Ethics - Lecture 1 PDF

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Ethics – Online Lecture One Three Streams of Thinking about Morality (Good and Evil) in the West  Each is connected to how we choose to know the world: o Myth (Religion/Symbol/etc…) o Philosophy (Reason and Macro-Microcosms) o Science (Empiricism/Logic/Method/etc) Stream 1: Ancient Myth and Their Profound Truths  Not false!  Myths are not lies, and provide profound truths  Myth (Religion/Symbol/etc…) o Eden and the Fall… o Epic of Gilgamesh… o The story of the sheltered prince… o Etc…  Symbol is a way to communicate a certain phrase that has truth Stream 2: Philosophy  Truth or no truth: the war for the mind Stream 3: Science  Psychology based on biology based on chemistry based on physics… etc… o Enormously useful  Anatomy/brain science/biology  But still some questions that scientific approach has trouble answering: o Metaphysics o Epistemology o Ethics… So What Happened ? What Makes Our Era So Different ?  Our approach to the world has changed  Ancient conception o Human condition is given o Nature is too large to hurt o ‘Higher’ law/contemplation as height for humanity o Ethics is essentially situational o Limitations are built in  Contemporary conception o What is human ? A bridge ? o Nature critically vulnerable o Freedom/progress as height for humanity (without overarching ‘law’) o Radical futurity must be taking into account with ethics... o There is no set human nature o Many know that we will eventually die, however we are setting new dimensions and pushing the limits of the frontier of aging and dying  How we see ourselves within the world A Warning about Real Ethics: The Dangers of Starting into the Abyss  Challenges some of the axioms of our age: o That hard work pays off… o That people get what they deserve…

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That there is always a happy ending because of science and technology… That progress (social and personal) is inevitable… That knowledge is always a good thing…  Are there some things we would rather not know ?

Are There Some Things We Would Rather Not Know? Nietzsche’s Wisdom of Silenus  Nietzsche’s Wisdom of Silenus: o Creon asks Silenus what is the ‘best’ thing for a person to know o The answer of Silenus is staggering:  It is better never to have been born  Failing that, it is best to die quickly  The reality of pain and death cannot be ignored when discussing ethics and morality… Are There Some Things We Would Rather Not Know? Bertrand Russell  “That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation be safely built.” Myth: The History of Philosophy  Myth: Deeply meaningful symbolic stories that try to articulate profound truths (that can’t always be understood otherwise) o The story of the Plato’s primordial humans o The story of the sheltered prince  Very important for group and also for individual identity/meaning  We are the categorizing beings… We Want Ethical/Moral Certainty… Some Basic Questions  Mencius vs. Hsun Tsu o Are human beings good or evil by nature ?  Question: can we say for certain that some things are always wrong (ie: murder, theft, etc…) ? o Some theories about human social nature—the ‘state of nature’ idea:  Hobbes—Leviathan—life is nasty, brutish, and short  Rousseau—State of nature—civilization screws us up !  Is there even such a thing as human nature ? o Not everybody agrees… o Do we even have a ‘non-fluid’ identity ? o Is there anything beyond context ? The Big Question: You Are What You Think… Righ t?  As long as their beliefs do not interfere with mine  We are taught not to fight about a meaningful life  Opinion vs. knowledge: there is a difference between stupid opinion and knowledge

