Important Announcement about a new paper on ethics

There is never a point in life when one is not doing anything so there is never a blank slate starting point.

You can decide at some point “to do good”. What would it mean to decide “I am good”?

You are evaluated by others based on what you do, so simply saying “I am good” is not going to get any response from them without some sort of actions.

A self evaluation of “I am good” is simply a thought without any substance. Your actions are the evidence of your goodness, for yourself as well as others.
And simply making the commitment does not guarantee that your actions will be good … you may be mistaken about what is good.

It is true that “our actions speak louder than words,” and that we set an example by our conduct, an example that someone who is conscious {aware of how to tell the good from the bad} wants others to follow when it is a good example.

The commitment an ethical individual makes is to create value. This includes being nice to others, helping others to rise, being deferential (but not excessively so), being considerate, generous, empathic, kind, being of service, being authentic, sincere, inclusive, responsible, etc.

See the logical explanation for this in the first link below in the signature.

Questions, comments, discussion?

How is that different from just saying : “To be good is to be able to tell the good from the bad and to know the correct order of priorities”

You’re just substituting another word for the word ‘good’ without adding anything new.

The problem is still the same … knowing what “creates value” and what removes value. If you don’t know or are mistaken about what is ‘good’ then you probably don’t know or are mistaken about what “creates value”.

The concept of “creating value” is more abstract and removed from what drives a human being than the concept of ‘good’. If one is to get a working ethics, then it seems to me, that one has to get closer to a human being. It has to feel real.

Sounds like the choice of a rich person, someone who does not have to do anything now. Since most of us are doing already, mightn’t one pursue goodness through acts already. I mean, if that is what one wanted to do. Since people often have completely opposed ideas of the good, there are problems either way, it just seemd an oddly detached life one would have to traing themselves in being, then later in doing.

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I am wary of people who tell me I should be egoless. I notice they tend to take up a lot of space and are silently judgmental.

I don’t think this holds for psychopaths.

Hitler made a commitment to be good.

Or there is a problem with the laws.

How selfish are you supposed to be? Allowed to be?

Obviously, you’re doing things for yourself - you’re not living entirely for other people.

yes, and further, what I would tend to call a good person is someone who it is great when they are selfish. Decided not to listen to their family and pursued an odd career they loved. And this selfish love led to them doing what they cared about which ending up helping people and also kept them from being a bitter commuter to a prestigious job they did not want to have. Too much ego, being selfish - thes kinds of criticisms stifle precisely the people I wish felt free to do what they want and have no affect on the people I wish it would.

What is your evidence for making this claim?

And how do you define “good”? Do you mean it here in the Ethical sense of the word, as defined by Dr. R. S. Hartman in his magnum opus, THE STRUCTURE OF VALUE.
:question:

[See the entry “Science of Value” in Wikipedia…]

This exhibits the Straw Man Fallacy. I never said anything about “I am good.” In fact, I recommended having humility, when it comes to being morally good.

You quoted this :

and this:

The implications seem pretty clear… one decides to “be good first” and therefore one is good without having done any good thing.

Or one decides “I am conscious” which is equivalent to “I am good”.

What is your evidence for the claim that committment to the good leads to what you think it does? In any case, I don’t think that anyone doubts that Hitler thought it was good to raise and keep pure Germany and the Aryan race. All the experts I’ve read seem to agree on this and it fits, for me, with my sense of his behavior and how people act in general. Unfortunately people have different ideas about what the Good is. He committed to this with great passion, at the repeated risk of his own life, and I have little doubt he would have been put to death after the war and he likely knew that but pushed on fanatically.

I am pressing on specific points in your thesis because to me it seems this kind of ethical approach has been tried again and again in history with the limited success it has had, but it is presented here as ‘now there is a way for all of us to get along’ as if something new is being presented. It boils down to a call for the golden rule coupled with judgments of selfishness. We’ve heard this over the centuries in many forms. It is not new and I see nothing it this version of it that will be more catchy then older versions.

This is not a reason NOT to pursue convincing people to care more for others. But you present it, and have for years, as if it is some kind of new, original panacea. But it clearly is not. If you do not have the funcamental understandings of human nature and why this idea does not catch on, how can you present the ideas in a new way so that it will?

