Which Ethical Framework is Superior?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Kalalification, Feb 13, 2011.

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Which ethical framework is superior?

Consequentialism 0 vote(s) 0.0%
Deontology 3 vote(s) 12.5%
Divine Command 0 vote(s) 0.0%
Ethical Egoism 3 vote(s) 12.5%
Kantianism 1 vote(s) 4.2%
Moral Absolutism 0 vote(s) 0.0%
Moral Relativism 0 vote(s) 0.0%
Natural Law 2 vote(s) 8.3%
Utilitarianism 2 vote(s) 8.3%
Virtue Ethics 13 vote(s) 54.2%
  1. KC The Greater New Member

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    Several questions I have here:

    By 'superior' do you mean which one should we follow and be our code of conduct, OR do you mean which one suits Human nature (as in how people are 'built' to act)? Because from your original posts you seem to argue that human beings are born with the concept of self-interest, you said that being am EE make sense as a human being but did not neccessarily address that EE is a better code of conduct than others.

    This comes down to my second and third question: What is human nature? And what are morals? As a student studying political philosophies these two questions had to be addressed properly, the idea of human nature in particular, for your arguement for EE is entirely based on your understanding of human nature, that we only care about ourselves. Now do not get me wrong, I am not criticizing your views of human nature, for I have quite a similar view as yours with regards to human nature, however many people out there have a very different view of human nature.

    Several posters (apologies for not addressing you by names, it is early in the morning here and I am a bit lazy) had shown it by presenting the fact that there are some people who genuinely feel happy when they help people and see that others are happy. The fault in your argument against Utilitarianism in their eyes (and to mine too) is that you measure happyniess by material wealth (I would assume you are a materialist by reading your post, correct me if I am wrong), but the irregularities of human emotions in a lot of times trumps reason (which I will explain in greater detail later).

    Your argument that a true EE would not propose the philosophy that they believe in to the others is exactly the same as one of the arguments anti-social contract theorist make: That leaders would promote utilitarianism (or anything conducts that contradicts with self-interest) instead of EE to make the public work for them instead of for themselves. In contrary you should preach ideas such as utilitarianism or moral absolutism so that people will follow you and strife for the greater good of yourself instead of the other people. Double standards basically. The fault of this argument is your interpretation of human nature (again).

    Hence here are my answers (to both the questions you've posted and the ones I proposed):

    Human beings are selfish. their will to live in itself is an act of selfishness, for ones existance will always bother another in different ways, competition of materials, land, 'property' etc. (with regards to the definition of property I would not argue here unless the need of it arise later). In general people do not trust one another (at the modern age in particular when we are taught not to). We are egoistic and strife to succeed in gaining material wealth and hence generate satisfaction and happiness. That is a very reasonable observation of human nature. However there is the iragularities that I spoke of from the passage above - emotion. a lot of times we underestimate how emotional we are and think we are animals of reason. To be honest I think a lot of animals out there are a lot more 'reasonable' than we are, which I would define as following the natural law.

    Homosexuals are an example. Before anyone wants to brand me as a homophobe I would like to make it clear that I have nothing against them, however I acknowledge the fact that homosexuals contradicts natural law where the opposite sex should attract each other. Being attracted to the same sex is counterproductive as... You know where I am going. Human emotions are unpredictable and does not always serve the 'purpose' if you see emotions as a cataclysm to human interaction (as I do), helping the human beings to strife. Materialists tend to ignore this iregularity and think that only material wealth can satisfy us. However that does not neccessarily take away the selfishness of people. Romantic love for example is still a considerably selfish feeling at the very least, a feeling that you want to be with this person and this person ONLY makes no allowance of choices and hence to be with this person becomes an personal interest.

    Another example I would like to give proves human nature being all 'reasonable' and 'selfish' is the reluctance to kill another. One of the greatest concerns of military leaders from the birth of warfare is the reluctance of the soldiers to kill one another. Some may associate this with education, but emotionally speaking most of us would not feel comfortable killing another person. We feel disgusted seeing blood, or mutilated body parts, we accuse the practice of cannibalism as unholy and against human nature. That is the concern of many people nowadays with video games as they think the bloody scenes we see on the screen of the computer will lower our disgust towards hurting (or headshooting) one another and we will all become blood thirsty killers. But no one can deny the fact that the killing another person is a very deliberate way (and effective) of achiving many goals, from taking property to being the leader of the country (as Stalin suggested). Hence there is something called 'wrath' and so on that will make you overcome the unwillingness to kill.

    This leads to my answer to the second question that is the where morals come from. Human emotion plays an important part in constructing ones moral. An example would be theft. Say you are a farmer, you spent a whole year, every day and night planting your crops and in the end you get good results. you now have plenty of crops to sell and you can feed yourself and your family. But one day there are these people who came along and stole all your crops. One may start going 'oh this is unfair to the farmer because he spent a whole year's effert to have everything stolen.' And can go very far with all those bull s*** about equality and stuff, but in the end, its really about the farmer feeling extremely frustrated and wanted to rip the thieves apart. What else is there about? Whilst one pity how much 'work' the farmer had put into the land, they have overlooked the 'work' that the thieves have commited into this theft. There is practically no difference between farming and theft other than a farmer won't bother people as much as thieves do. And if the farmers DO bother people, there is the Highland Clearence in Scotland during the 18th and 19th century when landlords force the local farmers away in order to transform land from growing crops to growing sheeps (as wool became a lot more profitible than vegetables).

    An emotionally based moral makes it entirely dependant on the individual him/herself and their view of human nature, hence due to my view of human nature being selfish (with different extents in every individuals), EE (as well as Natural Law to an extent) is the most 'suited' to us, meaning that had there been no law or social contracts this will be the dominant ethical philosophy people would believe in. In case this seems familiar to you, yes it is the 'State of Nature', and to a certain extent, anarchy I am talking about.

    Now to address the question I believe you are asking, that is what should we follow as an ethical guideline. I must first state that I am not familiar with all of the ethical philosophies that is listed, as I have been studying Chinese and other Eastern philosophies more often (because I am Chinese and I have spent the past 18 years in China), hence from my limited understandings of the ethical guidelines, my vote is as the majority of the voters, that is utilitarianism. Simply because EE is there within us does not make us all selfish bastards and go killing opposing candidate as you have suggested. Happiness and satisfaction, as I have said many times before, does not soly depend on material wealth, hence to most of us the idea of 'good will' is always in us as well. As we live in a community where human beings are to cooperate, it is best if our sense of EE is suppressed and 'good will' being emphisized. Hence the people should be subjected to utilitarianism as a teaching, to encourage people to help one another and act for the greater good of the society instead of only yourself. Sounds like what countless dictators said during the history of mankind, it is up to you to believe whether they are genuine or fake, again, ones perception of human nature.

    That's about it for now, apologies for any grammar or such mistakes in the post, as English is not my first language (just got my essay back from my uni tutor and my grammar and structure is not satisfactory... :cry: :cry: ), and it's 2 am in the morning and I feel sleepy. Hope I have not embarrased myself as I said I do not have a particularly rich knowledge on all such theories.

    Have a nice day.

    Regards

    KC The Greater
  2. Link NO SWAG

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  3. Kalalification Guest

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    I will answer your questions/claims/arguments in a bit, but I'm way too tired at the moment. Suffice to say, I think that most of your ideas revolve around ethical egoism as a universal framework, which is fine if you intend on attacking that position. However, I don't think very many people would actually defend ethical egoism as a universal framework, so the relevance of what you're saying is somewhat limited.

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