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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2007 : 14:26:05 [Permalink]
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Dave wrote: | But the fact that you use the term "meaningless" indicates a value choice. In your ethical philosophy, other ethical philosophies may have less value than your own (by being "meaningless," for example). |
By “meaningless” I did not mean less value. I meant less comprehendible and less useful in application. I meant “meaningless” in the sense that it is meaningless to say it is ethical or unethical that the sun exists.
| Unfortunately, aesthetics is a branch of ethics. Art appreciation, at its heart, is an ethical exercise. Whether a painting is good or bad is ultimately a question of ethics. |
What!? I've never heard that before, and I have a Masters in Fine Arts and have taken courses in aesthetics. According to wikipedia, both ethics and aesthetics are branches of philosophy under axiology – the study of value or quality. Not that aesthetics is a branch of ethics. I think you have this wrong.
Anyway, it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that the problem is not that I'm applying different values, but rather, I'm using a different definition of “ethics”.
| Why does he choose to use one definition over another? He values one more highly than another. |
If you are going to take it there, everyone in this conversation, including Dude is pushing their own value system on this conversation. I think you've stretched the meaning of "value" to the point where it is practically meaningless in the context of this conversation. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 06/15/2007 14:28:24 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
 Posted - 06/15/2007 : 14:29:01 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
Can we ethically judge what race people are born? If we say yes, doesn't that heavily dilute the meaning of "ethics"? |
Not at all. It's unethical to judge people by their race under my own personal ethics, and probably yours too, but it wouldn't dilute the basic definition of ethics. Klansmen have an ethical system of their own, a different set of ethics. But that doesn't - and cannot - mean that the principles they live by aren't ethics.
For a different example, it is unethical for a lawyer to talk about something her client has said while on the clock. You've told us about a couple things your clients - the kids - have told us while you were on the clock, marf. Were you being unethical? Of course not, since teachers don't have the same ethical standards that lawyers do. But that doesn't dilute the definition of ethics. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2007 : 14:33:58 [Permalink]
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Dave wrote: | But now you're saying that the "motives" part of Matt's definition is irrelevant, and all that counts is the conduct. |
I disagree, but I suspect it might be because you and I interpreted the word "motives" slightly differently.
I'm starting to remember why I stopped debating philosophy after college... everything descends into a discussion of semantics. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2007 : 14:40:45 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
Yes, and I'm arguing that it makes about as much sense to ethically judge uncontrollable feelings as it is to judge the existence of the sun. |
Right, and I'm trying to explain to you why I think that's incorrect.
| People feel guilty about certain feelings as a mechanism for changing future feelings, yes, but feeling guilty isn't the equivalent of judging a feeling. |
What??? Of course guilt derives from an ethical judgement, in some cases even a judgment on one's feelings. You may feel guilty about how you acted, or sometimes you may feel guilty about how you felt. If a person loses a grandparent, for example, they may subsequently feel guilty about previous feelings of ingratitude they may have had while that person was alive. The guilt stems from the ethical judgement that ingratitude is a bad trait to possess. If there were no judgement taking place, what then would a person have to feel guilty about?
Some people feel guilt over being born into racial privilege. Can we ethically judge what race people are born? If we say yes, doesn't that heavily dilute the meaning of "ethics"?
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The guilt in that example actually stems from the ethical judgement that it is wrong to value people based solely on race. I don't see how that isn't a question of ethics.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 06/15/2007 14:44:53 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2007 : 15:00:33 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
Dave wrote: | But the fact that you use the term "meaningless" indicates a value choice. In your ethical philosophy, other ethical philosophies may have less value than your own (by being "meaningless," for example). |
By “meaningless” I did not mean less value. I meant less comprehendible and less useful in application. |
I find "less useful" to be a value judgement. I value utility, too. But...| I meant “meaningless” in the sense that it is meaningless to say it is ethical or unethical that the sun exists. |
And I can imagine cultures in which the mere existence of the Sun is an ethical matter. Sure, to you and I the existence of the Sun is nothing more than a fact, and my imaginings are mostly scifi-type pseudoreligions, but the definition must be broad or we risk misapplying it in unforseen situations.| Not that aesthetics is a branch of ethics. I think you have this wrong. |
I think so, too. I think I got mixed up by those whose ethics is based upon "it's beuatiful, therefore it is good." An ethics based upon aesthetics.| Anyway, it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that the problem is not that I'm applying different values, but rather, I'm using a different definition of “ethics”. |
I think you're trying to define the word 'ethics' so that emotions and thoughts are inappropriate subjects for ethics, despite the fact that people judge certain thoughts and emotions to be "good" or "wrong" or "bad" or "right" all the time. If you think it's wrong or inappropriate or even just a waste of time for people to judge emotions, that's your own system of ethics talking. I would agree, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible or even meaningless (as you used the word) to make value judgements of emotions - both their own and others'.
