Issues in Ethics

Issues in Ethics

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Issues in Ethics, by Sam Vaknin (#12 in our series by Sam Vaknin)
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Title: Issues in Ethics
Author: Sam Vaknin
Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8216] [This file was first posted on July 3, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ISSUES IN ETHICS ***

(c) 2002 Copyright Lidija Rangelovska.

Issues in Ethics
1st EDITION
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
Editing and Design:
Lidija Rangelovska
Lidija Rangelovska
A Narcissus Publications Imprint, Skopje 2003
Not for Sale! Non-commercial edition.
(c) 2002 Copyright Lidija Rangelovska.
All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from:
Lidija Rangelovska - write to:
[email protected] or to
[email protected]
Visit the Author Archive of Dr. Sam Vaknin in "Central Europe Review":
http://www.ce-review.org/authorarchives/vaknin_archive/vaknin_main.html
Visit Sam Vaknin's United Press International (UPI) Article Archive
Philosophical Musings and Essays
http://samvak.tripod.com/culture.html
Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited
http://samvak.tripod.com/
Created by: LIDIJA RANGELOVSKA
REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA
C O N T E N T S
I. Morality as a Mental State
II. Affiliation and Morality
III. Nature, Aesthetics, Pleasure, and Ethics
IV. On Being Human
V. And Then There Were Too Many
VI. Eugenics and the Future of the Human Species
VII. The Myth of the Right to Life
VIII. The Argument for Torture
IX. The Aborted Contract
X. In Our Own Image - The Debate about Cloning
XI. Ethical Relativism and Absolute Taboos
XII. The Merits of Stereotypes
XIII. The Happiness of Others
XIV. The Egotistic Friend
XV. The Distributive Justice of the Market
XVI. The Agent-Principal Conundrum
XVII. Legalizing Crime
XVIII. The Impeachment of the President
XIX. The Rights of Animals
XX. The Author
XXI. About "After the Rain"
Morality as a Mental State
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
INTRODUCTION
Moral values, rules, principles, and judgements are often thought of as beliefs or as true beliefs. Those who hold them to be true beliefs also annex to them a warrant or a justification (from the "real world"). Yet, it is far more reasonable to conceive of morality (ethics) as a state of mind, a mental state. It entails belief, but not necessarily true belief, or justification. As a mental state, morality cannot admit the "world" (right and wrong, evidence, goals, or results) into its logical formal definition. The world is never part of the definition of a mental state.
Another way of looking at it, though, is that morality cannot be defined in terms of goals and results - because these goals and results ARE morality itself. Such a definition would be tautological.
There is no guarantee that we know when we are in a certain mental state. Morality is no exception.
An analysis based on the schemata and arguments proposed by Timothy Williamson follows.
Moral Mental State - A Synopsis
Morality is the mental state that comprises a series of attitudes to propositions. There are four classes of moral propositions: "It is wrong to...", "It is right to...", (You should) do this...", "(You should) not do this...". The most common moral state of mind is: one adheres to p. Adhering to p has a non-trivial analysis in the more basic terms of (a component of) believing and (a component of) knowing, to be conceptually and metaphysically analysed later. Its conceptual status is questionable because we need to decompose it to obtain the necessary and sufficient conditions for its possession (Peacocke, 1992). It may be a complex (secondary) concept.
Adhering to proposition p is not merely believing that p and knowing that p but also that something should be so, if and only if p (moral law).
Morality is not a factive attitude. One believes p to be true - but knows p to be contingently true (dependent on epoch, place, and culture). Since knowing is a factive attitude, the truth it relates to is the contingently true nature of moral propositions.
Morality relates objects to moral propositions and it is a mental state (for every p, having a moral mental relation to p is a mental state).
Adhering to p entails believing p (involves the mental state of belief). In other words, one cannot adhere without believing. Being in a