are means to achieve ends or goals {means and ends} {ends and means} {means/ends}. Means can be ends. Good goals can use questionable means. Does end justify means?
Marginal acts, once allowed, can lead to bad acts, by small continual extensions {slippery slope argument}|.
People can have dishonesty, injustice, immodesty, or bad morals {moral turpitude}|.
Judgments {value judgment} can state how things should be, not how they are.
People have right to make decisions about themselves {autonomy, ethics}|.
If something is going to happen, it will happen, so people do not need to do anything {lazy sophism} to protect themselves.
People must recognize other people as people, not objects, and so not interfere with their interests and recognize limits to self-interest {altruism, people}|. People can realize that they are not special persons among all people.
People are aware that they have past and future, have ideas about past life and future life, and affect other people, such as relatives, friends, and community {biographical life}.
People make negative reports {blame}| about bad behavior. Blame requires responsibility, but responsibility does not require blame or praise.
People think about, feel, become motivated, and act on problems, responsibilities, roles, worries, and necessities {concern}|. Satisfying concerns is executing actions appropriate to problems. Concerns can be fundamental to identity or temporary problems. Ethical questions concern what people expect of each other and whether to do unethical acts. What other people think affects concerns. Concerns cause thoughts, motives, and actions but are not desires or drives. Satisfying concerns does not release tension from needs or drives.
Human ethical faculties {conscience}| can know right and wrong directly.
All actions have negative and positive, foreseen and unforeseen, effects {consequences} in present, near future, and far future.
Action consequences can be secondary to intended consequence {double effect}. Correct acts can have bad secondary consequences. Incorrect acts can have good secondary consequences. Secondary consequences affect action choices.
People can use other people's weaknesses to gain advantage {exploitation}|. In some situations, this behavior is unjust or unethical. In other situations, it is appropriate to winning competition.
People fear death {death fear} {fear of death}, which can cause anxiety.
People can always follow moral standards {integrity}, even if they can get away with bad behavior, have strong desires, or have need to take advantage.
Actions resulting in good consequences can produce rewards, and actions resulting in bad consequences can receive punishments, in proportion to responsibility and consequences {justice}. Justice results when everyone has fair returns for achievements and efforts. Justice results when all products and services offered are good as a whole. Justice results when opportunities are equal for all people and groups. Justice results when people receive compensation for torts, broken contracts, or other injuries.
People can be faithful to people or ideas {loyalty}|, by religious faith or personal fealty.
People can aspire to higher morality {moral ideal}| in actions, motives, or virtues. Moral ideals are praiseworthy and admirable. If people do not reach higher plane or do higher action, they have no blame or shame.
Agents have a duty {responsibility, ethics} to consider consequences. People's responsibilities to future generations are environment, population, and no radiation. Responsibility requires belief that personal actions are voluntary. People's actions and movements can cause responsibility.
Different societies have different risk assessments {risk-taking}.
wealth
In wealthy societies, people can afford to take monetary risks but avoid personal risks, because individuals are important. In poor societies, people take personal risks but not monetary risks.
God
Personal beliefs about God determine personal attitudes towards risk. Believers believe that God knows everything and can control everything. People can believe gambling is sin, because sinners do not trust in God to provide and hope to gain by others' misfortunes. People can gamble often, believing that fate is in God's hands anyway. People can believe that God disfavors opponents and favors believers.
results
After gambles, immediate results are all that counts. Long-term risk-taking results depend on immediate outcomes. To prevent repeat gambling, immediate results must be losses.
People try to maintain homeostasis and avoid pain {self-preservation}|.
Moral actions can be positively done for the good of other people, not self {supererogation}|, sometimes with difficulty, risk, or sacrifice.
Virtues {virtue}| are dispositions, not abilities or capacities, that typically have good results for society. The ancients had four main virtues: prudence or practical wisdom, fortitude or courage, justice, and temperance. Christians added faith, hope, and charity or love.
People can feel good overall {well-being}|, which depends on relative health, security, housing, fuel, food, pollution, and ecology.
Through reflection and experience, people can understand world and people and act efficiently, productively, helpfully, and intelligently in all situations {wisdom}|.
Things {evil}| can be against God's will, against custom or convention, against nature or natural law, or against happiness. Actions and states can be evil.
value
Evil has negative value, because the good or right has positive value. Evil is good's lack, incompleteness, deficiency, or non-existence.
choice
Evil is an available choice among alternatives.
types
Evil is conflict, incompatibility, or low harmony. Religious evil is blasphemy, unorthodoxy, sins against church, and failures in religious duties, such as prayer, tithing, or penance. Educational evil is frustration, boredom, and misdirection. Intellectual evil is untruth and insincerity. Moral evil is harm to others or rights deprivation. Social evil is actions against whole groups or social order. Material evil is starvation, no shelter, no warmth, and no medical care. Aesthetic evil is insincere, unskilled, or evil-encouraging art.
pain
Evil is or causes pain and suffering. Pain and suffering {natural evil} can result from acts of nature. Pain and suffering {human evil} can result from human actions. People can choose to cause pain and suffering, cause them indirectly by pursuing goals that harm others, or cause them accidentally.
purpose
Perhaps, limited human reasoning and perception makes evil only illusory. Evil can be necessary to allow existence or to bring about greater good.
