Ethics & Morality

Ethics are about rules of conduct or, more precisely, ethicists attempt to decide what good and reasonable behavior is.  In practice, ethicists are employed by universities, academic hospitals and some professional organizations; they do best by examining specific situations and engaging the people involved in conversations about specific interactions. When behavior and/or decisions are questionable but laws have not been broken, Ethics committees substitute for judges or juries and deliver advice or judgments. The value of ethics decreases as issues become of more general importance or are issues of law. 

Ethics can be appreciated as an abstract exercise in description and reasoning that may fail to appreciate the deep determinants of human feelings, beliefs and conduct. This book is about human nature, complete with descriptions of imbedded social regulation and morality. An understanding of all these discussions is required for meaningful ethical discourse.

I often read ethic statements that, in essence, suggest that humans should not act like humans. While I agree that it would be better if some aspects of human nature were permanently changed, that is improbable. A realistic human puts fantasy aside and deals with the really real. Humans are not always nice, reasonable or fair. Sometimes, humans are brutal savages.

There are two kinds of ethical statements: the first and most common is a more or less arbitrary rule that must be obeyed. Rules proliferate as the kinds of human interactions proliferate. Obedience to rules is learned, practiced, and varies greatly.

The second kind of ethical statement is a deeply felt, personal expression of caring, concern, justice and freedom. There is a deep and archetypal sense of freedom, goodness and fair play. Any lasting ethics must be congruent with this deep but undifferentiated sense of goodness which can be called “morality.” The natural, moral part of an ethical system involves bargaining with others in an effort to achieve the most benefit for the people you care about. Deep feelings for others are local and specific. Whenever competing demands are made from others, innate tendencies prefer the most local and most specific demands. Humans are inherently selfish, so that I am first to receive benefits from my own actions. My family and close friends are next.  Fellow members of local groups are next. The more distant relationships and obligations I may recognize receive the least benefit from my actions. The more abstract the relationship, the more learning and effort are required to support loyalty or obligation.

In academic discourse, ethical problems are posed in an abstract manner, dealing with strangers in another place and in another time. Abstract "reasoning" has several limitations; the main limitation is that humans are built to evaluate close and immediate situations that have personal relevance.  Distant events can only be evaluated by learned protocols that vary with the education and socialization of the evaluator. Close and salient encounters invoke innate tendencies that are relatively independent of education and experience and will tend to supersede learned rationality.

Americans and Canadians are far from homogeneous in their ethics and are not alone in their denial of important truths. Clearly, some humans are more insightful than others and some humans act ethically beyond self-interest and others do not.  Ideal justice involves the fair and impartial measurement of human behavior and more or less equal treatment for all citizens.  Can the ideal be realized? Probably not.  Events in the first decade of the 21st century point away from all idealist visions toward the harsh realities of human conflicts and suffering that have prevailed as long as humans have walked the earth.

Values

The term “values” is often used to claim virtue. Values mingle ambiguously with ideas, beliefs, political biases, social policies, morals, ethics, rules and laws. The term value derives from an innate tendency for humans to make selections by assessing the benefits and risks of one choice compared with another. The gradients are aligned from reward to punishment. Evaluation is the process of sorting choices along a gradient. The tendency to affiliate with others requires evaluation of the benefits of association versus the cost and the risks.

Discrimination is an aspect of quick evaluations based on feature detection. Humans evaluate faces quickly and approach others whose faces are familiar and attractive. They shun other faces that are unfamiliar and unattractive. These innate features of brainmind form the elements of cognitive structures that become elaborate and abstract as societies grow in size and complexity. Much of the elaboration is noumenal that occurs mostly in story form. It is common for humans to claim that they are guided by superior values when their actual performance is mediocre or even reprehensible.

Urban et al suggested that values are guiding principles of behavior. The problem is that this definition is that we cannot decide who does what to whom and cannot clarify what part of human behavior arises spontaneously and what part is determined by learning and social forces. In terms of cognitive models or structures and semantics, there is always redundancy in the terms used in different disciplines and different contexts. Often, humans use a variety terms to describe the same phenomena so that misunderstandings and confusion are normal consequences of discussions.

Urban also suggested that political differences originate from different assumptions about how the world works: ”The conservative worldview is organized around ideas like tradition, the moral order (the belief that society is organized in a natural and rightful hierarchy), the importance of authority, and the fundamental nature of property as private… The ideal government, in the conservative view, does not interfere in the lives of upstanding citizens: each is free to pursue his own self-interest in a self-regulating system. The state intervenes only in cases of threats to the moral order, such as criminal or immoral behavior or foreign attack… The progressive worldview is organized around the engagement of citizens in self-government and progress (a counterpoint to tradition)… government is an expression of the will of the people, one that reinforces community and helps to redress inequality… progressives recognize merit but know that no great achievements occur in isolation. The overarching progressive prescription for the state is ensuring the commonwealth for the common good: hence, public education, social security, and healthcare.“ 

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Group Dynamics

Group Dynamics is part of the  Psychology & Philosophy series, developed by Persona Digital Books. We encourage readers to quote and paraphrase topics from Group Dynamics published online and expect proper citations to accompany all derivative writings. The author is Stephen Gislason and the publisher is Persona Digital Books. The most recent date of publication is 2010.  The URL to the book description is http://www.personadigital.net/Persona/groupdynamics/