Amartya Sen is a reputable Economist who give Ethics a lot of attention and he is a Nobel Prize Winner in Economics.
The first thing to do with the concepts of Morality or Ethics as a system of knowledge is to establish which is to the PURE and APPLIED aspect of the field.
In this case I attribute Morality as the PURE and Ethics as the APPLIED.
Like Philosophy and other general fields [intelligence, emotional quotient, wisdom], Morality and Ethics is applicable to ALL human activities and every field of knowledge in their pure and applied aspects.
So it is appropriate the Morality and Ethics would naturally be applicable to Economics and other fields of knowledge.
What I notice with the above book is, its focus in more on the APPLIED aspects but do not give much attention to the PURE principles of morality.
In this case, it is engaging more in the firefighting than dealing with the root causes and prevent fires from the root.
Sen focus is on the productivity competence of the individual [capabilities approach, functionings, etc] to stand on his two feet within the economic sphere, but do not focus on the moral competence [thus attention to the moral principles] of the individual.
Overlooking the inherent moral function of the individual is like overlooking the inherent emotional intelligence of the individual.
Capable individuals of humanity without sufficient emotional intelligence would be a problem to humanity.
Capable individuals of humanity without sufficient moral competence would also be a problem to humanity.
Thank you for a fine contribution. I agree with the case you make. There is indeed an important distinction between theoretical [pure] and Applied Etjocs.
Dr. Sen is a wise man; and like you he is ethically sensitive. His main focus is on the poverty of under-developed countries. His research is helpful.
I highly recommend viewing this YouTube video to its conclusion. It is essential to an understanding of Ethics applied to Economics. Do not judge it prematurely until listening to the entire argument it presents:
I know you nor other members of this board aren’t going to like this… I say it so often in these boards.
Ethics, morality, condenses to one concept:
Nobody wants their consent violated.
That’s it.
What’s the reality we live in? Everyone is having their consent violated in some way, shape or form!
Zero sum realities always violate consent (where there’s a winner and one or more losers for everything)
In a zero sum reality, ethics and morality is only about doing our little part to reduce some consent violation. That’s the best we can do in a zero sum reality.
The goal of ethics and morality is to place everyone in non zero sum realities that never violate consent. That’s the goal of spirit.
I not only just summed up all of your readings and work, I bettered it. That’s the factual answer to all of your possible posts.
What I noted is Prof Wolf proposed all the basic needs and goods should not be handled by those that are bent on profit maximization but left to all-participants-co-op, while non-essential products can be handled by the capitalists. To a certain extent I agree with this.
However I believe Prof Wolf missed the proximate root cause which is morality per-se.
Morality proper is an inherent mental function like intelligence, emotional quotient, wisdom, rationality, mathematics, and the likes which are applicable to all other fields of knowledge including economics.
Whatever the economics and political model, if the inherent moral competence of the individual is not developed, then we will continue to fire fight.
I don’t agree with Prof Wolf, the current extensive spread of Covid19 infection is due to the economic reasons and politics he pointed out.
If you look at the statistics on Covid19 infections worldometers.info/coronavirus/
there are many countries which are 3rd world and those less developed than the US and European countries, thus inefficient health systems, but their covid19 infections are very low, e.g. Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and others. Capitalist nations like New Zealand, Taiwan, and others also have low infection numbers.
Therefore the Covid19 infection and death numbers cannot be attributed to profit maximation, capitalism nor democracy which the Prof is trying to pin point.
The root cause for the terrible high numbers in the US, European Union, Russia, Brazil are due the individuals lack of higher moral sense to work together to prevent the epidemic. You will note the individual in these countries are more morally bankrupt,indifferent and selfish to only their own interest, not being aware they are essentially and potentially Patient One if they are infected and could easily spread to others.
I mentioned E.O. Wilson, if there is threat to the insect colony, each insect will spontaneously do their part to protect the colony. They will not protest [re mask, freedom, lockdown] like those Americans who did.
But the problem with the US is, the individuals are very indifferent and do not appear to have any moral sense of unity and co-operation, concern, empathy and compassion if they get sick and spread the virus to others.
