Ahh..... now, i got what you meant by paradigm shifts. Thanks for the last sentence. now to the questions.

I like examples. Thats brings focus.


Morally wrong. Violation of natural law. In my view, cloning is unacceptable.



Morally not wrong. Continuation of natural law. In my view, giving employment is a good thing to do, instead of spending in frivolous pursuits.

Thomas Aquinas Says that "there is no problem from the fact that some men desire evil [the contrary of good]. For they desire evil only under the aspect of good, that is, insofar as they think it good. Hence their intention primarily aims at the good and only incidentally touches on the evil."

Paradigm shifts within ethics suffer violence and all of us use violence to stop the progression of these shifts.......This statement sounds provocative perhaps..... I have no answers but I do have many questions In the field of ethics that I hope many will reply to....... As I have wandered threw history with my blindfold of ignorance on I have stumbled upon many things that I wonder about, hoping that you great thinkers will be able to address........ I will not go all the way back in history to the point of inception but rather I will start with Socrates who most of you should know, so there is no need to explain but instead I will move forward to Plato who traveled to Egypt which all of you should know as well, I will then move to Philo who also lived in Egypt who wrote about the Therapeutae.:detective: Philo writes that they were philosophers that claimed they were able to heal the souls or the minds of the people. What do you suppose the therapeutae thought would create a paradigm shift in another person's mind, that would make him/her think differently than what was thought ethical at first? ....That task would seem impossible, By just looking at one defect in philosophy that seems to be shared among most of us OCPD. Well maybe not the full blown disease but it sure does seem that many among us have some traits of OCPD at times. If you disagree just ask your spouse. I will now fall off a cliff that I did not see. This is what the Christians may be thinking of me from this point forward.:devilish: Religion has been used by humans for what ever reason man thinks it needs to be used. Man is not perfect and even if he believes that he has been inspired by god it does not mean for certain that he has..... Our minds have illusions at times.... If you do not know what I mean do a research on the different illusions that the mind can have... There are some examples that are very easy to understand and some so complex that we do not understand them completely as yet....... Baptism seems to have been a tradition even before the Christians. The Jews were known for cleansing themselves from defiled things before they entered into the temple. It seems that a greater importance was given to the cleaning of the outside of things rather than the inside of things. Getting to the point of these questions may seem to be provocative but here goes......Changing water into wine? These healers of the mind, "did they think that the idea of baptizing with water should be changed into something different? Maybe something that would make people behave in a different way, like maybe the way alcohol is able to change the mood of the mind. Something like ABC fine wine and spirits?:drinking: Spirits? Maybe not that type of spirit but even something more different than that. Remember these were philosophers and as we all know great philosophers can be very creative thinkers. How about a holly spirit, one that is all truth, logic and ethical? Could you imagine a person that when taught reason, logic and ethics by forms of parables and fables?.... Having this new wisdom, Being able to hear and understand the words of wisdom being spoken to him, where as before he was deafly ignorant and not able to hear or make sense of them. He is now able to see the way that he should behave where as before he was as blind as I am walking with this blindfold of ignorance stumbling threw life as if he were crippled as if he were spiritually dead. The unexamined life is not worth living. Did the therapeutae believe that man was spiritually dead? ... Could they have viewed this transformation as if they made the blind see, the deaf hear, the crippled to walk and resurrected the spiritualy dead, and so on and so on?.......If you learned ethics and thought that you were just as important as anyone else and that you should not be pushed around nor should you push others around. With this new knowledge of right and wrong and with you sharing it with everyone around. It may have seemed to be a very big threat to the ruling power.... Everyone may start to view some of ruler's ways to be wrong......If you keep spreading truth of ethics around and large numbers of people start to follow you, the rulers may see you as a threat and have you punished or even terminated.......It would be very hard for one who gains wealth directly or indirectly by unethical means to allow a paradigm shift in ethics to take hold. Anyone who has a general knowledge of neuroscience and biology should be well aware that there will never be a perfect utopia, But could it be possible for every family to be more advanced in all areas of interest if mankind were more tuned with true ethics? ...What are true ethics? ...Well maybe we can not know, but could we be better off than what we are now if We spent more time in this field? Or would this bring greater division?.... Thanks for any comments or corrections. You will not hurt my feelings. have I wandered far from logic?

I went through the OCPD thing, but i am unable to understand the link between OCPD syndromes and paradigm shifts in Ethics.

Although i would like read but am unable to go through deepthots book on ethics. I hope to discuss that with deepthot soon.

Hey....... man!

R U. by any chance out of a million moons, suggesting that I have an OCPD problem.????.............. i.e, I just got an inkling.

my my my........... LOL!!!!!!!!..............

Oh thanks for generalising it....... you saved me an embarassment.

But yes, i agree with you when you say we all have traits of OCPD....... ......

And ........ we all need to be illogical at times, if we were not we would not have such a good human world...... We have our idiosyncracies, strangeness, emotionalness, love, sexual libidos...... hard rock, olympics, soccur world cup, wildlife photography, making a beeline to Mt Everest and its crumbling peak, building 100 storeyed buildings, ....... yes we all are illogical at times..... and i think i like it that way.

