Ethics

Abstract

The two quotes above sound the theme for this chapter. There is nothing supernatural about ethics. They are actions, and statements about actions. In the analysis of these sorts of actions, the critical issue is what explains behaviors called ‘ethical’. How do they come about? They can be explained by asserting an agent — an ego or self or more subtle stuff — that freely chooses the action called ethical, or explained by examining the conditions under which actions called ethical occur. If the latter, then the distinction between “is” and “ought” — the way through which a so-called world of “fact” as separate from that of “value” is addressed — is simply the distinction between the conditions under which two forms of statements occur. The former statement is no more “naturalistic” than the latter. Both are verbal relations descriptive of events, but events with differing kinds of contingent controls. Such contingency relations may have been produced by social shaping or through biological shaping, or both. Social and biological processes jointly affect ethical actions at the locus of the individual, the community, and the population. But at any locality, it is the action deemed ethical that is the focus of analysis and which requires an explanatory framework.

Most writers on the emotions and on human conduct seem to be treating rather of matters outside nature than of natural phenomena following nature’s general laws. They appear to conceive man to be situated in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom: for they believe that he disturbs rather than follows nature’s order, that he has absolute control over his actions, and that he is determined solely by himself... Experience teaches us no less clearly than reason, that men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined; (Spinoza, 1632–1677, Ethics)

We struggle for justice and truth since we are instinctively equipped to see our fellow beings happy. ... Not only is the mechanistic conception of life compatible with ethics: it seems the only conception of life which can lead to an understanding of the source of ethics. (Loeb, 1858–1924, The Mechanistic Conception of Life)¹