5 ms·

Does anyone on earth not have an obligation to be ethical? (Yes, I know there is no universally accepted definition of "ethical".)

thecatspaw 10y ago
Yes, noone does. You are not bound by law to be ethical. There's no law about it. Are you _supposed_ to act ethical? absolutely. but you dont have an obligation
- ajdlinux 10y ago
  Legal obligation being the only possible meaning of "obligation", obviously.
- eropple 10y ago
  When the best thing you can say about your position is it's not literally illegal, you should probably stop digging.
jdimov10 10y ago
Yes, I don't. Because when you say "act ethical" you mean "do what pleases me". This is why you can't put forth a definition, because if you did, it would expose your hypocrisy. And I'm not one bit interested in doing what pleases you. I'm only interested in doing what pleases ME (as is every other person on Earth, although most will never admit it out of cowardice). So no, I don't have ANY obligation at all towards you. Now, is it in my best interest to treat you nice and contribute to your well-being? Yes, in most circumstances I'd have to admit that it is. Have a lovely day!
- benmcnelly 10y ago
  Pretty much right, you don't need a religion or code of conduct to tell you not to be a dick. With the NSA, and many other agencies and organizations, a culture of ends justifying means is highly contagious. Human nature and our reasons for being decent moral persons and speaking the truth instead of a lie, always has some threshold defined by our world view and beliefs. When you deal with scumbags all day, those pesky rules and rights are just in the way of justice some times.
- matt4077 10y ago
  That's pseudo-intellectual hobbelgoggle. "Pleasing" deals with emotions, so we can drop the facade of hyper-rationality right there. Cooperation is beneficial for an itdividuums' survival, as you rightfully state. It is indeed of such importance that the standards of cooperation have been internalized long ago – for non-sociopaths, altruism is an end in itself and creates positive feelings. And if you insist on your way of looking at it you actually stopped half-way: what "pleases you" is /also/ just a useful heuristic to maximize you reproductive success. The warm feeling you get from winning the lottery is no more or less real than the warm feeling (other) people get when they see someone happily getting married. For this whole system the borders between the individual and the group are fluid. While certainly, all else being equal, the individual's need usually trumps the group's, it is anything but clear-cut in most real scenarios. You may be willing to sacrifice someones life to save your own, but that can change if the other person is you daughter, when you get to old age or when it's not a 1:1 sacrifice but merely an assumption of a non-zero risk of death.
  - woodman 10y ago
    Calculated actions that take emotions into consideration seem pretty "hyper-rational" - you acknowledged as much with examples. > ... but that can change if the other person is you daughter ... old age ... It isn't as complicated as you're making it out to be, the decision made by the individual depends on the maximization of their goals. So that depends on the weight they assign to the importance of genetic immortality, reproductive years remaining, justice in an afterlife, etc. Sure, not everybody is a perfectly rational actor applying game theory in their daily interactions, but individuals are much more self interested than you're describing - even with family.
    - matt4077 10y ago
      I don't really disagree that all human actions have self-interest as the core motive. I'm just saying that in an interdependent social environment, a phenomenon best described as altruism naturally emerges, either because instincts initially developed for self-serving purposes develop a life of their own, or because the still-existing individual benefits are obscured (i. e. a sort of game-theoretic justification for a middle class person to support welfare). I'm mostly taking offense with the characterization of such "feelings" as "not real" or of lesser value than the "pure" thought of rational egoism: 1. If we take altruism as a highly developed extension of egoism, it's worth to consider it an invaluable heuristic trained over thousands of generations to intuitively make good decisions. Where a cold analysis may tell you that giving money to a poor person is wasteful, I'd say that the warm fuzzy feeling we get from giving is an encoding of results gained over millennia of experience. This also touches another point: I'd suspect that most altruistic behaviors are actually net-negative for the individual but, when practiced by large parts of the population are beneficial for everyone. Here, emotions serve as a prehistoric solution to the tragedy of the commons. It's an idée fixe in some circles, most notably libertarians and the Ayn Rand crowd to replace this with a system of contracts or simply force but that disregards (amongst other things) that almost no idea in psychology has more empirical support than the beneficial effects of helping. 2. If we consider altruism as an emergent behavior, a sort of instinctual moral code, it should be revered as one of the highest achievements of humanity on a level with art or science.
- jasonwatkinspdx 10y ago
  > I'm only interested in doing what pleases ME (as is every other person on Earth, although most will never admit it out of cowardice). This simply isn't true. Humans engage in many self sacrificing behaviors for a variety of reasons. We're a social species with complex instincts and tendencies in how we form groups and collaborate. People who understand humanity is not a cartoon of individual self interest are not cowards.
  - jdimov10 10y ago
    Bullshit.
    - pc86 10y ago
      Quite the eloquent rebuttal. You've swayed me with your words.
solipsism 10y ago
This is a circular question. One's obligations derive from one's ethics.