What i dont like about the illogicals are things like war, cunningness, power politics , eating tigers bone as an aphrodisiac and keeping our electrical appliances on stand-by mode all the time.

Oh thanks for generalising it....... you saved me an embarassment. ......What i dont like about the illogicals are things like war, cunningness, power politics , eating tigers bone as an aphrodisiac and keeping our electrical appliances on stand-by mode all the time.

Please be so kind as to explain.

p.s. I wrote five books on ethics. I assume you mean the latest, the one entitled A Unified Theory of Ethics. The two preceding are prerequisite in the sense that they contain material good to have as background for the current booklet. They are entitled Living The Good Life; and ETHICS: A College Course. Have you scanned them already?

The inability comes from the unableness to read what you have written. I read the AUTOEthics till about 12 pages..... where the discussion had reached to 'conscience'........ This faculty or trait of mind is very often invoked, and frankly i have not studied it deeply, even though it often crosses my thoughts on ethical issues. The Qs typically, what is 'conscience'..... why it has a role in intellectual life, did Hitler had a 'conscience' , and so on and so forth.

And you reminding me of my promise, is a bit harsh:lol:, and i am finding less time to read, as i am engrossed in another book, which i read two or three pages a day.........pretty awful for 'progress'.

I am also studying how environmental ethics can pervade into a new paradigm shift in ethical behaviour of man....... i had anticipated and hoped that all ethical theories should now turn attention to environmental and energy related or show sensitivity towards eco-friendly human behaviour.

The moral code of conduct should now include the issue of how humans deals with our unique resources on which modern man has become more and more dependent.

hello sir

I am glad to hear about you. I am a conservation(act)ivist. I will certainly go thru the pages. No, i was not bored by the topic on conscience, in fact as i hinted it is a persistent thought.

The other genuine excuse i have is that i do not want to deviate from the topic of the thread, and only if the original OP allows such an deviation.

Ps: The abbrev. was refrering to your e-book for which you had given the link in this thread - A Unified theory of Ethics.

Excellent questions.

In question #1 it seems we would eventually come down to a debate about what constitutes a state of "being alive" and what responsibility/respect is (morally) due something that is "alive". Because other than that, one could look at a human as nothing more than a functional combination of atoms (matter) no different than steel & silicon (a robot for example). To do otherwise will force us to place special value on the concept of "alive" beyond such a combination of matter.

In question #2 it seems we would end up in a place of discussion of the role of "happiness" within a human and our own views we hold regarding the morality of 'manipulation' of a living thing for the benefit of other than that thing. This question of course is a question of the morality of our current mode of operation in the world as exactly this is, and has been, taking place for thousands of years.
By "convince" you are implying that their state would be one of contentment & happiness which in some circles is considered the epitome of the human condition.

But both of these questions bring into question a living entity's ability to think, reason & question. As long as that ability is present it seems any state of happiness & contentment will be beyond reach and therefore both questions will eventually fall to a state of 'immorality' if we accept that a some point both examples of people will grow beyond the boundaries we have chosen to impose on them, at which point we will be responsibile for their state of unhappiness and ensuing violence.

GS

I do have to admit you had me confuesed on [autoethics] I thought that you may have been referring to car sales ethics. LOL I can see how easy it can be for all of us to jump to conclusions. :poke-eye:
The abbrev. was refrering to your e-book for which you had given the link in this thread - A Unified theory of Ethics.

It does apear that there may be many readers that would agree that the botom question would be moraly acceptable. I would like to know if I reworded the question and added your love ones into the picture if the reader might treat their love ones any different than the rest of the people.




Would it be immoral If you are highly intellectual and are able to come up with a scheme that would convince the intellectually challenged to be your work force?

You could hire administrators who would over see all of this, so that you could have more leisure time to come up with other great schemes.
Your administrators would have other people under them analysts, managers and so forth to teach the people that competition and rank are most important.

If you are clever enough the people will demand competition and rank as if it were their divine right, and if you are lucky your philosophy that you teach will seem more important than morality, Which in return would help you to keep the wages of the people low and your personal profits high.

[Meaning that if you could hire the person who is capable of performing a job and is in the most desperate situation caused by his/her environmental or psychological situation that your philosophy helps to create.
he/she may accept a wage 1,000 times less per year than you would, therefore you would be able to reap from his/her misfortunate situation and all the other laborers as well who have agreed with your philosophy.] You could call this your great pyramid.
You at the top and the most intellectually challenged laboring at the bottom. You could find a place for the reader in the middle if he/she would like to go to college and learn old and new technologies.

You could even [tithe] pay the churches to preach your philosophy along with mythology that the people are so desperately wanting to hear:rules:

The priests can be your informants that can let you know of any type of paradigm shift that might be taking place so that you will know how to respond and use it towards your advantage to make even more wealth for yourself.:detective:

Now lets just say that your mother or father or the one who is close to your heart just happens to be intellectually challenged or environmentally challenged. Would you give them a break? or would you say sorry mom and dad it is just tough love.