Ida:
I'm glad you mentioned hypocrisy. Avoiding hypocrisy is vitally important. I'll tell you what I mean by that. A hypocrite fails to live up to what he (or she) believes. We have certain principles, along with concepts as to what a good, decent person would be. These may be spoken of as our ideals for ourself. They are our self-ideals. (They're a part of our Self-image.) If our behavior, our conduct, fails to match our self-ideals, we are a hypocrite, we suffer from hypocrisy.

Larry: Isn't that a form of immorality?

Ida: Yes, it is.

Larry: So what then is morality?

Jerry: Fair enough. Now the question arises: What makes anything good? And we also should explain later: How is bad related to good? The applications to real-life experience I believe will become apparent as we go along. What do we mean when we describe something as "good"?

Frank: I can answer that, thanks to the work of a genius named Robert S. Hartman, who, like Plato, and George Edward Moore, devoted his life to coming up with an answer. Hartman succeeded where the others didn't. We know now that a good item, let's call it X, is indeed a good X if it is all there, in other words, if it meets the standards you set for an item of that kind. A good chair has everything for which you are willing to settle in your mental picture of a chair. If it has all those features or qualities, you will likely call it "a good chair." If it only has some of the qualities you may speak of it as "a valuable chair" meaning a chair that has some value. To be judged as a good chair it needs to have most everything, to fulfill the picture, to be a real example of the ideal for chairs that the valuer may have in mind. What applies to chairs, applies to every other concept in the universe, and to the universe itself. When a thing, situation, category, or person matches its ideal that the judge may have for it - matches its meaning 2 - s/he will judge it as "a good one" of its kind. And if it only partially matches, he or she judges it as at least having some value. Is that clear?

Ida: Having thought about it, it's clear to me. We say a map is a good one if it - point-for-point - matches its territory. You are generalizing this idea to everything we might prize as good. A good janitor is one who complies with the details of the job description for a janitor. He (or she) 'does his duty.' The same with a barber, or any other category. Yet Ethics is concerned with Who is the good individual? What characteristics would a good person have? And, indeed, this is a topic which we will investigate more thoroughly when our guest speaker, Mark, is introduced.

... can you tell me if any were in your book that it speaks of the love of money? Could this be the be the root of the ethical problem that we have?

Do you know who made this quote?
[The majority by far seem to be naturally moral, and there is little that philosophy can do to make them more so...If you want to do something, attack the economy of immorality... Capitalism would not stand a chance in a moral society, and it would not justify so much immorality... Virtue becomes an article of commerce...Liberty was once an article of commerce... Were the slave masters of our South wrong in saying they should be free to relocate their human property anywhere in their country???They were right, given the rules of property; but then it is the rules of property which are wrong -if not misunderstood...It is never free and clear any more than an individual is ever free and clear of society....]


...I do not see any thing wrong with worshiping ideas of love for all and calling this god, ... I would think that you may be a reasonable person as long as you are not useing absolutes when you are speaking of god.

It remains an open question whether a "show of hands" can arrive at ethical norms that are any better or any more certain than those that are the result individual thought and meditation. I for one would be hesitant to put "wisdom" and "crowds" in the same sentence or assume that any sort of collaboration would result in authentic agreement about what actions are right and what are wrong.

... In many big bureaucratic organisations, leaders are often ruthless and extremely trigger happy towards people who will defy him with an honest oppinion about his (incompetent) work. Experienced leaders know that they have to be somewhat hippocritic to survive in specially politic, as honesty will offer them nothing but a very short career.

.
Seems these guys confuses usefulness with good/skill/high quality. Ofcause the concept of "good" can equal the concepts of usefulness/skill/high quality ..etc, but seems they don't really distinct those differences.

Besides they base their judgement on very ancient standards, modern judgement would include things such as "is this product made of child labour?", is this product "green?" (CO2 neutral production methods and recycleable?). Nor is long term usefulness, or short term usefulness concepts coverd.


Is the chair made from non endangerd rainforest wood?

Does the product forfill it's intended purpose fully? Many buyers are fooled by some cheap flash, good sales speech, good dinner, and thereby buys worthless crap.


