What is "Ethical"?

[Cainanite (imported)]

I read 1-12 but dissolved in your paragraph.

Seems most self evident except the conflict of individual good vs social good not found.

again.

Moi

That is covered by the part about consensus and compromise.

Consensus and compromise allow that not every part of a decision is best for every individual involved.

Some decisions are best for a group (social good).

Some decisions are best for a single person (individual good).

The process tries to find a balance, but has to acknowledge, that some harm will happen regardless.

Only when all people know everything there is to know (everyone is omnipotent) can an answer to the dilemma between an individual and a group be arrived at, where there is a right and a wrong outcome.

No one is omnipotent. In order for there to be a "correct" solution, everyone would have to be.

Because no one (let alone everyone) can be omnipotent, we have to allow for compromise.

There is no single unifying answer for a dilemma. If there were, life would be much simpler, and we wouldn't have to learn anything.

[moi621 (imported)]

Well that concluded I guess River can close the thread

[Cainanite (imported)]

Well that concluded I guess River can close the thread

Would that really be the ETHICAL thing to do?

[kristoff]

Would that really be the ETHICAL thing to do?

No we won't close it. Most philosophers usually think themselves in circles and never know where they'll end up. Just waiting to see where it goes.

[janekane (imported)]

I messed up in my keystroking effort, and left out a couple words in one posted comment. The effect of the left-out words is, on reading and re-reading that comment, effectively reversing my intended meaning. Before I could post a correction, my wife encountered a need for some significant medical care, including trips to emergency room settings and the like.

That blunder is not here being corrected, though I plan to post a correction when I have figured out how to write it. Alas, were this thread to be closed before I can post the correction, I find finding a way to post it somewhere on the EA message boards would be, for me, of the form of an ethical mandate.

This thread has been in my personal and subjective view, among the most gentle and decent of the many gentle and decent threads on the Archive message boards (or Forums?).

When I became age-appropriate for the social tradition of conventional infant-child transitioning (in late 1940), I deemed my transitioning from infancy to childhood to be unethical; and, accordingly, declined the opportunity to transition into socially traditional-conventional childhood. Ever since, whenever I have been presented with the opportunity transition into childhood as a necessary step along the pathway through adolescence and into adulthood (all of those being of the conventional social tradition), I have invariably (and without exception) declined to do any of those social stage demarcation transitions.

My life is of the same basic form it was before I was born into the world of human society (though without being born into human society in any conventionally traditional sense). To me, the notion of "guilt" is of the form of a delusional notion; I find it impossible for any person to actually be guilty of anything. Shame is an affective-emotional brain response to the presence of the delusion of guilt.

Put me on a jury, and I will find every defendant totally innocent on the basis of first principles. Command me to make a judgment, and I will make the judgement that judgement is a process of unmitigated, dastardly, atrocious, unconscionable error. Declare me guilty of some infraction and I will forgive that error, and those who have made it, endlessly, and without seeking any redress of harm actually done to me.

I live in the same manner as I did before I was born. Happenings happen, and I adapt to what happens, and how I am able to adapt to what happens is always good enough. I live, and have always lived, in an actual, directly observable, creatively evolving world in which whatever happens, as it happens, is inextricably necessary and sufficient. In that sense, the world in which I experience my life as a proper subset of aid world, is one of a perfect process; a world in which whatever exists in any observable way whatsoever is at the absolute limit of what the process of existence, as evolving creativity has yet been able to make.

I do not experience, nor ever have experienced, suffering as in the traditional Buddhist first noble truth.

The very earliest memory I have been able to find, in searching my memory, is of my becoming aware. The second temporal-sequential memory I have been able to find is becoming aware of having become aware. To me, the second memory is of what I guess is often regarded as self; the first memory is of what I guess some folks regard as of the self-transcendent (God, I suppose, perhaps, for some folks who "believe in God").

The reason, and I understood it when I was 18 months of age and first invited to transition into childhood, that I declined to so transition is because I recognized and understood that, for me (and perhaps for no one else), my so transitioning would have destroyed any useful access I had to that first of all my memories.

My entire life has been framed by an awareness which incessantly exceeds my self-awareness. How could I have become self-aware if I had not first become aware?

