What is "Ethical"?

[Cainanite (imported)]

Hi Cainanite,

It was never my intention to not include all of your quote to misconstrue what you were saying. It's not practical for me to try to respond to every point in every post. While I do want to respond to everyone who directs posts toward me, I just don't have the energy to respond to everything.

For me, I have a real problem accepting the definition of causing the least harm as the definition of ethics. That is why we have such trouble fighting wars, because we try to justify them as the option of least harm to our citizens. But what about harm to everyone as a whole? Is it unethical if you kill even one more person than you have to, in order to win a battle? Is it unethical to use a drone to fire missiles into the living room of people we suspect are our enemy? Even if it kills innocent people?

That's the problem, defining what harm is and who is harmed. I don't accept that people are hurt if the executioner fails to perform his duty. What if a person is spared by the executioner and then never commits another crime and dedicates him/herself to charity and helping others? Would it still be unethical for the executioner to have not performed his duty? Or is it unethical for the executioner to kill a man/woman who might have otherwise gone on to save countless lives and been rehabilitated for the better?

The problem with ethics, as I see it, is that everyone forms their own ethics on what benefits them the most, not what is truly right and/or wrong. If we could even define that? There is almost nothing that a person might think is ethical or unethical that can not be challenged with counter-examples. Ethics are selfish.

Again, thanks for posting.

Elizabeth

I see your problem with defining ethics.(I have highlighted the part of your quote I think best demonstrates your problem.) You seem to think ethics is a single answer for ALL people. As I have repeatedly stated, ethics is different for each person. It is different from each point of view, and different from situation to situation. If you are trying to use ethics to say there is one single correct answer in all situations, you are not understanding how ethics work. In the ethical decision making process, it is important to understand your sample size. Who is deciding, who is affected, what each person views as correct, and views as incorrect. You cannot reject compromise as incompatible with the ethical process, when it is paramount.

There is no one size fits all answer in the process of ethical decision making. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the process of ethical decision making involves.

It sounds to me you are trying to think of answers that satisfy solely yourself. If that is the case, we can have no discussion of ethics. Your view will be completely one sided. Only your opinion counts. Viewing things from only a single side, or point of view, is not the ethical decision making process. Nor can any real understanding of the process happen when you reject an ethical decision, simply because one possible outcome might be considered bad.

If you continue to decide to pick and choose what parts of the dialog to pay attention to, and which to ignore, then you reject the completeness of a point of view. A dialog becomes impossible. Reaching an ethical compromise becomes impossible.

You said, "Ethics are selfish." You are coming closer to understanding. The ethical process tries not to be selfish, by trying to involve the most complete picture of those affected. Ethics fails when that picture is incomplete, as it must be, by its very function, and limitations on being human. We can't know every outcome. Someone will always be overlooked. We are not omnipotent. Given two terrible options, the ethical process can only strive to choose the least terrible of the two.

In the simplest and least complete of explanations, the process of ethical decision making is weighing possible outcomes

, and choosing the one that has the least

bad in it.

* * * * *

I must say, looking back at your original post, I have misunderstood you. You asked for a definition of ethics.

Here is a definition for you: Ethics is the process by which people attempt to understand the difference between right and wrong, and to decide which path to take, or outcome to choose, based upon the findings of that process.

I realize belatedly that you did not want to have a dialog about how that process works. I apologize. I attempted to define that process. It is complex and involves many intricate parts that only work in conjunction with one another. It is not a process that you can select only one or two defining sentences from, and expect to have understanding. With a subject as complex as ethics, this is impossible, and any single process, stripped of the others becomes meaningless, and easily dismissed.

Here are just some of the pieces of that process, stripped of definition,

Observation

Timeline past

Timeline future

Known outcomes

Unknown outcomes

Sample size (deciding)

Sample size (affected)

Societal expectation

Known precedents

Known variables

Unknown variables

Harm spiritual

Harm mental

Harm physical

Harm subjective

Benefit analysis

Risk analysis

Comparative logic

Compromise

Follow-up

Re-visitation

The two points most often missed by people who do not understand the process, are "Follow-up" and "Re-visitation". I won't bother to explain that here and now. We'd have to understand each other a little better for it to make sense.

