What is ethics

This article by Dan Polansky investigates what is ethics. An inspiration for this article is a suspicion that the subjects that Aristotle deals with in his Nicomachean Ethics are rather different from those usually considered to be the subjects of ethics in, say, the 20th century. (If someone wants to use this page title, the article can be moved to "One man's look at what is ethics" or "What is ethics (Polansky)".)

Initial considerations

Some questions asked by Aristotle:

• What objective do all human activities aim at?
• Is political life better than philosophical life?

Some questions asked by a differently scoped ethics:

• Is intentional killing of a human ever justified and why?
• Is theft ever justified and why?
• Under what conditions is lying permissible/acceptable, if ever?
• Is torture of animals inadmissible, and if not, why not?
• Is destruction of natural heritage inadmissible, and why?
• Are there positive ethical duties (duties requiring a positive action rather than abstinence from action), e.g. to try to save a drowning human?

The second set of questions could also be rephrased as: what is unethical and why? Since, the way the word unethical is usually used seems to point to the second set of questions rather than the first set.

If this analysis is correct, we get the strange situation that the name used by Aristotle in his work, of Ancient Greek origin, is now used in its Anglicized (and Germanized, etc.) form to refer to an inquiry that is quite different from Aristotle's inquiry.

We may further advance this inquiry by listing some of the key words/concepts with which ethics is or can be concerned. These can be above all good vs. bad and right vs. wrong. As a crude approximation, we may match good vs. bad with the first set of questions and right vs. wrong with the second set of questions. But once we introduce the word morally, it may be hard to distinguish morally bad from morally wrong. We can add admissible vs. inadmissible for disambiguation: right vs. wrong may pertain to e.g. a result of calculation, a different matter.

Ethics can be hard to delineate/distinguish from politics. Since, is the question whether first-term abortion should be legal an ethical or political one?

The above separation of questions can be perhaps captured as pull vs. gate. Most people aim at various things (own health, own happiness, own wealth, etc.) but then are constrained by the means admissible in reaching these aims. The things aimed at (e.g. riches) are the pull, the constraints imposed are the gate. (Instead of pull, we could say push, but that is a terminological choice of little consequence. A cart is pulled by a horse, not pushed, and whether the cart can pass through a gate depends on the gatekeepers.)

Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics provides one hint on what ethics could be. Wittgenstein first quotes Moore as saying that "Ethics is the general enquiry into what is good." But Wittgenstein has a broader conception: 'Now instead of saying "Ethics is the enquiry into what is good" I could have said Ethics is the enquiry into what is valuable, or, into what is really important, or I could have said Ethics is the enquiry into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living, or into the right way of living.' This broader conception can well be contrasted with an enquiry into admissibility and thus better matches the fist set of questions (those of Aristotle) than the second set of questions.

Further reading:

• Lecture on Ethics - The Ludwig Wittgenstein Project

Inquiry into duties

One conception of ethics could be as inquiry into duties, both negative and positive duties. There would be duties not to murder, not to steal, not to lie (with exceptions), to try to save a drowning person, etc. There is even a word for that, deontology, from Ancient Greek deon, deont-, obligation, necessity And then, we could use that word instead of ethics. We could have e.g. "medical deontology" rather than "medical ethics". And to be briefer, we could have medical deontics, or in English, medical dutylore. However, one can object that this is too narrow conception of ethics and that there is also consequentialism, an approach to ethics different from duty ethics.

Inquiry into oughts

One conception of ethics could be as inquiry into oughts. This can turn out to be the same as inquiry into duties. Per M-W, the noun ought means "moral obligation : duty". However, M-W auxiliary verb section covers not only obligation but also advisability, which could perhaps be interpreted as pointing to the distinction drawn out in the initial consideration. That section further covers epistemic (knowledge-relating) oughts, which do not belong to ethics.

The word ought feartures in Hume's is-ought distinction.

An auxiliary verb similar to ought is should. A stronger verb is must. A contrast can possibly be made, since should can possibly be interpreted weakly, as "you (ideally) should not but you can". In particular, "you must not murder" (rule?) seems perhaps more convincing than "you should not murder" (recommendation, hint?).