Should feelings be unethical is itself an ethics question. Can feelings be unethical is an empirical question for which the answer is undeniably "yes."| Why does he choose to use one definition over another? He values one more highly than another. |
If you are going to take it there, everyone in this conversation, including Dude is pushing their own value system on this conversation. I think you've stretched the meaning of "value" to the point where it is practically meaningless in the context of this conversation. |
The goal is to find a definition of 'ethics' which does not include value judgements as part of the definition. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2007 : 15:15:09 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Should feelings be unethical is itself an ethics question. Can feelings be unethical is an empirical question for which the answer is undeniably "yes." |
I would agree with that.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2007 : 15:29:57 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
...everything descends into a discussion of semantics. |
We're arguing over the definition of a word, marf. How could it not be a discussion of semantics?  |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2007 : 15:41:13 [Permalink]
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Humbert wrote: | If there were no judgement taking place, what then would a person have to feel guilty about? |
Emotions do not have to be rational. Emotions can be triggered by ideas but that doesn't mean the person agrees with those ideas, only that they are considering or dwelling on them. For example, if I imagine my mother's death and I really sink into that idea, I will feel grief even though I know she's not dead. If I dwell on the times I thought ill of someone I loved while at that person's funeral, I will inevitably feel guilt, but that doesn't mean I've judged those ill thoughts as unethical. Maybe I am, but not necessarily. I'd like to point out that usually when people have regrets at funerals, the regrets are about passed behaviors, not mere feelings. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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dv82matt
SFN Regular
760 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2007 : 19:24:04 [Permalink]
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I'm not sure that there's any substantial disagreement here. Marf and Boron seem to be arguing that things that are not under a person's control should not be subject to ethical judgements. Certainly there are exceptions, but in practice, in this part of the world, and at this time in history we, as a society, try not to make ethical judgements about things that demonstrably out of a person's control.
Those arguing the other side are also right in that an ethical system in principle need not take such a distinction into account. So we have those arguing from the context of general principles of ethics and those arguing from the context of the practical application as it exists today. The differing contexts make the disagreement insubstantial. |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2007 : 21:56:16 [Permalink]
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Why I am not taking part in this discussion:
When I was in school, I hated philosophy classes. But I kept taking them because I couldn't understand why I hated so important a subject. After all, in the late sixties, as students, it was almost our duty to ponder. And I must admit, a whole lot of pondering was going on, even by me.
I managed to get B's in the first two classes I took, one of them being “morals and ethics.” I suppose I earned the B's because of my somewhat lackluster performance in those classes. Why? Because, I wanted them to be something other then boring. Read John Stewart Mill, write an essay on utilitarianism. Read Sartre and write an essay on existentialism. I had no breakthroughs. I did not bask in the warmth of finally understanding my existence and whatever meaning I could extract from it even with the help of the great thinkers who pondered such things. Perhaps my teachers stunk. I dunno…
The final straw was when I took, back-to-back, metaphysics and physical anthropology. My philosophy teacher actually had leather elbow pads on his sport coat, silvery gray hair and smoked a pipe. My anthropology teacher looked a bit simian in the right light, prominent brow ridges and all. Three days a week I would move from examining the nature and theories of reality to…well…reality. (I'm not sure but I think I could have sued the school for whiplash.) I fell deeply in love with physical anthropology. Now that was a puzzle worth pursuing. Sure, there was pondering going on. Lots of it. But I'll take Raymond Dart and his little Australopithecus africanus skull, the first discovery of a fossil link between us and some earlier ape like creature, to a discussion on how many angels fit on the head of a pin, any day. I suppose that's just me.
It's not as though I am unaware that by being a skeptic I have placed myself squarely inside of a whirlwind of philosophical concepts. But hey, life is funny that way…
I now return this thread to those of you with much more patients than I have for the subject…
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2007 : 23:35:38 [Permalink]
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The ancient Greeks, who were probably the first to study ethics did not make a distinction between ethics and aesthetics.
dv said:
| Those arguing the other side are also right in that an ethical system in principle need not take such a distinction into account. So we have those arguing from the context of general principles of ethics and those arguing from the context of the practical application as it exists today. The differing contexts make the disagreement insubstantial. |
The disagreement is far from insubstantial.
B10 and marf are claiming that there is an objective way to measure right/wrong. They have decided that there are things about which you cannot make a value judgement. If that were the case then there would neccessarily be an objective system of right/wrong. It is self-evidently untrue, however.
As Dave_W pointed out earlier, there is a difference between can and should.
I doubt that there are many major differences between what B10 would consider right/wrong and my own judgements in that regard. But that is irrelevent.
It is obviously true that people can, and do, make judgements about the goodness or badness of almost everything. People also have widely differing opinions when it comes to what is right/wrong or good/bad.
Ethics, the philosophical study of moral values, does not comment on the personal values sets of people or cultures. It is merely the study of how people make decisions about right/wrong.