In my previous posts I have tried to simplify the process for this forum, when in reality it can take years of university classes on the subject, before being able to properly put the process into conscious effect. As you reject any one part of the process because it does not fit with your pre-decided definition of "good and bad", a meaningful dialog becomes pointless.

Perhaps if you do wish to have a dialog about how the process of ethical decision making works, it would be best to start from a baseline, and have you explain what that process means to you.

Elizabeth,

Please tell us how you define the process of ethical decision making. Having this as a baseline will better help me explain concepts, and point out parts of the process you may be missing, or not understanding. It may also be the beginning of a real dialog between us.

[Cainanite (imported)]

Hi again Cainanite,

Once again, at least from my point of view, the definition of "mistake" is very subjective. "I meant to that". To know whether or not something is a mistake predisposes us to accept that the person either did not know what they were doing or intentionally did not do it. The premise that just because someone thought they were making the correct choice, that somehow that makes the act intentional, is something I just don't accept. I believe more often than not, things have unintended consequences and many times these can prove to be mistakes, although those consequences were not considered in whether or not the action should have been taken or whether or not it was a mistake.

The rest of your post is based on that premise, so I find it invalid. Just my opinion.

Elizabeth

I understand your definition. I was using janekane's definition; That a mistake is something that was avoidable, not just an unexpected outcome or unintended consequence. If I define unexpected outcomes and unintended consequences as mistakes, then my entire life is a mistake. I certainly can't predict the future. I don't know anyone who can. No one can know all the consequences of their actions, or all the outcomes of any decision. I would venture, that when you put a coin into a gumball machine, you can reasonably expect to get gum out. You cannot know what color gumball you will get, or what it will taste like. Just because the gum you get does not meet with your expectations does not necessarily mean it was a mistake to put your quarter in the machine.

If I have a bad day tomorrow, does that mean my entire life was a mistake up to that point? My bad day is the unintended consequence of my life to that point after all.

No. I just had a bad day. It is my perceptions of those outcomes that define my idea of whether my day is good or bad. I do have the option of altering my perceptions though. If I view learning experiences as good things, then my bad day might be a learning experience, and it is really a good day for me after all.

I prefer to talk about harm, because though harm is subjective, it can be more easily quantified than the terms "good", "bad", or "mistake".

After having thought on the subject, having read on the subject, and having spoken to janekane about the subject, I find I agree with his supposition. The concept of the mistake is a logical fallacy.

As no outcome is a mistake, one is free to learn from what has happened in the past, and choose to avoid less harmful outcomes in the future. Only people who are alive, and capable of thought can do this. If your actions cause your death, or cause your inability to make decisions in the future (ie. alive but brain-dead) then you are removed from the learning equations, and instead become a part of the lesson.

The only life we have is what we remember of the past. Everything you have ever done, or ever thought, or ever read, or ever learned, was in the past. Every action you have ever taken was in the past. Our gift as living conscious humans, is that we can take what we have learned, and the information in our minds to imagine the future. We'll be wrong, but we can make educated guessed based on what we know from our past, and with each new piece of information, our guesses become closer to the truth. The avoidance of harm becomes increasingly more probable.

If we view a "mistake" as a learning experience, then the "mistake" has value to our decision making capabilities in the present. A "mistake" then becomes something positive for our present self. Something of a positive outcome cannot be viewed as a "mistake".

* * * * *

On a side note: I am becoming increasingly dismayed by your ability to dismiss anyone's opinions on this forum, other than your own, of course, as "invalid". This is exceedingly rude and dismissive, and isn't the type of attitude we should be showing to each other here.

Feel free to tell me where I am wrong. Show me your opposing opinion. Disagree with me. Do not tell me what I think, or who I am, is invalid.

[loveableleopardy (imported)]

Why make a big thing out of something simple?

They say that Jesus said, 'Treat others as you would be treated,' Simple. And the principle is the same regardless whether you are religious or even if you're a dog or a cat. Simple.

I wasn't going to post anything on this thread today because I just find it too hard to keep up with all of the intelligence on here (lol but true, and I suppose that I am not much of a rambler after all!), but maybe I can go beyond a 'status update' just briefly.

