Friday, 2/11
Choose 1 of the following:
A. What are morals or values that you see as self evident? How or can someone prove that a value or moral is self evident?
B. What is an example of something that you don't think is ethical but is considered ethical in another society (or vice versa)? When can ethical relativism be justified and when can it not be justified?
Regardless of which you choose to answer PLEASE use concrete examples. Thanks.
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One of my own morals is to not physically hurt others, and I see it as self evident. It's fairly obvious when you hurt someone, it's also obvious that the person doesn't like being hurt. If someone were to punch me, good reason or not, I wouldn't be too happy with them. Everyone should know that causing pain is bad.
You can prove morals or values are self evident by asking yourself, "Is it right? Would I like this?" and if your answer is"No", then you have proven self evidence. I believe most morals are self evident, doing the right thing should be blatantly obvious.
A. I feel that harming another person with no good reason is something that we should not do & self evident. The way this can be proved is kind of the idea from Kant - "do unto others as you'd want done to yourself." If someone hit you and had no purpose for it, you'd know that's wrong. It's not something that's debatable, but something you feel and just know.
Prompt A
I feel like ethics and morals that involve not causing people extreme or undue harm are self-evident. For example, killing another is wrong. Period. There is no reason besides self-defense to ever even think about killing someone, and if it was self-defense, they were most likely trying to kill you.
I guess another way to explain would be that I see human life as valued in every culture I can think of. Keeping that life around is an ubiquitous goal; therefore, harming others is universally unethical. All the ethical systems we've looked at are based on that, even utilitarianism; it isn't always as straight-forward as deontology, as in "you're harming someone, automatic wrong" but the process of deciding what to do in utilitarianism is still based on how much harm to others it causes.
A. Values that are normally seen as self evident are ones that have to do with other people. Most people agree that it would be wrong to steal from a poor person but there would be different ethical view about many other things. There isn' t a way to tell if a person finds a moral to be self evident, they may say it is but at the same time they may be lying about having that moral because they may see that it is okay to lie so they may lie about it being okay to lie.
Question A:
Morals that are self-evident are hard to come by, but there are a few. Things such as murder, rape, discrimination, violence, abuse, manipulation, and stealing are all self-evident because in no circumstance are these actions GOOD. Someone may be trying to have a good outcome, but all of these actions will cause harm or suffering first then possibly happiness after, but the harm would have already been done. From a very narrow and direct ethical viewpoint these actions should not be done to anyone or anything wishing to be ethical, because they are unethical. Others will disagree with this, stating that "the ends justify the means" but looking at it from my mind they are all inherently bad. That does not mean that I wouldn't do anything unethical, because I would if I thought the benefits were greater, but in this sense things can be self evident if they are intrisically bad.
Some self evident morals are obviously the big two don't kill or rape, like we talked about in class the other day. But some different ones are probably don't steal, lie, or cheat. You can tell what self evident morals are by the simple right or wrong of your actions.
One example I can think of that would be self evident would be the act of killing. A good way to prove anything is self evident is by questioning if you would like that specific thing to happen to you. If not, don't do it to someone else.
One thing I don't think is ethical or self evident in any society is war. Anything can be reasoned out peacefully, without the loss of any life. I can MAYBE see it being justifiable to save peoples lives (like utilitarianism) but in general, I oppose it
Let's use the Middle East as an example. Out there, women basically don't have rights. They can't drive, they can't show their bodies, they can't do this, they can't do that. It seems a rather odious existence, in my opinion.
Frankly, they're treated as second class citizens. Their opinions don't matter.
I think it's disgusting. I mean, sure- It's part of their culture. That's how they do things out in Iraq, or whatever. But I personally don't believe that it's right to treat anyone lesser than anyone else based on gender, race, religion, or sexual preference. Even in America people are discriminatory against women. In this day and age, I hardly understand how people can get away with it..
But they do.
Even if it is part of their culture, I still don't understand how they think it's ethical. It isn't.
I believe that arranged marriage, which is considered ethical in a number of countless societies, is not ethical. I think something like this can be entirely justified because it is usually used to benefit a person's family and their overall quality of life, but it is not ethical in many cases because the two people are being told that they have to spend their lives with people that they don't necessarily want to be with, which causes sadness. I don't believe any forceful action against another person is ethical, but can still be justified by the outcome.
Here in the united states many people see the act of homosexuality as okay, and not ethically wrong. There are many acts and movements to try to give gays equal rights such as marriage and that is not seen as ethically wrong to some people. In the Middle East in many of their cultures they see homosexuality as morally wrong and unethical. They see this issue this way mainly because of their religion which tells them it is wrong. This issue has become a topic using ethical relativism because it is becoming more "normal" and we as a society are adapting and getting used to homosexuality. However, in the Middle East they have not accepted it nor will they in the near future. when ethics are based on personal beliefs I believe that views do not have to be the same for everyone. for more serious topics like murder, for example, should not be placed in ethical relativism. I think that should be a topic across the board that is morally wrong in whatever culture or society you grow up in.