What B10 and marf have done, and repeatedly insist they haven't done, is apply their own values to certain things and decide that they won't make judgements about right/wrong or good/bad with regard to those things. Their fatal error is in thinking that everyone else should share their judgement.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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dv82matt
SFN Regular
760 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2007 : 01:21:54 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
B10 and marf are claiming that there is an objective way to measure right/wrong. |
I don't see where they have claimed that or why it would be relevant if they had. There clearly are objective (though arbitrary) ways to make ethical judgements.
| They have decided that there are things about which you cannot make a value judgement. |
You need to keep context in mind. Within the scope of any particular ethical system (say for example the US legal system) there are potentially things about which no ethical judgement is possible.
| If that were the case then there would neccessarily be an objective system of right/wrong. It is self-evidently untrue, however. |
So? There is no objective system of mathematics either but that does not stop it from reaching objective conclusions.
| It is obviously true that people can, and do, make judgements about the goodness or badness of almost everything. People also have widely differing opinions when it comes to what is right/wrong or good/bad. |
First, in practice, not all judgements about goodness or badness are ethical judgements. Sloppy language is contributing to the misunderstandings in this thread. If you mean ethical judgements use the word "ethical" or "moral", not "value", "good/bad", "right/wrong", or other partial synonyms.
Second, the choice of what principles to include in an ethical system to use may be arbitrary but that does not mean that determinations made under a particular ethical system are not objective.
Ethics, the philosophical study of moral values, does not comment on the personal values sets of people or cultures. It is merely the study of how people make decisions about right/wrong.
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Yeah, that's the context thing I was talking about.
| What B10 and marf have done, and repeatedly insist they haven't done, is apply their own values to certain things and decide that they won't make judgements about right/wrong or good/bad with regard to those things. |
They have used their personal ethics as a kind of meta-ethics to aid them in shaping their personal set of ethical principles. Kind of recusive I guess which makes it hard to analyse.
| Their fatal error is in thinking that everyone else should share their judgement. |
I'm not sure that thinking everyone should agree with you is a "fatal error" but anyone who thinks that someone must agree with them is surely mistaken. |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2007 : 05:14:00 [Permalink]
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Matt wrote: I'm not sure that there's any substantial disagreement here. Marf and Boron seem to be arguing that things that are not under a person's control should not be subject to ethical judgements. Certainly there are exceptions, but in practice, in this part of the world, and at this time in history we, as a society, try not to make ethical judgements about things that demonstrably out of a person's control.
Those arguing the other side are also right in that an ethical system in principle need not take such a distinction into account. So we have those arguing from the context of general principles of ethics and those arguing from the context of the practical application as it exists today. The differing contexts make the disagreement insubstantial. |
Yeah, ok, I suppose you are right. And I guess whether that difference could be called a difference in application of values or difference in definitions of ethics (contemporary use of the term opposed to a broader usage) is probably beside the point. So I'll stop splitting hairs.
Kil wrote: Why I am not taking part in this discussion:
…
I now return this thread to those of you with much more patients than I have for the subject… |
I am suddenly reminded of that episode of South Park where the goth kids play a song called something like “This Talent Show is Gay” for the talent show, and then walk off saying, “Heh, heh, we sure showed them.” “Yeah, I hope we win.”
Dude wrote: | B10 and marf are claiming that there is an objective way to measure right/wrong. |
No, we have not. In fact, we've both explicitly stated that that is not what we are doing. (Edited to add: Although I will accept that we've argued for objective measures in the arbitrary sense that Matt has described in his above post.)
| They have decided that there are things about which you cannot make a value judgement. |
We didn't decide anything. If we look at Matt's above statement, boron and I are applying ethics as it is commonly understood in today's context. And we didn't say you cannot make an judgment, we said it wasn't very meaningful or useful to make judgments about certain things – such as most feelings – and thus, inappropriate.
You were the first person to use the word “objective” here, and that was in giving your supposedly objective definition of ethics. You claimed that objectivity based on the fact that there is a English-speaking consensus on the meaning of English words, such as ethics. So if boron or I implied or said that you can't ethically judge certain things, we meant that in the same sense that you can't call the grass red. Of course anyone can call the grass red, but the statement is absurd. If boron and I were going on a contemporary usage of “ethics”, we were in fact not understanding the word “ethics” the same way you were. We were using a different definition of that word.
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 06/16/2007 05:21:01 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2007 : 05:18:12 [Permalink]
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One more thing. Dude wrote: | Their fatal error is in thinking that everyone else should share their judgement. |
No fatal errors have been committed. Just because I'm defending my stance in a discussion doesn't mean I think everyone should think as I do. I've already changed my stance in this discussion twice, and probably will again, because I'm actually interested in pondering this topic that I haven't pondered before. Boron offered to agree to disagee with you. It is you who is insisting that we accept your view. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 06/16/2007 05:23:23 |
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Can Feelings be Unethical?