It just occurred to me that the Jesus phrase quoted may not be so good, and I mean, I would have always just assumed it was good, and I'm sure he meant it as such. But I think that too many people can not see how others could wish to live their life far differently to them, so therefore, if I wanted to be chemically castrated (even if only for a period) then others would see themselves as not treating me right if they didn't stand up against it, because they view it as so wrong. Just a brief pondering. My brain is mash!

I booked another appointment with my doctor today; for November 4. I don't hold great expectations about it (I've even become a little ho hum, kind of like when Red said "I don't give a shit" and then he got parole!), but it will be interesting to see how he treats me, and how much he is now willing to see things from anothers perspective.

[Cainanite (imported)]

Sorry everyone. I'm going to post another long one here, so bear with me.

I'm going to try to explain how the Ethical decision making process works. If you want explanations, please post here, and I will attempt to reply concisely.

Take the example we've all heard.

Would it be ethical for society to make one innocent child suffer continuously, if it meant it could ensure a happy life, including an end to all suffering, conflict, despair and poverty for everyone else?

Firstly we need to identify our sample sizes. The affected sample is all of society plus one child. In this example the deciding sample is one, me. (This is how I work it, not you, so the deciding sample is me. Okay?)

Next we have to identify our timeline. The question asks, "Would it..." implying it is a situation that has not yet come to pass. Therefore, the society in which one child suffers while the rest live in Utopia is the timeline - Future. Everything we know, and the society we live in today, is timeline- Past. Keep in mind that time does not stop. It keeps moving forward, even for the timeline - Future.

The known outcome is defined for us already. All the people in society, but one, will live in Utopia, with no suffering, conflict, despair, or poverty. All, except that very important one.

Current accepted Societal expectation states we do not intentionally harm an innocent child when another option is available.

Known precedents, are things from our past. Things like the Holocaust. Ethnic cleansing. Slavery. However all the known precedents deal with large groups of people suffering, not one. Nor can it be shown with any precedent, that any form of utopia was possible, promised, or achieved. This is important to note, both for the sample sizes and the precedent outcomes.

Known variables. This knowledge can come from both ends of our established time-lines. What was the methodology of implementing past attempts at utopia? What are the proposed methods for making sure only one child suffers while all others are freed from suffering. The timeline - future's methodology is not explained, and left to interpretation. Discovery of those methods will impact an ultimate decision.

Observation; We know that even in our current society there is suffering. There are already countless people who suffer from pain, fear, despair, poverty. This is not some imagined or proposed future. This is happening now. How many people currently suffer the way we imagine that innocent child suffers in the timeline - future? Factor in your mind how many suffer in the timeline - past, and how many suffer in the timeline - future.

Identify those harms. Harm physical, Harm mental, Harm spiritual, Harm subjective, and Harm financial. In identifying who is harmed, and what type of harm occurs, be sure to place those harms on their prospective sides of the timeline.

What are the Harms involved? One could argue the greatest number of people harmed, and the greatest number of total harms are on the side of timeline - past. In the timeline - future those harms are confined to one single person. Though one could argue persuasively there would be a Harm Spiritual to those of the Utopian society in the the timeline - future, though the other harms, except for one person, have become moot.

Benefit Analysis would appear to favor the timeline - future, in which only one person suffers. However, this must be balanced with, on which harm does society place the greatest weight. If society places the greatest weight on Harm spiritual, then the harm of timeline - future might outweigh timeline - past.

Risk assessment. What are the risks of imposing the new structure to society? The question leaves this unanswered. One would have to know the method by which this future is proposed to come to pass. How risky are these methods. Is there a risk to life? Is there a risk that society won't attain the proposed goal, and be worse off from the attempt if it fails? In order to properly make this decision, risk assessment must be made. For the purposes of this proposal, we will pretend that there is minimal risk involved. ( Though the idea of minimal risk seems implied in the proposed ethical dilemma, it is not clear. Risk assessment will be very important. If the risk is too high, or there are too many variables in achieving the goal, then this idea could end right here.)