People can try to show why evil exists and what the greater good is {theodicy}. Perhaps, God uses evil as tests, correctives, or motivators, to accomplish ends. Perhaps, God has right to use evil and cause pain and suffering.
Evil can be necessary to allow free will {freewill defense}.
Natural evil can be necessary to bring about such things as courage, patience, sympathy, and other high-level thoughts, actions, and feelings {higher-order goods defense}.
Correct behaviors can differ depending on people's natures {agent-relative morality}.
Ethics can be about value {axiological ethics} {axiology}, as opposed to morals or justice.
Morals are not truths {descriptivism}.
Ethics {ethical standards} can be moral absolutism, deontologicalism, consequentialism, or agent-relative morality.
People have no essence or property that defines their lives or constrains their freedom {existentialism}. The first truth of which humans are aware is that they exist. People must choose actions based on this knowledge.
Women can have equality and justice {feminism}. Women have not been in public life, partly because they have greater roles in private life. Private life can have value and merge with public life, so women can have justice, equality, care, and concern. Societies have typically subordinated or oppressed women. Perhaps, social structures depend on oppression or exclusion of women {radical feminism}.
Morals are what impartial observers, such as God, say or do in situations {ideal observer theory}.
People can act morally only if they have souls that survive death {life after death, ethics}, because people do get rewards in life from acting morally.
Ethics can depend on nature, or ethical properties are natural properties {naturalism, ethics} {ethical naturalism}. However, perhaps, oughts should come only from oughts.
Morality is about approval and disapproval {emotive theory, ethics}.
Ethics is about feelings, attitudes, and emotions {emotivism, ethics}.
People ought to do only what is in their self-interest {ethical egoism}.
Will is basis of morals {ethical voluntarism}.
Pleasure is the only rational good, all actions can be pursuits of pleasure, or pleasure is the only goal that people desire {hedonism}. However, people pursue many goals and drives. Pleasure cannot describe all good things, such as freedom.
Personal value can be the greatest good {heroicism}.
Good actions are positive reinforcers, and bad actions are negative reinforcers {operant conditioning, ethics}. Operant conditioning can teach ethical behavior.
Ethics {Eudaemonism} {perfectionism} can depend on individual personal growth, as they use all their abilities, powers, and ideas, keep well-being and confidence, and find their true selves through experience and action. People can be morally excellent, powerful, or achieving, rather than doing wasteful or useless activities.
Self-interest is the motivation for human actions {psychological egoism}. Desire wills voluntary actions, which are for self even if they are altruistic, emotional, or rational. However, self-interest is too general, and interest is actually about direct interests. Many motives are not about self, such as reasons and emotions for donating money. Self-interest is about present and future interests, so people must know both.
Communities are the basis of values {communitarianism}, because social customs and institutions develop individual activities, including social relations. Values develop from community, not by imposition from outside sources, such as ideologies. Completely individualistic societies are impossible. Communitarianism {value communitarianism} can emphasize shared values, such as trust, group feeling, give-and-take, and intimacy, and public goods, such as air, markets, and government.
People achieve happiness by their decisions as agents motivated by values {distributism}, so people must have private ownership and personal liberty. Distributism is communitarianism against capitalism and socialism.
Ethics {absolute ethics} can depend on moral duties and religious laws. Relative ethics depends on situations.
People can have duties, responsibilities, or obligations {deontology}. Perhaps, certain actions are themselves right or wrong {deontological ethics} {deontologicalism}. Circumstances and results do not matter. People can know what people can do or not do in all situations, including action timing. In deontological ethics, actions are intrinsically right or wrong and people must or must not do them, no matter what the consequences.
God commands some behaviors and forbids some acts {divine command ethics} {command ethics}.
Ethics can have laws and absolute ethical standards {ethical formalism} {formalism, ethics}, rather than have judgments. Kant had formal ethics, from which he deduced everything.
Certain actions are always right or wrong, and people must always do them or not do them {moral absolutism}. Circumstances and results do not matter.
Morals are commands to do or not do something {prescriptivism}.
Actions can be right or wrong depending on consequences {consequentialism}. Actions can be right or wrong depending on result rightness or wrongness {act-consequentialism} {direct consequentialism}. Consequences can be personal or social, can be effects or states, can involve optima or only improvements, can lead to equitable distributions, or can surpass minimum thresholds. Utilitarianism is consequentialist. Actions can be right or wrong depending on consequences of choosing certain rules {indirect consequentialism} {rule-consequentialism}. However, people cannot know, pay attention to, or weigh all consequences. Perhaps, people cannot affect others much.
People value actions, goals, and people that contribute to survival {evolutionary ethics}.
Things can have value {instrumental value} because they help reach goals.
Ethics {pleasure theory} can depend on the most net happiness or pleasure, which can include the most equal sharing of happiness and pleasure, as in Mill's utilitarianism.
Right actions lead to good consequences, and wrong or bad leads to bad consequences {pragmatism, ethics}.
Ethics can include the most equal sharing of happiness and pleasure {utilitarianism}, as in Mill.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225