Inquiry into good and bad

One conception of ethics could be as inquiry into good (into what is good). This would perhaps fit customary usage if we limited the inquiry to good action, good conduct, good character, good person and good life. By contrast, the inquiries called ethics did not seem traditionally interested in what is e.g. a good knife (approximately, is instrumentally good for cutting) or good medical treatment (approximately, is very likely to improve health). This limitation could justify the terminological choise of ethics as relating to character, but this would require clarification. Even so, if the name of the field should be inquiry into good character, one could incorporate the Greek word for good into the field name.

This inquiry would leave aside the contrast of right vs. wrong, focusing instead on good and bad.

Inquiry into right and wrong

One conception of ethics could be as inquiry into (or study of) right and wrong. As pointed out in section Britannica online, one differentiator is missing, that of morally right and wrong vs. legally right and wrong. This line of inquiry seems to point to the second set of questions set out in the initial deliberation rather than the first set of questions, and thus, to duties and inadmissibilities. Since, it seems implausible that Aristotle's question whether philosophical life is better than political life is a question about whether, say, philosophical life is wrong. On the other hand, one could charge that philosophical life is wrong since it is a life of idle inquiry that does not meaningfully contribute to the community or polity.

Etymology

Following the etymology of the word ethics, it would be an inquiry into character, or characterology. But that is not what ethics is. Be it as it may, we may wonder whether matters would be improved if we replaced the label ethics with a label that better captures the investigated subject. Thus, if ethics is the inquiry into what is good, we could find an Ancient Greek word for good and make an -ology out of it. On the other hand, physics does not suffer from being an inquiry into nature by its name, while in fact excluding biology, an inquiry into living matter.

Other related words whose etymology can be of interest are moral and morality. Moral is from Latin mōs, mōr-, custom. Some sources indicate these words resulted from translation of Ancient Greek ethicos or something of the sort; needs a clarification and verification.

We can as if tap on the concept of custom (mentioned above) and see what we can get from it in relation to ethics. For one thing, it seems implausible that unethical/immoral would simply mean uncustomary (deviating from custom); surely various uncustumary behaviors are not bad enough to be generally considered immoral [an uncustomary use of brackets is {uncustomary enough} without being <immoral>, as confusing as it may be]. Moreover, in a tribe that practicise cannibalism or infanticide, that practice being customary would not lead the Western speakers to conclude that that it is therefore morally admissible/morally right. (One may ponder whether the proverb "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" captures a moral principle or rather an immoral one, as in, when in Nazi Germany, do as the Nazis do, i.e. kill the Jews. On the other hand, we can provide a harmless variant or explanation: following local customs that violate no ethical norm is often advisable since it provides various benefits. For instance, in Italy, they have the custom of speaking Italian and speaking to them in good Italian can often be beneficial.)

Moral philosophy

Some sources indicate that ethics is also known as moral philosophy. However, SEP's Moral Theory article indicates a possible contrast between the concepts of moral and ethical. There is a related Stack Exchange question, in which some indicate equivalence and some difference. A related article is Britannica's What’s the Difference Between Morality and Ethics?.

Britannica online

According to Britannica online (article by Peter Singer):

• "ethics, the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad and morally right and wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values or principles."

This definition uses the word "morally", presumably to differentiate. Thus, it is not any inquiry into good vs. bad and right vs. wrong but only specifically about what is morally relevant. However, the definition does nothing to define the word morally. The use of the word morally appears somewhat circular; if we replace morally with its arguable synonym ethically, we get that ethics investigates certain ethical matters, to which I say, sure thing, but what is meant by ethical? One might add that the word moral was created as a Latin calque of the Greek root of ethical (sources to be provided). Whatever is meant by morally, the need for differentiation is easy to discover: something can be legally wrong--illegal, against the codified law--and at the same time morally right. For an extreme example, a country can codify mass killing of certain human population groups into law, which makes that mass killing legally right, but nonetheless morally wrong.