Comparative Logic shows us that we already have an extremely large number of people suffering in our current real world. There are more people suffering continuously right now in this world, than the proposed one. There are no doubt countless innocent children suffering endlessly right now (This part isn't a thought experiment. They really do exist right now.), and our current society does nothing. If the risk of transition is minimal, then it would appear logical to reduce the numbers of those suffering from their current uncounted numbers to just one.

Compromise. Recognizing that the benefit outweighs the risk (which we have decided is minimal.), transition to the new world would be the ethical thing to do over continuing the world in which we currently live. It would be the spiritually correct thing to do (causing the least Harm - spiritual), to save all those uncounted innocents from suffering. It would be the most ethical, even acting with the knowledge that there will always be one innocent child we cannot save despite our efforts.

Keep in mind now, time keeps moving forward. Nothing exists in a vacuum. The next bit is VERY important to the ethical process.

Now that compromise has been made, we must keep observing, for any Unknown Variables. If things do not go the way we expect. If things veer dramatically off course, then we need to be flexible and make corrections. If it all turns out to be a crackpot idea, we need to be able to pull the plug. If we allow for the unknown variables, that we could not predict earlier, then we can quickly learn from our actions, and make changes as we move into the future. There are no mistakes, just learning opportunities. As each new event transpires, you continue to try to make decisions to reduce the amount of harm. Reducing harm is the ultimate goal. To not observe and correct for unknown variables, you risk the worst possible outcome. Making a decision and walking away would not be the ethical thing to do.

Follow-up. Once your goal is achieved you must continue to learn from your new experiences. If you recognize that some harm will come from any decision, you must also be prepared to be responsible for that harm caused. Learning new things allows you to change how you do things in the future. This cannot be done, unless you follow-up on your past decisions.

You must revisit your outcome and look for a better way. Re-Visitation allows you to act from a new position. As you now have a society where no-one suffers except one innocent child, you would act best to not become stagnant. As all other harms have been reduced, the greatest harm is now what is happening to that innocent child. The ethical process seeks to reduce harm. Now that the proposed future is your present, you can begin to make changes to protect even that one remaining child. One cannot predict how that will be possible, until the situation comes to pass and you have learned from your continuing observations of unexpected variables and intentionally looking at past decisions. ( Remember, you cannot know that which you have not yet learned.)

If you lived in a society where everyone was ensured a happy life, with no suffering, conflict, despair and poverty, except one innocent child, it would be ethical to try and find a way to reduce that child's suffering. Just because you've chosen the lesser of two evils, does not mean you can't still look for something better.

* * * * *

The above question to which I have tried to answer, does not really have an answer. There are simply too many things left undefined in its description. It does however point out how in ethics there can never be a right or wrong answer, there can only be a continuing effort to make the best decisions possible, and to remain active in accepting of those decisions. Just because you made the best decision possible does not make a better decision impossible.

Only from the most full understanding of the problem, can the best decision be made. However, one must accept that we cannot know everything. When we learn something new, it may be better than what we knew previously. We must allow that we get better with more knowledge, while recognizing that we can never know everything. The ethical process needs to remain fluid in allowing for that, or it is not ethical at all.

[A-1 (imported)]

Why make a big thing out of something simple?

They say that Jesus said, 'Treat others as you would be treated,' Simple. And the principle is the same regardless whether you are religious or even if you're a dog or a cat. Simple.

Which Jesus?

[janekane (imported)]

I have a queasy feeling that "The Golden Rule," or, "

Treat others as you would be treated,

" or, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," as a basis ethical principle tends to self-destruct, and take people with it, when someone choosing to live according to the golden rule has been treated in ways that lead to intense self-hatred. and that to a strong desire to be severely damaged.

Does not the golden rule work quite perfectly as a justification for violently escalating reciprocal retaliation, which I regard as the plausibly-ultimate self- and mutually-defeating process?

Did the United States, in killing Osama Bin Laden, do other than carry out the golden rule with rigorous accuracy?

To me, Ethics is about concealing deception from conscious awareness.

A clear exposition of that might take me a few million words, far more than I deem reasonable to post here.

However, it is beginning to appear to me that people who are sufficiently bereft of deception may have neither need of, nor use for, ethics.