It is true, the more autocratic and dictatorial countries could be more efficient if the leaders are serious since they can FORCE everyone to obey the prevention measures. But that is at the expense of freedom and other rights.
It may not be done at present, but for the future, the priority is to develop the moral competence to co-operate in the event of threats to humanity, e.g. like an epidemic and other catastrophe.
This will have to be done via fool proof self developments programs and practices.
In this case the moral agent [in a very human sense] will voluntarily improve his own moral competence and act spontaneously [without coercion from external parties] in alignment with the interest of the human species like what the ants [insects] are doing spontaneously for their colonies.
Thank you, Prismatics, for raising some very important points.
Aren’t we more evolved than the ants? We can consciously co-operate, as do those who join the workers co-op movement, or work in a workers co-op business, whereas the insects work together by instinct.
The average pay at a workers coo-op enterprise is $19.50 an hour, and their contract structure stipulates that any managers they hire can make, at the very most, no more than four times what the lowest-paid worker makes. Often top management makes less than four times; compare that with the private businesses you know today where the tip brass makes 300 times what the lowest-paid worker makes
I congratulate you for having the intellectual curiosity, and the willingness to learn, that is shown by your listening to Dr. Wolff’s videos in their entirety. Here is a link to a recent one: youtube.com/watch?v=dzSYZcv … jYj&index=
You are correct, Prismatics, that he doesn’t say much about the moral sense, about the educated conscience. He believes, though, that Democracy - having a ssay in your own fate - is a high ethical value.
What do the rest of Forum readers and participants think? Did you gain any insights from listening to Dr. Wolff’s Economic Update? He is an excellent teacher.
On this topic, here is a link to a highly-relevant transcript of an interview aimed at those who want to make an impact. It encourages investing time, money, and energy into the encouragement of worker-ownership – which is the concept of employee-buyout of the business for which they work. A very interesting interview:
a businessman - who also is a pretty-good teacher of Economics – provides for us. Be sure to view this insightful video in order to gain the new knowledge. youtube.com/watch?v=th3KE_H27bs
It gives a capitalist’s perspective on why Neo-liberalism is a faulty ideology based on unsound ideas; and we are informed as to what we can do to counteract such misleading doctrines.
We can choose, he tells us, to fix the prevailing economic arrangements that aren’t working well. We can consciously choose to make things better, and this capitalist explains clearly how.
And check out thisYouTube video which may prove helpfull to understanding Ethics applied to Economics.
[Listen to all of it before judging what the message is – for that is the philosophical approach – don’t jump to conclusions until you have digested the entire argument by Dr. Wolff. He is an Economist, and a Philosopher of Economics: youtube.com/watch?v=dzSYZcv … jYj&index=
…Stumbled upon a site which tells about a non-profit organization that integrates ethic’s and activism: it sets policy agendas. This is practical, Applied Ethics. Check it out for your reading enjoyment:
a businessman - who also is a pretty-good teacher of Economics – provides for us. Be sure to view this insightful video in order to gain the new knowledge. youtube.com/watch?v=th3KE_H27bs
It gives a capitalist’s perspective on why Neo-liberalism is a faulty ideology based on unsound ideas; and we are informed as to what we can do to counteract such misleading doctrines.
We can choose, he tells us, to fix the prevailing economic arrangements that aren’t working well. We can consciously choose to make things better, and this capitalist explains clearly how.
And check out thisYouTube video which may prove helpfull to understanding Ethics applied to Economics.
[Listen to all of it before judging what the message is – for that is the philosophical approach – don’t jump to conclusions until you have digested the entire argument by Dr. Wolff. He is an Economist, and a Philosopher of Economics: youtube.com/watch?v=dzSYZcv … jYj&index=
…Stumbled upon a site which tells about a non-profit organization that integrates ethic’s and activism: it sets policy agendas. This is practical, Applied Ethics. Check it out for your reading enjoyment:
You refer to ethics and Ethics as if it is one thing. As in the title of thread and in many parts of the OP and other threads.
But there isn’t one ethics. People have different values and different priorities.