Ethics – Online Lecture One Does it Matter What We Believe ?  Heaven’s Gate  Bo and Ti o Fallen world – Gnosticism/apocalypticism/Bo Jesus reincarnated/ship o Failed prophecies but still believed o Gave up material possessions o The men castrated themselves o Ship behind comet Hale-Bopp ?  They all TRULY believed…  39 committed suicide in March, 1997  Jonestown, November, 1978 – over 900 people die So Yes, It Does Matter What We Believe (or What We Think is Right)  On issues like immigration, sexuality, politics, religion, ethics, etc… o Because our beliefs affect other people o Because we DON’T LIVE IN A VACUUM… Is Knowledge Possible? The Philosophers vs. The Sophists: War for the Mind !!!  The Sophists: o Teachers who taught excellence for a fee o Excellence is the ability to convince others of the rightness of one’s claims o Claimed knowledge of how to live the good life (rich, powerful, etc…) o Protagoras of Abdera: “Man is the measure of all things” o Georgias of Leontini: “Nothing exists…” o Critias of Athens: “The gods are human creations” o There is no meaning to life beyond what we create o We create truth and morality o Moral relativism – there is no natural moral law o Excellence is trying to convince others what you think o Humanity is the measure of all things: environment, person and things o Humans measure everything o Beauty is in the eye of the beholder o We create right and wrong, we decide everything o Social agreements, and only to one particular society, not applicable to all societies  The Philosophers: o Truth is real; it can be discovered through reason o Cosmos is rationally ordered o Demanded ‘reasons’ rather than emotion or opinion o Knowledge can be applied to create more humane individual and social life o Reason equals truth equals knowledge equals virtue o Knowledge is power o Disagree with sophists Plato vs. Socrates  Plato: o Born around 427 B.C.E. o Died around 348 B.C.E. o Wrote the book Republic, from which our reading comes, around 380 B.C.E. o Foundation of western civilization

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Plato       

o Was important to western philosophy Socrates: o Plato’s Teacher o Often, after his death, a character in Plato’s writings—upheld as the ideal teacher o Primal teacher that impacted Plato’s writing

The Cave Allegory: the premise of Western intellectual tradition From the Republic How to organize cities, and what is true Plato was trying to figure out why is it so hard to know things about the world Prisoners think that the shadows are real, and that the cave is their world to them, and have no knowledge of the roadway, the world outside or the fire All we have is a partial truth in real life Some people are okay with the knowledge beyond the cave, but most do not believe the real world

Important Questions about the Cave Allegory  What are the shadows ? o The physical world that we usually engage with always changes o Like shadows are cast by something more real o The real world is hidden; most of us rarely see it o The real world is not physical; it consists of ideas/blueprints o Sunlight is truth/goodness/goal of life o What we define beauty is different amongst us, as it is our own ideas  Why is it so hard to leave the Cave ? o Learning is tough o Pre-established patters are difficult to break o Other people pressure us because they don’t want us to change either  Why doesn’t anyone want to listen when we go back in ? o The two times in life when you appear the most dumb are:  When you are first learning to see and understand something that is deeper than what you knew before  When you have become comfortable with deeper understanding and you are asked to take part in things that you think are stupid, trivial, and pointless\ o The wise person is occupied with the changeless ideas of the real world  Why does it matter to us today ? o Gorgias  The preliminary answers to the republic  Socrates tries to fight Callicles  Callicles’ immoralism and hedonism  We create right and wrong-there is no such thing in nature  Distinction between nature and convention; strong kept down by the weak through education and conceptions of equality  Problems with philosophy aside from youthful pursuit, it can lead people astray  The best life is the powerful life, which is only open to a few (the strong)  Socrates disagrees- goes through various arguments showing that the goal of each of us should be to seek the Good  Premised on the idea of an immortal soul  Can we know moral truths for certain ?

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Massive implications when studying ethics

History of Philosophy  Plato to Christianity  Christian philosophy in the medieval period (from around 400 CE—1500 CE)  God at the center/the fallen flesh and nature/sin/Great Chain of Being/14 th century sucked…  The Renaissance (c. 1400—1650CE)  A new view of human uniqueness and potential/new worlds/printing press/etc…  The Scientific Revolution (c. 1543—ongoing)  Copernicus/Vesalius/the birth and rise of science  The Enlightenment (c. 17th—19th centuries)  The use of reason to discover truths of nature and humanity/against entrenched authority in religion and politics…  The four ‘men of mystery’  Charles Darwin (1809-1882)  Karl Marx (1818-1883)  Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)  Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)  You Friedrich Nietzche (1844-1900)  The Madman and the Death of God  The myth of Silenus  Beyond Good and Evil  Becoming rather than Being  Education, the weak and the strong, noble-minded o Slave morality (humility/goodness/meekness, etc…) Plato’s Republic- Allegory of the Cave  Education is not what some people boastfully declare it to be  They can put knowledge into souls that lack it, as if they could put sight into blind eyes...