Then there is that two word question.

Which Jesus?

Perhaps it does not matter a whit.

[janekane (imported)]

My personal definition of "mistake" (which definition I used in my dissertation) is an operational definition:

A mistake occurs when someone does something and what happens as a result is not exactly, in every detail, precisely what was anticipated.

My personal definition of "learning" (which definition I used in my dissertation) is an operational definition:

Learning occurs when someone does something and what happens as a result is not exactly, in every detail, precisely what was anticipated.

The only distinction I can find between learning and making a mistake is whether whosoever is deciding what happened when someone did something was desirable or undesirable. The brain process of learning and of making a mistake appear to me to be perfectly indistinguishable, except for whether what results is labeled desirable or undesirable.

However, I also find that it is desirable to learn what is undesirable and it is desirable to learn how to avoid what is undesirable, and I further find that the only practicable way to so learn is through doing what is undesirable enough times and in enough ways as allows usefully learning the pattern of actually being able to avoid doing what is undesirable.

Therefore, my resolution of the moral dilemma enigma is simple. It is right to do such wrong as is necessary for learning what is wrong and how to avoid it.

My resolution of the ethical dilemma enigma is similarly simple. The wrong which occurs is exactly the wrong needed for learning what is wrong and how to avoid it, and such learning is inextricably ethical.

Only unavoidable mistakes happen, and we know they were unavoidable because they were not avoided. Avoidable mistakes are invariably avoided, and we know they were avoidable because they were avoided; alas, because avoidable mistakes are always avoided, we never get to learn what they were because they weren't.

It has saddened me at times when I find how much fur has flown because of not understanding the unqualified necessity of each and every mistake ever made.

[Cainanite (imported)]

I have a queasy feeling that "The Golden Rule," or, "

317642540]
Treat others as you would be treated,

" or, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," as a basis ethical principle tends to self-destruct, and take people with it, when someone choosing to live according to the golden rule has been treated in ways that lead to intense self-hatred. and that to a strong desire to be severely damaged.

Does not the golden rule work quite perfectly as a justification for violently escalating reciprocal retaliation, which I regard as the plausibly-ultimate self- and mutually-defeating process?

Did the United States, in killing Osama Bin Laden, do other than carry out the golden rule with rigorous accuracy?

To me, Ethics is about concealing deception from conscious awareness.

A clear exposition of that might take me a few million words, far more than I deem reasonable to post here.

However, it is beginning to appear to me that people who are sufficiently bereft of deception may have neither need of, nor use for, ethics.

Then there is that two word q
[/quote]
uestion.

Which Jesus?

Perha

ps it does not matter a whit.

Hi janekane.

How are you?

I have highlighted the part of your quote that I disagree with.

If I look at ethics as a clear definition of what is right and what is wrong, then I would agree. I believe it is the fallacy of the idea that there can be only one correct definition.

If one accepts that an ethical decision is merely the best decision we could make with the knowledge we have, then I disagree. To make a truly ethical decision, one must accept that one may have not made the best decision that could ever be.

As you said,(I am paraphrasing) "If something is worth doing, then it is worth doing poorly, until a b

etter way comes along." It is the

rejection of the idea of, "If it is worth doing, then it is worth doing well."

We must accept that we cannot know the future, and can only know the past. What constitutes "doing something well", with the knowledge we have, may in fact later prove we were doing that something poorly all along. When we learn something new, and now know a better method, we must be free to reject what we were doing and choose the better method based on what we have learned.

To be truly ethical, one must accept with as little self deception as possible, that what you decide cannot be the ultimate perfect decision. There can be no ultimate perfect decision, because such a decision presupposes we know everything that can ever be known. We can only know that which we have learned. One cannot predict unknowable outcomes, until they come to pass.

When someone uses ethics to try and say, "This is THE answer. It is THE good answer, and there will never be a better answer." Then yes I agree with you. This is deception and self deception at its worst, and will lead to harm in the worst way. Thinking like that is an unfortunate human fallacy, best avoided by avoiding deception, self or otherwise.

I'm glad you posted back. You have a unique view of the subject, and we can all learn from your input.