thecatspaw 10y ago

Yes, noone does. You are not bound by law to be ethical. There's no law about it. Are you _supposed_ to act ethical? absolutely. but you dont have an obligation

ajdlinux 10y ago
Legal obligation being the only possible meaning of "obligation", obviously.
eropple 10y ago
When the best thing you can say about your position is it's not literally illegal, you should probably stop digging.

jdimov10 10y ago

Yes, I don't. Because when you say "act ethical" you mean "do what pleases me". This is why you can't put forth a definition, because if you did, it would expose your hypocrisy. And I'm not one bit interested in doing what pleases you. I'm only interested in doing what pleases ME (as is every other person on Earth, although most will never admit it out of cowardice). So no, I don't have ANY obligation at all towards you. Now, is it in my best interest to treat you nice and contribute to your well-being? Yes, in most circumstances I'd have to admit that it is. Have a lovely day!

benmcnelly 10y ago
Pretty much right, you don't need a religion or code of conduct to tell you not to be a dick. With the NSA, and many other agencies and organizations, a culture of ends justifying means is highly contagious. Human nature and our reasons for being decent moral persons and speaking the truth instead of a lie, always has some threshold defined by our world view and beliefs. When you deal with scumbags all day, those pesky rules and rights are just in the way of justice some times.
matt4077 10y ago
That's pseudo-intellectual hobbelgoggle. "Pleasing" deals with emotions, so we can drop the facade of hyper-rationality right there. Cooperation is beneficial for an itdividuums' survival, as you rightfully state. It is indeed of such importance that the standards of cooperation have been internalized long ago – for non-sociopaths, altruism is an end in itself and creates positive feelings. And if you insist on your way of looking at it you actually stopped half-way: what "pleases you" is /also/ just a useful heuristic to maximize you reproductive success. The warm feeling you get from winning the lottery is no more or less real than the warm feeling (other) people get when they see someone happily getting married. For this whole system the borders between the individual and the group are fluid. While certainly, all else being equal, the individual's need usually trumps the group's, it is anything but clear-cut in most real scenarios. You may be willing to sacrifice someones life to save your own, but that can change if the other person is you daughter, when you get to old age or when it's not a 1:1 sacrifice but merely an assumption of a non-zero risk of death.
- woodman 10y ago
  Calculated actions that take emotions into consideration seem pretty "hyper-rational" - you acknowledged as much with examples. > ... but that can change if the other person is you daughter ... old age ... It isn't as complicated as you're making it out to be, the decision made by the individual depends on the maximization of their goals. So that depends on the weight they assign to the importance of genetic immortality, reproductive years remaining, justice in an afterlife, etc. Sure, not everybody is a perfectly rational actor applying game theory in their daily interactions, but individuals are much more self interested than you're describing - even with family.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    I don't really disagree that all human actions have self-interest as the core motive. I'm just saying that in an interdependent social environment, a phenomenon best described as altruism naturally emerges, either because instincts initially developed for self-serving purposes develop a life of their own, or because the still-existing individual benefits are obscured (i. e. a sort of game-theoretic justification for a middle class person to support welfare). I'm mostly taking offense with the characterization of such "feelings" as "not real" or of lesser value than the "pure" thought of rational egoism: 1. If we take altruism as a highly developed extension of egoism, it's worth to consider it an invaluable heuristic trained over thousands of generations to intuitively make good decisions. Where a cold analysis may tell you that giving money to a poor person is wasteful, I'd say that the warm fuzzy feeling we get from giving is an encoding of results gained over millennia of experience. This also touches another point: I'd suspect that most altruistic behaviors are actually net-negative for the individual but, when practiced by large parts of the population are beneficial for everyone. Here, emotions serve as a prehistoric solution to the tragedy of the commons. It's an idée fixe in some circles, most notably libertarians and the Ayn Rand crowd to replace this with a system of contracts or simply force but that disregards (amongst other things) that almost no idea in psychology has more empirical support than the beneficial effects of helping. 2. If we consider altruism as an emergent behavior, a sort of instinctual moral code, it should be revered as one of the highest achievements of humanity on a level with art or science.
jasonwatkinspdx 10y ago
> I'm only interested in doing what pleases ME (as is every other person on Earth, although most will never admit it out of cowardice). This simply isn't true. Humans engage in many self sacrificing behaviors for a variety of reasons. We're a social species with complex instincts and tendencies in how we form groups and collaborate. People who understand humanity is not a cartoon of individual self interest are not cowards.
- jdimov10 10y ago
  Bullshit.
  - pc86 10y ago
    Quite the eloquent rebuttal. You've swayed me with your words.

solipsism 10y ago

This is a circular question. One's obligations derive from one's ethics.