I think Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason are appropriate examples of ethical systems. Aristotle analyzed individuals according to extremes in personality traits; what was considered ethical or best was the midpoint between extremes. Kant formulates a law, the categorical imperative, which generally states that a human should only act in ways that that human would allow other humans to act in. The question for every moral theory is whether it is subjective (a notion) or objective (an object)? Any ethical system derived from science should be objective and found in nature, like science; but subjectivity has much to say on the subject of ethics.
The biological entity appears to have a sense of what is good and what is bad, and perhaps it derives such a sense as an extension of please and pain; for the unconscious maybe a consolidation of all the knowledge that the biological being possesses. But this is where the difference between biology and psychology becomes apparent; for biological awareness is what occurs at the cellular level, which is beyond our immediate experience of the world. Perhaps the biology inferred that if it is a colony of cells, then it would be best to gather information about colonies of cells rather than individual cells. Physics can then provide a scalar relationship between objects in space, which I think are the qualities of large and small being represented with quantities. Knowing is only one kind of action, an observer may perceive the biological entity performing all sorts of actions. Thought, either one’s own thoughts or another’s, may consider some actions as moral or immoral, and perhaps any attempt to understand those notions are pursued in human centered science. Science, however, does not contain a system of ethics, I believe. The question is whether that exclusion of a formal ethical system is due to a lack of an ethics in nature or a lack of discover.
Most human systems contain laws that mediate and govern our wide range of behavior. Existence itself may have a wide range of motions, yet what one perceives is ordered occurrences, instead of the chaos or complete silence of everything. For what would the image of all the visual memory of an individual superimposed on one another look like, or what would all the feelings one has felt feel like if experienced simultaneously? Usually the appearances are consecutive and somewhat predictable.
For me, science begins with the study of simple objects, such as simple three dimensional shapes, but that is to say I’m extracting a universal idea from a common perception of existence. In this case, one seems to take commonality for granted, then moves logic along with an “always happening.” Nothing is eternal with reference to God, but time allows occurrences to happen for long durations.
Following the lines of Aristotle’s worldview, to be good with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way, is an odd thing to judge as easy or difficult. A good being shouldn’t find it difficult to be good, for it is predicated to be good. But beings are malleable and adaptable, thus they may become something other than good. A good being can still perform wrong actions; such errors can lead to bad outcomes and could be seen as immoral by other beings. The notion of goodness is ambiguous much like God, logic, nature, and science which exist universally (or, perhaps, because they exist universally).
Hume expressed his ethical system using the dualities of praise and blame. These dualities are more concrete than good and bad, for they imply a judgment and pointing by persons, e.g. one can point out errors in systems with goals, or one can be aware of pleasure and an object which generates that affect. Theoretically, one maybe able to have a being categorize all the possible actions in existence as good or bad/praise or blameworthy. Problems typically occur when multiple beings are categorizing actions and have the ability to dissent from one another. Well, there is only a problem if ethics necessitates that all beings agree on which actions are good or bad.
It seems to me that there are psychological differences in how praise and blame are applied to various situations. One praises those objects which gives one pleasure. Pleasure, a feeling, is activated by appealing sensations. What is considered a moral action comes as a sensation. What appeals to the senses is perhaps not as important as why a sensation appeals to a mind or biological being. For biological beings the appeal appears to be related to the energy exchanges between the world and the being. The mind, being a record of the biological beings experiences, perhaps finds its appeal in how aspects of the world are connected.
The mind intersects the world at some point, but it appears multiple minds cannot intersect the world at the same point, for such would imply that two minds can exist in the same place at the same time. There are cases where two minds may appear to exist in the same place and time simultaneously, such as split personalities, identical twins, or collectivism. For we all exist on the same planet and share similar knowledge. These facts and other similarities are used to justify the assumption that others possess minds and consciousnesses. Yet, there are differences between minds/consciousnesses, for there would exist no friction or conflict if there were no differences. This may all be a result of intersecting the world from different points. Two physical points not being able to exist in the same position in space at the same time implies a distinct history for both points.
Perhaps ethics revolves around a logic based on the notions of good and bad, which are derived from biological functions (particularly the feelings pleasure and pain; and the behaviors or applications of praise and blame). What are the outcomes of categorizing something as good or bad? I would think God is to blame and praise for all that happens, but I’m unsure what that implies. A part blaming or praising the whole implies it blaming or praising the other parts that together make the whole. God is still beyond the whole.
The notion of ethics is also strongly related to judgments and decisions, Because the creation of a consciousness/mind in existence is so subtle, it has many degrees of freedom. Why one does what one does is a personal question. An ethical system seems to require a kind of universality. Science can tell one how to stay alive, but it doesn’t tell one how to exist; it merely exclaims what exist in nature.
The appeal to the senses is desire, for one comes to know what one wants through multiple interactions with the world and with one’s self. The desires of the self appear distributed between the biological structure and the particular mind which it possesses. The desires of the world are the wants of other beings and the necessity of physics. Though all are objects of praise or blame, the consequences of each are different.
No comments:
Post a Comment