[janekane (imported)]

What I tend to reject as harmful is the notion, "If it is worth doing, it is only worth doing well," and I reject that because it tends to preclude learning well how to do something exceptionally difficult and unfamiliar.

It is my personal and so-far-life-long consistent experience that ethics are about social folkways and especially about social mores which serve to generate psychological defenses as ways of coping with reality as defined by culture and society. However, psychological defenses, in the scientific psychology literature I have read so far, are generally defined as mental mechanisms which distort reality in the service of the Ego, the Ego being the socialization-process-generated, socially-acceptable self-construct of the person. Being mechanisms which, by definition, and consistently as I have yet observed, distort reality, it is that distortion of reality which I regard as the deception which ethical constructs, by also being mental mechanisms which distort reality, effectively conceal from conscious awareness.

Not one person I have yet met who achieved a socially-commendable outcome from the infant-child transition has been able to make any clear. practical sort of sense of my work so far. None of my thesis committee members who were psychologists or psychiatrists found any way to put my research findings to any pragmatic use in their clinical practice.

A significant aspect of my thesis and dissertation field work research effort was directed toward finding a notable flaw in the basic work of Dr. Abraham A. Low, who was a psychiatrist at the University of Illinois at the Medical Center, in Chicago, and who, in the 1930s, founded what became the self-help group, Recovery, Inc., which is now named, "Abraham Low Self-Help Systems," and which continues as the second oldest (founded not long after the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous) of the self-help groups started in the U.S.

The core of "The Recovery Method," as described in the book by Dr. Low, "Mental Health Through Will-Training," is that what Dr. Low described through numerous examples as "temper" leads to "tenseness," and tenseness leads to symptoms. The Recovery Method trains people to change how they interpret life events so that temper can be avoided, and thereby both tenseness and symptoms can be avoided. My research was, and is, directed toward demonstrating that "temper" is a normal brain response to the traumatic abuse of time-confused learning (as in the work of Erik H. Erikson) and time-corrupted learning (as in the work of Robert Scaer, M.D.)

A form of morphine-induced psychosis immediately followed my total colectomy with ileo-rectal anastomosis, which surgery happened about two months after my orchiectomy, in the summer of 1986. Because I had known people who murdered other people and the other people who were so murdered, when I observed that morphine had somewhat messed up what I regarded as proper functioning of my brain, I asked to be in a safe place, which happened to be a psychiatric unit at a major research university hospital. Almost immediately upon arrival in that psychiatric unit, I mentioned my being autistic, being transgendered, and having been severely abused as a child in such a way that I could not remember the abuse because it was too painful to remember and could not forget the abuse because it was too severe to forget. All those things, as it eventually was recognized, I had accurately described.

However, the psychiatrist under whose care I came regarded my claims as clear evidence of severe psychosis, and I was put on a typical cocktail of diverse psychotropic medications and psychotropic medications to control the side effects (I prefer to think of them as sigh defects) of the medications, and was put on psychotropic medications to control the sigh defects of the medications prescribed for control of the sigh defects of the first medications.

Being medication-compliant allowed me access to what I recognized as an astonishingly remarkable research opportunity; being all but thesis for my bioengineering doctorate, I had research skills not available to anyone else I have ever heard of who was willing to investigate mental illness and psychiatric treatment of mental illness as a genuine participant-observer-researcher patient and not as a pseudo-patient, as in the work of David Rosenhan, as published in Science in January, 1973, in the paper, "On Being Sane in Insane Places."

Being medication-compliant resulted in my becoming profoundly demented (oriented times zero) after nearly three years on the psychotropic medications. Finally, i came under the care of a neuropsychiatrist who was willing to entertain the view that my dementia might be entirely iatrogenic, and who took me off all the psychotropic medications as rapidly as was deemed at all safe. In about two months without any psychotropic medications, my measured IQ "skyrocketed" from something less than 10 to 70, and I was deemed capable of living at home once again. I asked for rehabilitation help, but was deemed too severely damaged to benefit from rehabilitation, so I set out with my own rehab program, which resulted in my getting an IQ score a year later that would properly qualify me for Mensa membership.

