Ethics

It is obvious that a successful human civilization can only be built on shared concepts of right and wrong. It is equally obvious that different societies in different times and places may have different ethical guidelines for the same or a similar situation.

If we examine different cultures from the past and the present it will be clear to us that the ideas about good and evil held by the people of different societies are often contradictory to one another. The differences in ethical beliefs are not minor but in fact it is very hard to think of a point of ethics upon which all human societies agree.

Every Human culture has a different source of ethical tradition. In many societies, their system of ethics is said to be founded upon scripture revealed by higher beings such as gods or angels. These systems of morality can only be accepted as legitimate by the ones who believe in those higher beings. For people of other faiths or atheists, agnostics or deists such arguments hold no sway.

Many philosophers have tried to come up with a universally acceptable system of ethics. Although the fact that different intelligent human beings acting in sincerity cannot agree on whether the same action in the same exact circumstances is an ethically correct or an incorrect act, shows us that quest for a universal system of Ethics may be hopeless. It can even be argued that the inability of humans to agree on any ethical principles shows that nothing is inherently good or evil.

Some people depend upon their moral intuition as a guide for actions. It can be argued that the idea that something is wrong just because it feels wrong and another thing is right because it feels right cannot be taken seriously as guiding principle because that which is moral according to one persons intuition may be immoral according to the intuition of another person.

The primary tool that philosophers have used in their effort to design a universal ethical system is logic. Since logical principles are something that multiple cultures can agree on, logic may provide us with the means of designing a universal ethical system.

Philosophers have used many different approaches towards a logic based ethical system. One of the most common approaches used by philosophers is the utilitarian approach.

According to the Utilitarian philosophers, the ethical value of an action can be determined by its utility to the doer of the action or to his family, his country or the human species as a whole. The Utilitarians differ upon what means to use to determine the utility of an action.

Aristotle defines the concept of eudaemonia, which is a general concept comprising wellbeing, prosperity or happiness, as the highest good. In Aristotles moral philosophy, actions that promote eudaemonia are morally sound actions while those that lead away from eudaemonia are immoral actions.

Other Utilitarian philosophers, such as Jeremy Bentham, have classified pleasure as the highest good which all actions should promote and pain as the greatest evil. According to this conception of good an evil, an individuals primary responsibility is to increase everyone elses and his own pleasure and try to minimize his own and everyone elses pain.

This definition raises an interesting conundrum regarding the man whose pleasure consists in torturing others. In case the man experiences a great amount of pleasure by causing a small amount of pain to others, according to this hedonistic calculus, the moral act for him would be to continue torturing others.

Another conundrum arises regarding a person that is so widely hated and despised that the greatest amount of pleasure in the greatest number of individuals could be obtained by humiliating or destroying that person. According to some branches of utilitarianism, the right and proper course for the members of the society would be to work together in opposition to that person, seeking to destroy him.

Some Utilitarian philosophers, such as John Stuart Mill answer this idea saying, that this attitude of malevolence towards someone could only arise in a person who valued their own pleasure over the pleasure of others.

Utilitarian approaches towards ethical standards often fall short of the dictates of conventional morality. For example, many human cultures speak of an individuals responsibility towards his parents. In a situation, where one has to choose between either of their parents and an unrelated person, many cultures would regard preferring the parent to be correct moral behaviour. Not so some of the Utilitarians. Utilitarian philosopher William Godwin theorized that if in a fire a person had a choice to save either one of his parents or the Archbishop Fenelon a benefactor of mankind, they should save Archbishop Fenelon and let their own parent burn to death.

As we can see from the examples above, ethics is a very complicated subject which depends a lot upon the likes and dislikes and the societal norms with which a person identifies. Ethical problems cannot be resolved on logic and intellect alone because while attempting to make ethical decisions, at some point we are forced to make value judgements that depend more upon our emotions than our intellects.