Universally Acceptable Ethics: Possible?
 

OK, it's not a small issue - and I'm not sure I'm ready to lay any of my own personal theories in this regard just yet - but what I'm interested in is whether it is possible to agree a system of ethics that can be universally acceptable without any of the dilemmas that we get when you look closely enough at current ethical systems.

As an example, I particularly like a story about a devout Catholic who wanted to sleep with his wife, but who didn't want any more children. He'd been told by his Priest that even to practice the withdrawl method was a sin UNLESS it happened by accident (truely coitus interruptus). So the man got his butler to stand outside his bedroom door and, at the moment when he believed that his master and wife were at the peak of their excitement, he was to burst into the room, thus allowing the man to withdraw from his wife and not commit an act of fornication.

There are of course more pressing dilemmas, such as life/choice, war/diplomacy, privacy/freedom of speech etc. In a complicated world, is it possible to develop a truely workable system of ethics? If so, how do we start? If not, what do we try and make do with?

Just wanted to get that out of the way.

As to your question, do you mean develop ethics on a personal level? or a larger societal level?

Yes, thanks Master_Shake - thanks for the clarification. I'm thinking about both personal and and eventually societal ethics - but believe that the latter can only come from the former.

On a side note, I thought it would be worth mentioning that the story of the Catholic comes from Greame Green's Monsignor Quixote and my opinion about it is that it's a very charming story about how people deal with strict moral codes.

On a further side note, I'm trying to come up with a set of morals/ethic code that is both easy to describe, and which doesn't contain any hidden absurdities or dilemmas. Assuming that is possible of course.

I do not see ethics as anything but a personal issue. To my mind, the social dimension of ethics exists as legislation. One could say legislation is as close as we can come to "Universally Acceptable Ethics."

I've been reading Richard Rorty's Contingency, irony, and solidarity for a class on Postmodernism and I find his ideas on language, truth and ethics intriguing. According to Rorty, we invent truth because truth needs to be described. In order to describe something, you need a vocabulary and we humans create the words that go into those vocabularies. Words like "truth" and "ethics" can often be inefficient because their meanings are so vague and subjective.

Thus, I think that one of the main problems with finding a universal system of ethics is the fact that, despite posted dictionary definitions, most people do not view ethics in the same light. A devout fundamentalist sees the word ethics and thinks that it means following the will of God. A rebellious athiest sees the word ethics and thinks that it means a system of hinderances placed on free will. Someone more middle of the road might see ethics as what it takes to be a good person. Regardless, a universal system of ethics cannot be achieved until we work out the best way to discuss it.

Sadly enough, Rorty doesn't seem to think that such a day will ever come and I can't think of any way to change the way we communicate enough to bring it about.

The closest I've come to finding something that I thought would fit the bill is a line from one of the so called 'Gnostic' gospels where Jesus is reported to have said.

"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate"

But I honestly think there must be a universally acceptable standard, something that we can all agree to, on which we can build our legeslation which, as Art suggests, is probably how we express our larger set of accepted ethics in the wider social arena. My problem with legislation is that it's not built on fundamental principals, but on historical accident, which though rich, interesting and on the whole, relatively fair - it also suffers from illogic, haphazardry and occasional loopholery - and is unable to teach or learn without going back through countless case precidents etc.

That's the problem, though. One person's fundamental principle is another's historical accident.

Another thought. When you talk about a universal principle are you talking about something that everyone can agree on or a principle that can be applied universally? For example, people who were hiding Jews in their houses during WW2 often lied to the Gestapo and others about it, so that might not be able to be applied universally even if most people agree on it.

If you're looking for a universal set of ethic principles, you would first have to toss aside
any societal influences. Societies come up with their own rules and standards usually
with much basis on historical values, religious, etc. This would put the entire system
to moot if we took their values into consideration since, in finding a universal set, their
values do not matter.

What you would more or less have to look for in deciding upon them, if you wish to do
so, is base them in a utilitarian way -- the greatest good for the greatest number of
people. Throwing aside all of their 'common beliefs', people generally can accept a
truth when it generally does seem like a good idea to uphold. As I'm thinking of this,
you would basically have to go by what ART said, which is that the only way to see
these types of things inacted, would be through legislature -- which is where most
common beliefs stem from in the first place (or at least enforced from.) The
same goes for most religions, which are run like governments, in a way.

Is that actually possible? To apply a unversal standard of ethics is to institute a system from the top-down, ie. everyone in society follows these norms, thus we all change our personal lives. Not the other way around.

That's interesting, my initial reaction was actually just the opposite.
People, on their own, will always come up with different values.
Society is the force that homogenizes and socializes individuals to hold shared values and beliefs. The only way to achieve a "universal" set of ethics would be to have a truly universal and homogenous society to socially instill and enforce them.

