The Moral Integrative Levels

Abstract

The investigation of ethics is conducted by and for members of the human species, but it must range in a far wider fashion, if only in order to indicate the particular setting of human ethics. We shall see that human individuals are tied to each other through the use of material tools. This is particularly true of the tools of communication: signs scratched on hard surfaces (writing) and sound waves modulated (speaking), for example. Human individuals are tied also to their immediate environment by other material tools, such tools for instance as buildings and bulldozers. It is important to remember that these signs and other tools (here collectively called “artifacts”) are parts of the immediate material environment. They most assuredly are not parts of the human organism. But they have important human roles to play, and in some of these roles as least they have a high relevance to morality.