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I enjoyed the paper overall, but found it too full of cliché and fairly empty of scientific documentation. I’d prefer a decent inclusion of evolutionary ethics in any paper that attempts to explain what people are like and what they do. The big question that embraces religious, scientific and philosophical theories of human behavior is WHY? One could ask==
1, Did our evolutionary development into self consciousness, causing a distinction between self and other, contribute to our thoughts on how others should be treated?
2. Is altruism an adaptation that benefits human survival?

thinkdr

But doing good things is also subjective thinking, is it not?

Is because you want to do them necessarily being totally conscious? Is it necessarily the “right and reasonable” thing to do? Wouldn’t “totally conscious” necessitate trying to be more objective, thinking out of the box, imagining what can happen if I do this thing that I think is the best?
How often have we tried to do good things only to discover that it was actually the wrong thing to do - in hindsight.
Wouldn’t totally conscious also dictate that the first or even second answer might not necessarily be the good thing to do?
Wouldn’t totally conscious allow us to intuit that there are no easy answers to morality and ethics and doing good?
Couldn’t totally conscious make us at times almost tremble about a decision we have to make and what repercussions can occur as a result of it?

But again, “good” is based in our subjective thinking, is it not?
Is altruism always based on complete knowledge and unselfishness?

“Hell is paved with good intentions.” Perhaps it might be better to actually hold back and try to help ourselves NOT do certain things in certain situations.
Is it always true that doing something is better than doing nothing or is discretion the better part of valor at times?

The lines of being good and doing good can be blurry and conflicted in relation to other things.

Look at the bombing of Nagasaki and Iwo Jima? We thought we were doing good and ending the war quicker and saving countless in the foreseeable future lives instead of letting things go on as they might have and having the possibility of saving lives.

What kind of conscious thinking and goodness precipitated the deaths of the innocent Japanese people, especially the children, who were bombed died, 90,000–146,000 in Hiroshima and 39,000–80,000 in Nagasaki and those who suffered the aftereffects.

What effects are those? The feel good effects?
That would depend on who is feeling them, no?
Do moral ethical people feel any effects when they know that their decision destroyed countless lives albeit their decision may have possibly saved other lives?
Do they bask in the glory of having been good and having done good or can they also be haunted by their decisions at the same time?

Thank you Arcturus, Phyllo, and Karpel for some good questions!

You make people think.

Lots of your queries could be answered, or obviated, if you read over some of the selections listed below.

There is no doubt, though, that they would raise new questions, albeit on a new level. Let’s hope the new set of questions would aid in producing a new and better ethical theory than the tentative one that I humbly offer.

Yes, it is.

Of all the critics, at least you read the essay. This speaks well of you, Terrellus. And I thank you for your comments and for your thoughtfulness.

Tell us more about your views on the evolutionary approach to understanding human beings. Have you read yet Steven Pinker’s book - Enlightenment Now: the case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.

We all live by some mythology …until we have sciences that will explain everything. Dr. Pinker doesn’t seem to be aware that Humanism too is a religion. Science will likely never explain everything since on its frontier it always raises new questions for further research.

So Philosophy will always have something to do; it will always have a role to play.

You speak of altruism. We find a lot of it in Sweden which is setting a good example for other nations to follow.
All of the cars manufactured now in Sweden are electric cars, and Sweden is setting up charging stations at frequent locations.

Furthermore, I have come to the conclusion that as the price of energy drops, and as sources of energy become available to more people [such as solar panels on every new roof built] then prosperity will be more widespread - and, hopefully, there will be less incentives to be selfish and/or self-centered (= unethical.)

We must also establish treatment centers for the lessening of that malady known as Greed.

Are you saying that electric vehicles are ethical and diesel/gasoline vehicles are unethical?

So it is not in anyone’s (any country’s) self-interest to reduce the use of internal combustion engines? There are no selfish reasons to protect the environment? The Swedes are doing this for other people?

thinkdr,
Thanks for your reference to Steven Pinker. I have not read his works since “How the Mind Works”(late 90s)
Human evolution, whether one considers it to be fortuitous or teleological, appears to be adaptations of Self to what is beneficial to Self. Despite “man’s inhumanity to man”, evolution appears to be geared toward survival for humans. That humans can come to realize their interdependence with all that is Other in ecosystems, is a hope to be desired as an antidote for the ravages of greed.