One of my values/morals is to not make fun of people with disabilities because i know they cant help the way they are. I find that very unethical and rude to stoop that low. I think you can prove that a moral is self evident by saying is this the right thing to do and would I want someone to do this to me.
There are many values that seem self evident to me; these tend to be supported by most cultures and societies. Firstly, harming others without reason is universally considered wrong. This may differ to some extent in how societies value different groups of "others," whether by race or species. Honesty is another self evident value, though there are exceptions to this as well. For instance, lying can be justified if it protects someone from harm. Honesty may also fall under the "not harming others" category of morals because it harms people emotionally.
In order to decide which morals are self evident, people can ask themselves how their actions would affect others. There is also a sense of guilt that comes with doing "wrong." People can also look at morals that are constant throughout societies, as I believe that morals exist in human nature and feelings rather than simply societal pressure and religion.
To me I see no truly self-evident morals. For all set of morals there is always an excuse, unless further parameters are set down. For example, not hurting people is not a self evident moral because I might need to hurt someone to protect a more important person. However, not hurting innocent people is a self-evident moral because their is a definite difference between being guilty and not.
A moral can only be proven to be self evident when there is no excuse to break the vow and you recognize that. As in the above example the first line does not work because I can recognize an instance where it would need to be broken. However the second line provides for a smaller parameter of those I cannot hurt making it possible to keep an ethical ground while still having freedom.
B) I don't think stealing is ethical. However in other countries/cultures it is required to survive so it isn't frowned upon. Ethical relativism can be justified if it is permitted in some countries or it is required to survive. It can't be justified when it is against the law or morally bad. For example, we think it is bad to kill someone here but in El Salvador, the government was massacring people.
I think that the morals I see as 'self evident' basically fall into the general belief of Buddhist ethics, don't harm others.
To me personally, it is self-evident to refrain from killing somebody, or hitting somebody, or stealing from somebody. However, I think that they are only self-evident to me when the situation is fairly simple. I think that they lose their self-evident status once the action's consequences become more complicated. To look to an example from the book, what to do in a situation where killing a terminally ill patient in order to save several that need organ donations, is not self evident, even though it would fall under 'do not kill'. I think this is because its consequences are equally bad, or worse than the action itself. In order for something to be self-evident, it has to make sense logically in your head, but also be something that you generally feel is true, even without logic backing it up. I think that it is a self-evident moral truth that you should try not hurt others, because I generally just feel it's true, but it's also logical to me because you don't want others to harm you, so you shouldn't harm them. The book outlines Euclid's axiom of geometry as something you 'just know as true', but also something that you can prove. I think that it is the same for self-evident moral truths: you should just 'know' it is right, but also be able to prove it logically. I think that it is okay that self-evident moral truths cannot be physically be proved, as long as they can be proved through logic.
A.Everyone grows up differently and has different environments that they dog row up in. If someone grew up with their parents telling them that stealing is wrong, they'll think stealing is wrong. If someone grows up with no one telling them this and they had to do it to survive, they won't think it's wrong. Morals and ethics is all from point of view. Everyone conceives it differently. I may say that it killing is wrong, but someone who hunts for survival has to do it. You can't see what someones thinking and you never know what's in their head; it's the same with ethics, you never lived their lives, you've never seen what they've seen,so you can't have same values.
I see it as self evident that one should not intentionally make another unhappy without reason. Because this is universally accepted in most societies, it would seem that this idea is self evident. However, I also know that I have been shaped by society since my birth, as have most people. If there were a person who was raised by wolves, for example, they might find that harming others is not immoral because they have become desensitized to violence. I think that we learn our morals through experience and come to accept them as self evident, while we have no reason to believe that they are, in fact, self evident.
B. In ultra-orthodox Jewish and Muslim societies it is perfectly ethical to treat women as second class and many muslim men have more than one wife. I don't think this is ethical because I believe, and so does western society, that women are equal to men. Ethical relativism can be justified with subjects that are on the smaller level such as things that don't argue with general human morals. It is not justified with things that are universal to most humans like murder is bad.
Morals that i see as self evident are the ones that we are taught as little kids and our parents repeat them over and over again and keep telling us for example something as basic as do not hurt other people. This can have more meaning because it changes over time,Society shows that there will be consequences for things that you do that are wrong.
I do not think that eating dogs isnt right or "ethical" but in other societys it is the norm and is often done. It is just that we live in totally different places with different views so what we might practice over in another place can be considered taboo.
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