But since we are all human beings, might not there be some principal that we could all agree on, and build our ethics from the bottom up?

The only way there will ever be a universal set of ethics will be if a truly fascist society comes about and takes over the world. Peoples ethics are based upon how they are raised, and what they are taught is right and wrong, if you raise everyone the exact same way, allow no freedom of thought, and punish/kill those that think freely, you will have a society that has a set of universal ethics.

Current society allows too much freedom for there to be a universal set of ethical guidelines that everyone can agree to totally. People are raised to have different moral guidelines. Current ethical standards vary too much for everyone to agree on everything, even within a single county morals can change depending on where your at.

I think there already exists a universal ethic and that is fairness. I know not everyone is fair to those around them. Think about it though, when someone does something unfair, when they are caught they feel a need to explain or justify themselves. They may say something along the lines of tit for tat, for example. We, as humans, seek fair treatment.

in this miasma of post-modernity i think the first task is to get people to universally agree that ethics exist at all.

Of course universal ethics exists! Defining them can a bitch, but I can't see how a society of thinking people can even begin to build (think caveman) without some ethical structure to support our innate social nature. Ethics in general dictate how we act socially as thinking creatures. Morals, on the other hand, work primarily from the inside out, and account for differences in cultures and religions. I think ethics exist throughout humanity, and different moral cultures exert influence on the ethical structure.

The assumption of our social nature as a species is one that I think assumes that our interacting lives depend on some level of mutual cooperation and understanding. In our species there exists a minority of people who choose not to cooperate and contribute to the larger social body of the population, but their abberant behavior doesn't disprove that the majority of people choose to "live and let live" to a degree that allows everyone to generally exist.

I think some people make the mistake of thinking of ethics in terms of religion, that ethics exist out there somewhere outside of us and governs us from above. I believe ethics exist from inside of us and among us. As sentient creatures who feel attractions and affections for one another, we are just smart enough as a species to be able to generalize these principals (of protecting the existence we enjoy) into a broader set of ethics.

I think the story of the Catholic man and coitus interruptus is a good illustration of how religion and ethics are easily confused. It was personal morality, not ethics, that drove the man not to want to break the rules of the institution of the church, to which he subscribed enough to dictate his sexual behavior. I think morality and religion are close cousins, both of which exert force on a human ethical structure of thought and behavior, and that ethics is something wholly different from them altogether.

Art was talking about the relationship between whatever ethics might be and legislation. To me legislation is that very imperfect beast that deliberately tries to combine ethics and morality (and in some societies, religious beliefs). The US Constitution is a great example of this -- soaring platitudes of freedoms, mixed in with a more specific set of rights that changes with social mores over time. And in the US religion is always in the mix. It's no surprise to me that there is such a close relationship in the US between legislation on any level and religious freedom of expression. The moral structures of religion exist to exert influence on ethical structures (our laws, ultimately constitutional law in a constitutional democracy). The death penalty, slavery, abortion, woman's sufferage, Prohibition -- they are all subjects which at times seem to blow in the changing winds of our legislative seasons. What these debates have in common ethically is the degree of moral force our societal leaders exerted on our freedoms which we would choose for ourselves.

Contrast this with ethical/religious socities such as the Taliban in Afghanistan. Ethics and morals there were virtually indistinguishable. For some people, that kind of existence is simpler, less complicated, but of course is much more restrictive, and the antithesis of a free society like the United States.

We live as a race in a system that consists of mutual agreements and definitions. We have some all-encompassing agreements that are catalytic and so indelibly useful that they must be incorporated in some manner in all of our life choices in order to have some success as a functioning member of society. These agreements include language, numbers, writing, science and religeon.

By nature we are competitive - to the death are we competitive, and this stems in large part from the fact that when we (homo sapiens) stepped into the arena as a distinct species 160 thousand years ago we were in serious competition with assorted very smart and successful folk who had been around for hundreds of thousands of years. We had to take their turf in order to survive, and to flourish we found it necessary to expunge them. It is our nature to act this way.

An agreement of right conduct is indeed possible. Unfortunately it would require committees to develop the prototypes and nationalistic bodies worry at the fruit of said committees until the results end up more in tune with agendas that had evolved from local conditions (said conditions bearing the freight of historical self preservation by extirpation). The homogeonizing nature of committees and the conservative momentum imparted by the validation on a national level will ensure that any broad spectrum of ethical agreement will have areas that are not validated by all, are not followed or accepted or enforced in a universal manner, and that will eventally be superceded by the evolutionary nature of our own intelligence.

That being said, it is always worth the exercise. It is always good to set a standard, an intelligent and well-founded agreement of right conduct. That is progress as we as a race understand progress, and that is our legacy and our beauty.