Not once in my whole life, and I have lived through times of truly formidable difficulty, has it ever occurred to me that my life would be better had any aspect of been different than it has been in any way or manner whatsoever. I live what I describe as the practical and practicable basis of my actual life. The theory of my life espoused and the theory of my life in use are indistinguishable. I actually live as I describe, and what I describe is limited in accuracy only by the words available for my descriptive use.

Is there anyone else who has described life in ways similar to how I have experienced my life? Yes.

Consider, as one example, Kabir Edmund Helminski, "Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self," Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York, 1992.

For another example, study the later life of Emanuel Swedenborg.

"The Tao of Pooh," and, "The Te of Piglet," both by Benjamin Hoff, may be informative.

I seek to not persuade anyone to believe anything; I seek only to share what I find I have learned, doing so on the chance that someone may find something of use within what I describe and share.

Nonetheless, throughout my entire life I have only found ethics and morality to be exclusively of the nature and function of psychological defenses.

It is not for me to expect anyone else to agree, nor to disagree.

[Cainanite (imported)]

Ah. janekane, I get the distinction. Thank you for that.

I find I agree with you then. As the concept of an unfortunate circumstance, undesirable outcome, or harm as I am using it, are all rooted in the perspective of the observer, and what is negative, may in another light actually be a positive, then ethics are fundamentally rooted in self deception. That makes much clearer sense to me with that view.

Got it.

If I accept that reality, then my concept of the ethical process remains a valid tool, but only if one accepts that ethics are attempted balance of perceptions of harm, or as you say, "undesirable outcomes". All answers derived from the ethical process are bound to be flawed because all harm is subjective. As negative perception is a deception, then all ethical choices are based in that deception.

I get the concept much more clearly. I was already on that path of thinking by offering to remain open to better outcomes as they come along. "Better" being the deception of perception.

I stand firmly by my definition, and example of use for the ethical process. I do still view that the least harm, as perceived by the people involved, is still the most desirable outcome, even if that outcome and perception of reduced harm is a deception.

Following your line of reasoning out to a logical conclusion, I would have to recognize that ALL decisions are based in deception, and all knowledge is based in deception, as decisions and knowledge are based on perception, and perception is a form of self deception.

As all of our observable universe can be interpreted through the deceptive means of our perceptions, then there is nothing we can learn that is not colored by our own deceptions. Everything we have ever learned, ever done, or ever thought is based in deception.

If I accept that, then I must also accept that for people, those deceptions are their reality. If I reject those deceptions because they are deceptive, then I must reject even the act of learning. I must reject the notion of our free will. For me it spirals too far off the map of my acceptable reality for the notion to do me any good at all. If I reject things because they are deceptive, I must reject all knowledge and experience too, because it is equally deceptive.

If I accept that deception is part of how human beings think and react, then I can make decisions based on reducing the perceived harm. Even though everyone's perceived harm will be a deception, that does not make it any less real to those people. That deception is their reality, and my own. Therefore I have to treat that deception as true and valid, even if it is only true for the sample size I have identified.

I prefer to use the word "incomplete" to deception. Without all the information and all the perspectives, no decision will ever be complete. No one person can ever know all the answers. As we are not omnipotent, everything we learn will be incomplete. It is our belief that our knowledge is complete, that is the deception.

In my ethical process, I recognize that all knowledge is incomplete, and allow for more complete information to be added to the ethical process as it becomes available. Ethics are a process, not a result.

Proposing that ethics can produce a single verifiable and true outcome, is the deception. I believe this to be the main problem in understanding ethics.

There can never be an ethical answer. There can only be the best understanding of a path, based on our present knowledge. A best educated guess, if you will.

Where ethics propose to offer a single best answer, then I totally agree with you. Ethics, by that definition is a deception.

Where ethics are a process, then the process will constantly move us further away from what we perceive to be undesirable outcomes. We can never completely escape undesirable outcomes, simply because

we can never know everything.

If we accept that our knowledge is incomplete, while simultaneously collecting as much information about an ethical dilemma as is humanly possible, then we minimize our self deception. By recognizing that our knowledge of reality is incomplete, we can avoid the deception of a perfect "right" or "wrong". We remain free to keep trying new things, as better options come along.