Are there principles or axioms from which we can reason out whether something is ethical or not? What are these axioms?
I would guess that some of them might be something like, "Humans are innately valuable," and "Freedom is an inalienable right." How does this apply to animal cruelty? Statutory rape? Human experimentation?
I eagerly await your responses.
2007-08-09 15:50:42 · 5 answers · asked by Surely Funke 6 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
I take it from a different point of view: HUMANS ARE BY NATURE SOCIAL CREATURES.
Therefore, the standards of ethical behavior are those that, if followed, would allow humans to live in community as well as possible. These would be behaviors that encouraged trust, freedom, good will, and peace.
The variations on the Golden Rule serve to articulate this as well as any other. My favorite version is, "Do not do to someone else anything that you would not done to you in similar circumstances."
Animal cruelty & human experimentation can fall under this rubric, but naturally, with any ethical system, there are fringe areas. Statutory rape is one of these outliers. At what age is someone deemed capable of giving consent for sex? This is more sociologically determined than naturally determined. And the changes in the US's laws reflect this. My own grandparents were married when they were 17 and 15. Neither had their parents' consent, but they were allowed to wed. Now, only Mississippi allows marriage without parental consent before age 18.
However, I think that evaluating an ethical system from the areas where it leaves areas unresolved is not as helpful as evaluating it from how helpful it is to use in general.
2007-08-09 16:57:41 · answer #1 · answered by NHBaritone 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Though they go hand in hand,ethics&morality are not the same thing.The principals that we call"ethics"have been in place for thousands of years.They are nothing new,but,the implementing of ethical&*moral* behavior is too subjective in some areas to be accepted as absolute while *ethical behavior*can&should be a rod by which our actions are judged by others as well as ourselves.
2007-08-09 15:57:53 · answer #2 · answered by TL 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
As Marcus Aurelius Said
"Everything is an opinion, Life is a flux"
2007-08-09 18:03:55 · answer #3 · answered by Osama bin Laden 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Yes. 1. I am connected to you. 2. What I do to you affects you. 3. Therefore, what I do to you affects me. 4. Therefore what I do to you, I do to myself. 5. Therefore I should only do unto you what I want done to myself.
2007-08-09 16:06:01 · answer #4 · answered by Source 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Even finding that something is right, does not mean it is right to do.
2007-08-09 16:06:58 · answer #5 · answered by Richard15 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