Expanding on the above, we could start with the concept of legally wrong (being against the law) and try to derive morally wrong from it. We will need the concept of celestial (otherwordly) lawmaker, known as God. Then, something is morally wrong if it is prohibited by the celestial lawmaker, so it is celestially legally wrong. This conception seems to point to the second set of questions indicated in the initial deliberation rather than the first set.

Greater clarity is brought by the following paragraph:

• How should we live? Shall we aim at happiness or at knowledge, virtue, or the creation of beautiful objects? If we choose happiness, will it be our own or the happiness of all? And what of the more particular questions that face us: is it right to be dishonest in a good cause? Can we justify living in opulence while elsewhere in the world people are starving? Is going to war justified in cases where it is likely that innocent people will be killed? Is it wrong to clone a human being or to destroy human embryos in medical research? What are our obligations, if any, to the generations of humans who will come after us and to the nonhuman animals with whom we share the planet?

The paragraph makes it clear that Singer's conception of ethics encompasses both sets of questions that we set out at the beginning as distinct, contrasting. or well separable. One one hand, it asks e.g. if we possibly should choose our own happiness as an (ultimate?) aim. On the other hand, it investigates whether it is sometimes admissible to be dishonest. As a point of doubt, it is not clear that the second set of questions above is "more particular" than the first set of questions. As a further doubt, the question about war could well be ranked as politics rather than ethics since it is a decision to be made by a polity.

Britannica 1911

Britannica 1911 gives us the following sentences that define or characterize ethics:

• "ETHICS, the name generally given to the science of moral philosophy. The word “ethics” is derived from the Gr. ἠθικός, that which pertains to ἦθος, character."
• "In its widest sense, the term “ethics” would imply an examination into the general character or habits of mankind, and would even involve a description or history of the habits of men in particular societies living at different periods of time. Such a field of study would obviously be too wide for any particular science or philosophy to investigate, and moreover portions of the field are already occupied by history, by anthropology and by the particular sciences (e.g. physiology, anatomy, biology), in so far as the habits and character of men depend upon the material processes which these sciences examine. Even philosophies such as logic and aesthetic would be necessary for such an investigation, if thought and artistic production are normal human habits and elements in character. Ethics then is usually confined to the particular field of human character and conduct so far as they depend upon or exhibit certain general principles commonly known as moral principles. Men in general characterize their own conduct and character and that of other men by such general adjectives as good, bad, right and wrong, and it is the meaning and scope of these adjectives, primarily in relation to human conduct, and ultimately in their final and absolute sense, that ethics investigates."
• From the above paragraph, let us single out the following: "Men in general characterize their own conduct and character and that of other men by such general adjectives as good, bad, right and wrong, and it is the meaning and scope of these adjectives, primarily in relation to human conduct, and ultimately in their final and absolute sense, that ethics investigates."

There is more relevant material in the linked article. Here, we find the words mentioned in some of the above sections: good, bad, right and wrong, put in relation to human conduct.

Let us consider another quotation:

• "When ethical speculation first begins, conceptions such as those of duty, responsibility, the will as the ultimate subject of moral approbation and disapprobation, are already in existence and already operative. Moral philosophy in a certain sense adds nothing to these conceptions, though it sets them in a clearer light."

This seems to read as an inquiry into duties and therefore the second set of questions from the initial deliberation rather than the first, Aristotelian, set.

Links:

• Wikisource: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ethics

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics sets out at least part of its inquiry rather clearly:

• "If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the object. It would seem to belong to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master art."

Following this, ethics would be an inquiry into that which we (humans?) desire for its own sake rather than as a means for something else. And a label for this sought item would be "chief good". (But what if all or most of our desires are bad or wrong? Would that which we desire for its own sake still be the chief good? But that is something of an aside; the subject of inquiry has been suggested clearly enough.)

Further reading:

• Wikisource: Nicomachean Ethics (Ross)
• Aristotle’s Ethics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

See also

• Ethics
• Introduction to ethics

Further reading

• ethics by Peter Singer, britannica.com