-------------

I think the entire booklet are written with an extreme idealistic naivity which only would end in a communism II.

Are we gonna try to network this?

Greetings, rl

In my papers and books I have spoken of the concept greed, but not of "the love of money." I do agree that it is a "root of evil" in that ethical fallacies - such as The Instrumental Fallacy - are committed in st of more and more money. It is however not the root of all evil. There are other causes.

It's a good quote. I don't know the author. Sorry. Maybe some other reader can help on this.

This is not the most-appropriate Forum for speaking about god, or The Force. Such discussions belong in The Philosophy of Religion Forum. Everything I have said there (or here) about God is tentative, and is subject to revision when better ideas come along.

Thanks for an intelligent and relevant contribution to the advancement of Ethics. You are right that the vice known as greed should receive greater attention by ethicists and moral philosophers. It has resulted in many men and women committing disvalues. It is due to moral confusion as to what is really important. It has unbalanced many a life.

Yes I do agree with you that the love of money is [not] the root of all evil. The closest that I can come to the root would be greed or selfishness. I do believe that we express this in our economy which brings alot of other evils with it.

Isn't ignorance the root of all evil?

"A thousand times zero is still---zero."

It remains an open question whether a "show of hands" can arrive at ethical norms that are any better or any more certain than those that are the result individual thought and meditation. I for one would be hesitant to put "wisdom" and "crowds" in the same sentence or assume that any sort of collaboration would result in authentic agreement about what actions are right and what are wrong.

Isn't ignorance the root of all evil?

Not quite, arrogance is equally as bad, doctors who think they know it all, often achive megalomania and god complex, when they realize the have committed a mistake they won't correct it.

Hi there, jigweed

On the contrary, by reading another thread more carefully I just found a two good examples as to how to extend the frame-of-reference we speak of as The Unified Theory. In the open-source spirit I present it here, with copious thanks to KennethAnthony and to A. G. Anderson for the first selection; and to Pavel for the second.
And let us thank 20-year-old Pavel, of Krasnodar, Russia, who "is not disturbed by external things." He is a student of the works of Tolstoy. He has come up with this deep insight:

I will in what follows present the quotes as supplements to A Unified Theory, using the same format as in that paper.


THE INFLUENCE OF MORAL BELIEFS ON ETHICAL CONDUCT

Ken: Many differences between moral beliefs depend on differences between non-moral beliefs. Consider the example of a wife - somewhere in the world where cannibalism may be practiced - who eats the brain of her husband to "keep his essence inside herself". She would not do that unless she had that belief. But that is not a belief about morality. It is a kind of metaphysical-religious belief. The difference between the wife's morality and our morality seems to depend entirely on a non-moral belief about the world.

Suppose I killed my wife by giving her poison because I thought (mistakenly) that the poison would cure her. Would you say that I believe it is all right to poison one's wife? Of course not. The same goes for the cannibalistic wife. The difference is not a moral difference but is a factual/metaphysical difference. What if she believed in modern science? Would her conduct be different?

Ida: No doubt it would be. Hence we see the vital importance of a good, up-to-date education in the latest findings of contemporary science. As I have often noted, Education is applied Ethics. Eventually, via education, vast multitudes will agree to accept the best definitions -- the ones which work -- work to make our lives better.


Nick: Let me introduce my young friend, Paul, who just dropped in. His field of interest is understanding the varying degrees of caring.

Paul: There is middle ground between being selfish and being loving. Until we think of a better word for it, let's speak of it as "not-caring." When, for example, I give some money to a poor person - when I am philanthropic, or exercise benevolence - it often isn't love; yet neither is it selfishness (but I view it as being closer to selfishness than it is to love, since I have done it for the fine feeling I experience later when I reflect upon what a generous person I am.)

Harry: Perhaps we can view love as on a spectrum, from least to most:
Systemic-love is Philanthropy or donations to charities.
Extrinsic-love is sexual (a love between bodies.)
Intrinsic-love - or at least one sort of it - is conjugal affection, the kind of passion that grows over time like water boils, gradually at first, but then reaches a depth, an intensity as the couple share their lives through the years. Let us call this: true love. Friendship underlies and precedes it. True friends achieve it. It is the ideal married love also.