This doesn’t mean you and your project are wrong, but coming into the discussion as if someone can answer a question about whether we should have ethics in economics as if Ethics is a single thing is problematic. I think on some level it will alienate people, especially those who have different ethics than you do and different priorities. IOW someone who values freedom higher than you do and equality less than you do on some scale. IOW someone who is more willing to put up with inequality in the name of freedom will consider themselves ethical but disagreeing with you. But the way you frame the issues is as if there is one ethics, so even if you do not say it, it is implicit that they are not as ethical. When in fact they simply organizes their values differently than you and or have different priorities and values. They have a different ethics.
It comes off kinda naive. Hey, we all want to be ethical right, so of course we want X. Even if someone does want X, they may not want it at the cost of Y. Or they may want it differently. Or they don’t want government to ensure X, but want X as much or less than you do, but via other means.
We are less alike than a read of your posts might imply. It is as if other people have forgetten ethics, when in fact they simply have other ethics.
Tell us more about the ethics that these others advocate. Be more specific, less vague.
What exactly bugs you about the theory of Ethics that I have proposed (which I say, time and again, is tentative and which welcomes upgrading and wants to incorporate any improvements into its synthesis.) What very specific criticism do you have of it?
When Economics is the topic, I am persuaded by those who argue that the current system is in a state of collapse, is chaotic in the extreme, and is ready to be replaced by something superior …replaced one little step at a time, watching alertly that there are no unintended consequences, and not too-much Future Shock.
What is necessary is a transition toward a new economic system that works for all of us.
It’s not a criticism of your ethics. It’s a criticism of the presentation of your ethics as The Ethics. And possibly your conception of there being one underlying set of values that, deep down, we all, in fact agree on. And notice that you say you value freedom as highly as everyone. That simply cannot be the case. People value freedom, however it is defined and it is defined in many different sometimes overlapping ways, differently. Some, are willling to kill for it. Some will not. Some will but not in the same situations others will. Some grant it only to adults. Some to children also. Many to varying degrees and different types of freedom Some are willing to kill innocents, as collateral damage or not, for freedom. Some refuse to. Some will exchange security for some limitations on freedom. Some will not and all to varying degrees. And so on. People have all sorts of valuations of freedom and while it is possible there are two people who value freedom and define it the same way, you cannot simply measure to even know this is the case.
It’s a bit like saying I like ice cream as much as anyone. Only even less likely to be true, since the eating of ice cream is a much more limited concept/process.
I chose that value at random, with a background thought that if I remember right you could probably be loosely considered a liberal as opposed to a conservative. Right or wrong, this often means that a liberal, say in relation to business, is willing to restrict certain kinds of freedom (the accumulation of capital) in the interests of general well being as they view it. So I chose freedom thinking that your ideas in economy might stress values that would clash at least in terms of priority with conservatives. Let’s not get locked down in whether my sense of you as tending towards liberal was correct. That is not the issue.
The idea that deep down we have the same values and priorities, really, is something I have sensed for quite some time.
IOW it has seemed like your position in general is based on the idea that if we rationally discuss our shared values, we can cut through our ‘seeming’ differences and achieve the society we all deep down want.
That when we discussed Ethics (capital E) it is a matter of getting down to our shared core values and then developing policy from that shared core.
I don’t think we have a shared core. There is overlap, of course, between most people but there are core differences and not just in terms of priority. There is no Ethics that we all have. There are a number of ethical systems that grow out of different values and different priorities and different attitudes.
I am not suggesting trying to find common ground to build from is useless. I am suggesting that a recognition that, at least, there may be core differences is a better starting point. Because on some level I think many people DO think they have different core values from other people.
If the discussion starts from a more ‘we all agree really’ presentation, I think this ends up being condescending or seeming confused. Not condescending intentionally but implicitly.
So my reaction is not about some problem with an specific positions you have on ethics or economics, but precisely what I am saying. I think the situation is harder than you present it as being and also that the way you present it is in some ways instantly alienating, especially to those who have different core values from you.
We see Situational Ethics (Opportunism) being applied in The U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. today. Thus we are aware there are other sorts of ethics than the model I have named A Unified Theory of Ethics.
