I've currently been reading up on Ethics, and I was wondering what everyone's opinion's were on Ethics. Everyone (or, most people I assume) has morals which they use to dictate their actions through life (weather it be giving to charity, helping an old lady across the street, or helping someone who's being attacked). Of course, not everyone has the same set of morals, the same kind of "right and wrong". Now my personal morals stem mostly from a particular theory called Utilitarianism (like a utility, from which the name comes from I think). In a nutshell, Utilitarian's believe that a moral decision should be made which would generate the most happiness/pleasure from the most amount of people (while minimilizing harm and sadness for the most people).

There are other camps of theories, such as Kant's theory and Virtue Ethics, and I'm wondering what kind of "law's/rules" do you follow form making moral decisions. Is it a gut feeling you have? And of course, the greatest question of them all. Why are you set of morals more superior than anyone else's? Or do we all agree here?

I don't do a whole lot of real reading on philosophy, but I do like to think about it. If I had to put my thoughts on morals into words, it'd sound a bit like this.

Morals are pretty much what people consider to be right and wrong, but I don't think, in the big picture, that anyone has the authority to judge what's right for everyone. I often describe my own ethics with the word "relativity." Everyone is different and has different needs, so any given person's ethics don't necessarily apply to everyone. Like in Kohlberg's Heinz dilemma, what one person considers morally good, someone else might not; and in the end neither person is right. Just like in cosmology, where spacetime is relative to the mass present in a given system, each person's ethics and morals are relative to themselves. No set of ethics is absolute; we all see everyone else's ethics through our own lens.

Because of that, I think the reason people consider their own ethics above everyone else's is simply that they understand their own ethics best. When it comes right down to it, because of relativity, people only have a limited understanding of each other's perspectives; the one perspective we can fully understand is our own. When it comes to making ethical decisions for others, we can only make guesses at what would work best for them. It's not always that people are actively selfish, but rather that we can only act based on that limited understanding.

People have different morals depending on how they live their life and their own experiences. A person who regularly have to fight for survival thinks differently than someone who doesn't believe in violence. One person would think killing someone is bad while someone thinks it's okay for to kill for survival.

This gets complicated when in a situation where you have a knife and someone is about to hurt one of your friends. You have a chance to stab the person to save your friend. The first that pops in your mind is to save your friend but does that make you a bad person? You have a purpose to kill that person which is to protect your friend. So it's not necessary a bad thing from your view. But does that make you lower your morals? It's better than to do nothing and regret from it. Most of the morals can fall between good and bad since there are many different situations that can fit for the reasons it's good and why it can be bad.

Well this is a interesting thread, well I think everyone has rights to judge the world in their own view and act accordingly but someone shouldn't discredit someone for their own ethics and judge the way other people do things. Though because of these differences disputes and conflict can occur and cause, oh lets say genocide, all because of different views. This is why I question why we have to separate the human RACE into categories and further distance between a compromise between the "different races".

Bumpumpumpump...

Just for the record, race is a phenotype that is linked to a variety of separate genes than can, for instance, increase the likelihood of high blood pressure or becoming lactose intolerant. If you merely see race as the colour of a person's skin than... well, I should leave it at that.

...Also, I'm pretty sure most genocide is culture-, not race-, related.

Ethics are obviously different for every person. Humans *supposedly* have a conscience which helps them distinguish right from wrong. But in a psychological sense, a conscience is often described as leading to feelings of remorse when a human commits an action that goes against his/her moral feelings. Basically the same thing in a sense.

All, or at least most of us, feel the need to do the right thing. Most of us follow our Religion and what-not. Others are Atheist and don't follow any particular God. Which means there must be something that's telling them to do the right thing. Being nice to others usually insinuates that they will be nice to you, so that could be a liable reasoning behind treating others nicely.

A person's ethics usually come from their religious views and/or culture. Different religions and different cultures have different views on things, that's nothing new to some people. If everybody would just snap into reality and realize that people have different views, and it's very hard to make them change their views, the world would be a better place.

My ethics are pretty simple. They involve swearing a lot. Or something.

:I

I don't really have any sort of philosophies and granted people may agree or disagree but I don't try to find a superior level of standing using my ethics as leverage.

The thing that tells me to do the right thing is other people's opinions of me. That said, I don't mind looking like a fool or an ass if I do something other people disapprove of.

My set of ethics come from life experiences. Basically I've learned that hell hath no fury like a woman even mildly upset and thus they should be respected accordingly, punching people out because you've got a problem with them is stupid, and people who don't swear have a huge ego.

See also

Sorry for not being able to understand well, but is there a topic to debate about or are we supposed to list down our ethics and philosophy here?

Ethics are something that society has placed in us. I personally don't think that human beings are 'moral' creatures. We look after ourselves and our families in nature and thus, ethics do not exist outside of a society.

There are a species of ape in Asia, I believe, that howl whenever a Tiger approaches to warn nearby grazing dear. In return, the deer allow the monkey to feed on them, eating their ticks. This symbiotic nature is indeed a moral code that developed, but this is only because it's for the betterment of that 'society'.

Now whether you want to call a group of monkeys and deer a society is a different question, but they do it for their own self-benefit anyways. If the monkeys were 'moral' they'd protect the deer because it's right.

If ethics are society's way of determining what is right and what is wrong, then it is safe to assume that what you may consider ethical could be completely immoral to another, no matter how beneficial your ethics are.

Ethics are a set of self rules a person forms and develops as they continue on with their lives, using their experiences to form their own rules of life. Seeing ethics in this way shows that the ethics otf wo people may be similar due to the influence of society, but they are in no way identical. Your ethical rules are not completely the same as mine.