Burning Zeppelin once challenged my principle of secular universal ethics. This was before I became as interested in philosophy and analysing my positions as I am now; I’d previously tried (and it was poor form, I now know) to ignore the fundamental discomfort I had with universal ethics: justifying their ‘building blocks’. The following are some of my current thoughts on ethics and morals; it comfortably reconciles human preference for having ethics with my discomfort with universal (absolute) ones. So, without further ado...Zeppy, this one's for you!
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Morals. Ethics. These are things that the vast majority of apparently capable humans don't think about very much at all, considering their fundamental importance to our lives. The technical differences between morals and ethics are subtle and--as I have decided from my attempts to find them--apparently esoteric or non-existent, and surely contentious. However, if I convey what I mean by the word 'morals' and what I mean by the word 'ethics' and attempt to explain the differences between these terms, I can perhaps provide a greater awareness of their nature and diminish ambiguity in my writings thereon.
To me, morals refer to the principles asserting what actions a group considers generally acceptable. Morals are typically obeyed by a society with the spoken or unspoken threats of conscious or unconscious reproach, punishment and alienation as possible results of disobeying these principles. Note that I write, 'generally acceptable', as opposed to 'should or should not be done' because some who hold moral principles would, when, pressed, admit that they don't think some breaches of a moral are necessarily always wrong, just that they would generally 'frown upon' them.
Ethics, on the other hand, are individual principles that dictate what a person considers right and what a person considers wrong. The ethics may or may not reflect the morals of a group or groups they belong to. Ethics generally derive from a few or even a single fundamental, often instinctual principle. An example would be that harming a 'sapient being' is wrong. From this very general, fundamental principle, one may come to a rather obscure ethical position such as that pinching a person twenty metres underground the surface of a point in the Amazon rainforest is wrong because it constitutes harm of a sapient being.
So, we have our definitions (well...'my’ definitions), but these are still ambiguous. The ambiguity I have in mind regards the meaning of ‘right’ and the meaning of ‘wrong’. As right and wrong are mutually exhaustive and exclusive states, the definition of one can be trivially given in terms of the other: right can be, 'not wrong' while wrong can be, 'not right'.
Having thought about this, it seems convenient to define right as 'not wrong' and wrong as 'Violating one or more fundamental and thus assumed principles of what actions are tolerable', with 'fundamental' effectively meaning an arbitrary, irreducible, ‘just because’ assumption (fundamental phenomena come to mind as a good comparison; they are the building blocks of all matter, cannot be broken down and apparently ‘just are’).
Now, we really do have (hopefully) unambiguous definitions. But, in forming these definitions, we've exposed what I originally intended to convey in writing this: ethics, filters through which we view our actions and limit our lives and which are, to many people, unquestionable truths are completely arbitrary and based on assumptions.
The causes of ethics are ultimately selfish pre-occupations. Why don't we murder unprovoked? There are some more obviously selfish and self-preserving reasons. For example, because otherwise a precedent for unprovoked murder may be set, and our survival would be in considerable danger. Perhaps because otherwise we may end up punished.
But a perhaps less obviously selfish reason is that harming a sapient being without provocation is wrong. But why is it wrong? The most effective and yet still insufficient justification for this position is appealing to emotion, such as, 'Because if we permit unprovoked murder, we must permit harming sapient beings, which would mean someone could come along and assault or kill you for no reason'. But overlooking the probably emotional response, we realise that that's all it is: an emotional response, not a formally logical one.
In fact, it's impossible to use formal logic to prove universal ethics (ethics inherent to at least the Universe that dictate what actions are right and what actions are wrong), so why should we hold any ethics? How can we be ensure that an enlightened society that acknowledges the absence of universal ethics wouldn't degenerate into chaos, wanton slaughter and extreme capriciousness?
Collaboration. Collaboration towards common goals. Common goals such as happiness while coexisting with others in a stable environment necessitate setting aside such tendencies as those above. In practice, stable society necessitates some method of dealing with those who jeopardise common goals and the rules set up to support them to ensure the best possible environment for pursuing these goals. By assuring that those who do so will be dealt with accordingly, a deterrent is present to keep people in line. We can see that universal ethics are not necessary for a stable, prosperous society. Common goals and the means to protect the pursuit thereof are two of the necessary things for a stable, prosperous society.
While it seems ‘universal ethics’ are mere wishful thinking, collaboration can ensure adherence to ethics that promote happiness as best possible. In a theoretical, ideal society, morals and ethics as defined here may become indistinguishable--though that’s not to say that personal tendencies and behaviours necessarily become consistent across all inhabitants of such a society. We can’t derive ‘universal ethics’, but we can fashion as good as.