People do have many differing concepts when it comes to ethics. KT is right about that. And that is why I propose a simplified model based on evidence, and which if successful would suggest experiences that would serve as confirmation of the model. This is the procedure of science.
How people conduct themselves provides the data for this model to explain. It speeaks of predators, brain-damaged individuals (such as psychopaths and sociopaths - one of the latter occupies the White House currently.) It speaks of selfishness, hypocrisy, corruption, and tyranny. It has no illusions about evil. Iy has studied the doctors who worked in the camps during The Third Reich. …and has clinically analyzed Der Feurer. It explains what “prejudice” is. Same for “kindness,” and “moral growth.”
Make things (morally) better!
Do no harm!
[Violation with consent is one way of doing harm.]
Ecmandu, I am sorry that you’ve been through hell.
You are naive and you don’t know what you’re talking about.
But constructively … it appears that you’re trying.
Here’s the deal thinkdr…
People who think zero sum realities are good, are horrible people. And there are billions upon billions of horrible people. I am 100% sure you are one of those horrible people.
So it’s kinda funny to see a guy like you discuss ethics.
In my previous post, I typed “Violation with consent…” when I meant to say: “Violation without consent…” This led to a misunderstanding, for which I apologize. It was a typo. Mea culpa !!!
See especially p. 19 of the STRUCTURE OF ETHICS booklet which I scribbled. There it explains that creating value in human encounters so that everyone concerned feels that they won is Intrinsically valuable for us. This is a non-zero sum move in ‘the game of life.’ It is an active process.
You really don’t get it (and this why I (for multiple reasons) called you naive). People just don’t give a shit. The reason they don’t give a shit is that on earth, consent violators have the best lives.
By the time I noticed that horrible mistake, the typo, it was too late to edit, to correct that serious error. Thank you for understanding, and for teaching us where you are coming from – your position on these issues.
I respectfully have to disagree that violators, predators, selfish, dishonest, the unauthentic, or hypocrites live “the best lives.”
They would live a better life in an ethical world, one where people could trust most everyone. If a cell in the body is surrounded by healthy cells it has a better chance to thrive; the same with human groups and societies.
Speaking of ‘an ethical world:’ In several of the selections referenced below I wrote that a major way to get to such a world would be the creativity that results in new Ethical Technologies. Here is a link to a site that recently had a page that informed its readers of three such developments:
See: === innovations.com
It told us of what I might speak of as a “green new deal” in process …a new windmill invention, already in practical use, that will supply each home that puts it on the roof with low-cost electricity; it has a battery which, without re-charging, provides easily at least three days of electric power. Then the site informed us of how this windmill can be linked up with a new rather-efficient low-cost way to desalinize salt water.
Then we learn how an entire town can grow its food supply in a small space, attended by “vertical farmers” who really, really love the work they do! This is now occurring in Wyoming.
These tech developments are truly Applied Ethics. People will have less grounds for violent quarrels, for rebellion, for looting [when done by those who tell themselves “I have nothing else to lose.”]
{{There will still be arguments, but let’s hope they will be part of the search for wisdom - and the love of wisdom, the analysis and clarification of concepts – which is Philosophy
As you may have noticed, another egregious typo snuck in due to it being too late for me to edit out - before editing was no longer available. [I thought I became aware of that wrong link shortly after the post was submitted; made the change right away, but somehow it did not take.] Sorry if I caused some disappointment.
Please substitute this new link for the accidental blooper in the previous post: innovationt.com/
And please ignore, or delete, the link given in that earlier post.
The fact that the rich (billionaires) get richer and the (working) poor get poorer seems to be very true currently.
What do you think about the Workers Co-op structure, as a way of organizing a business, – which was described much-earlier in this thread – as a solution to preventing future economic 'busts: namely, the massive unemployment, and the misery it causes, under the present system?
I ask you, Readers, is what Ecmandu wrote good reasoning? Does it follow -even if it were so - that “violators have the best lives” … does it follow from that that “people just don’t give a shit”? or does the converse, or the obverse follow? Is there any relation between the two assertions?
And/or iIs he claiming: that since people believe that consent-violators live the best lives, therefore most people aspire to be consent-violators?
The latter is a proposition which, I would argue, is not true.