Three Greek words for these shades of love are: philia, eros, agape. The Greeks had many more words for love, each describing some of its infinite varieties. What is love? One possible definition of it is this: it is the perceiving of countless possibilities in the loved one, or loved object, possibilities for the enhancement of both the lover and the one loved. If you look at someone and see so many possibilities radiating, you are falling in love. It is a way to love oneself. Love recognizes in others the completion of life. And let's not confuse this with infatuation, which is an imagination about the loved one which does not match reality: a state in which the loved individual is 'put on a pedestal' and may be worshipped as super-divine.

Kay: True love always entails caring. It is giving. One serves the person who one loves, continually doing favors for him or her. Yes, love is giving of oneself.


Thus, John, you see there are resources here. There are thoughtful individuals, who when we all chip in, can produce advances in the picture ...which is Ethics.

---------- Post added 03-29-2010 at 04:07 PM ----------



Greetings, Hex:

We humans love to play the game "Ain't it Awful." It's one of the games we play See Dr. Eric Berne's book by that name. I have in my last four books mentioned the dark side of (current) human activity. Even the stress on hypocrisy to which you allude, was a mention. So you should know I'm aware of it. I do not labor on the topics of human perversity and perversion because I am attempting to construct a positive Ethics.

I have several times here at the Forum referred Ethics Forum bloggers to the annual diagnostic Manual that psychiatrists' associations publish. They revise it and update it each year. It tells of every variety of stunted moral growth, every deviance, every mental illness of which that profession is aware. So don't imply that I am naive.
Yes, the characters in the booklet are idealists. You are right about that. They have the ideal that a positive, constructive theory of ethics can be built. The truth is out there somewhere. They have that faith. They just don't see the point of dwelling on the failings of human beings constantly.





You have not read extensively enough into the booklet to get the definition of "x is good C" which is a definition, in context, of the word "good". It's a definition which compels us to be specific about the concept, C.

Yes, you have listed some good-making properties of a chair. I may use them as illustrative in future references to the possible meaning of "chair."
Thank you. You miss the point, though: the ggod chair, where C is the concept "chair" is good because it exemplifies the meaning of 'chair' in the mind of the judge calling it "good." It is not that it fulfills its so-called purpose. Sure, a chair is usually valued Extrinsically, and hence usefulness and purpose become relevant considerations - but only if that is part of the meaning in the mind of the valuer, the one who prizes, prefers, or judges that chair. ...as a category. The definition applies to any concept, whether it is "gravity", "transcendental number", "my beloved mother", or "an original Van Gogh." Purpose is not always a predicate in the meaning in the conception of the beholder. Read the more-formal definition in Chapter Four of ETHICS: A COLLEGE COURSE, my previous paper, a link to which is HERE: http://tinyurl.com/2mj5b3As I said, in A Unified Theory, the earlier booklet is pre-requisite to comprehending the current booklet.





---------- Post added 03-29-2010 at 04:20 PM ----------

In another, earlier, thread on the topic: 'connecting the terms of Ethics', Camerama wrote this:




And here is my reply:

Yes, now that you mention it ! You may have planted the first seeds into my subconscious mind.
Thanks for the suggestion !!

As much as I appreciate the OP's enthusiasm, I believe that this bears repeating.



'Crawl, stumble, stagger-but go alone.'

-Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Not quite, arrogance is equally as bad, doctors who think they know it all, often achieve megalomania and god complex, when they realize the have committed a mistake they won't correct it.

Greed, Selfishness, and Arrogance are all due to ignorance

When a man is greedy, selfish, or arrogant, what is he ignorant of?
Why, Ethics, of course.

Not quite, it's a very basic feature which is very importaint for you to learn, and all other philosophers in this forum. Arrogance isn't nessesarily due to ignorence, quite the contrary. Mishaps happens not due to ignorence, but due to simple misfortune, highly esteemed doctors, politicians, buisness leaders ..etc, will not lose face, prestige, ..etc and therefore will try to hide a mistake.

They'r not ignorent about that, but opputunistic about exerting it.