"Wei wu wei" translates into English for me, not as "doing without doing," but as "doing without trying."

I am able to imagine what it might be like were I to suffer. So far, I can only imagine that, for I have never been able to actually experience suffering as I understand other people do, and not at all for lack of sensitivity to harm.

The way (or wei) my life has happened, it is as though I live in a parallel universe, albeit the one that is actually real, and not the imaginary universe of human social consensus tradition.

Do I need to be once more be in a QR, in full leathers?

What if, while in a QR, more than once, and in full leathers more than once, I was given the necessary freedom to let my mind go anywhere it could go while, full leathers kept my body safely alive?

What if actual freedom is not ever wishing any aspect or detail of one's life had been different than it was, is different than it is, or will be different than it will be is the true nature of freedom? If so, I have lived in such freedom for the entire whole of my life.

It is from within that freedom, if it be freedom, that I observe that Ethics is the human social process, as a collection of reality-distorting, ego-serving mental mechanisms of socialization-trauma origin; the function of which is to block people from the awareness of awareness (which is the essence of my entire life thus far).

One scholar, a person who had agreed to be a member of my thesis committee before a "promotion" ruled out the person's being a member of my thesis committee, wrote, in a "To Whom It May Concern" letter, that my work if successful, would undermine many established views.

The main established view that I find my work, if successful, will undermine, is the view that people make mistakes because of some aspect of human imperfection.

In contrast with that view, one which is of the foundation of adversarial systems of law and justice, I find that the nature of human perfection is human ability to learn by doing what has never exactly been done previously.

Thus, in my world view (Weltanschauung?), it is the making of mistakes which is the essence of human perfection, both as condition and as process.

[Elizabeth (imported)]

I messed up in my keystroking effort, and left out a couple words in one posted comment. The effect of the left-out words is, on reading and re-reading that comment, effectively reversing my intended meaning. Before I could post a correction, my wife encountered a need for some significant medical care, including trips to emergency room settings and the like.

That blunder is not here being corrected, though I plan to post a correction when I have figured out how to write it. Alas, were this thread to be closed before I can post the correction, I find finding a way to post it somewhere on the EA message boards would be, for me, of the form of an ethical mandate.

This thread has been in my personal and subjective view, among the most gentle and decent of the many gentle and decent threads on the Archive message boards (or Forums?).

When I became age-appropriate for the social tradition of conventional infant-child transitioning (in late 1940), I deemed my transitioning from infancy to childhood to be unethical; and, accordingly, declined the opportunity to transition into socially traditional-conventional childhood. Ever since, whenever I have been presented with the opportunity transition into childhood as a necessary step along the pathway through adolescence and into adulthood (all of those being of the conventional social tradition), I have invariably (and without exception) declined to do any of those social stage demarcation transitions.

My life is of the same basic form it was before I was born into the world of human society (though without being born into human society in any conventionally traditional sense). To me, the notion of "guilt" is of the form of a delusional notion; I find it impossible for any person to actually be guilty of anything. Shame is an affective-emotional brain response to the presence of the delusion of guilt.

Put me on a jury, and I will find every defendant totally innocent on the basis of first principles. Command me to make a judgment, and I will make the judgement that judgement is a process of unmitigated, dastardly, atrocious, unconscionable error. Declare me guilty of some infraction and I will forgive that error, and those who have made it, endlessly, and without seeking any redress of harm actually done to me.

I live in the same manner as I did before I was born. Happenings happen, and I adapt to what happens, and how I am able to adapt to what happens is always good enough. I live, and have always lived, in an actual, directly observable, creatively evolving world in which whatever happens, as it happens, is inextricably necessary and sufficient. In that sense, the world in which I experience my life as a proper subset of aid world, is one of a perfect process; a world in which whatever exists in any observable way whatsoever is at the absolute limit of what the process of existence, as evolving creativity has yet been able to make.

I do not experience, nor ever have experienced, suffering as in the traditional Buddhist first noble truth.

The very earliest memory I have been able to find, in searching my memory, is of my becoming aware. The second temporal-sequential memory I have been able to find is becoming aware of having become aware. To me, the second memory is of what I guess is often regarded as self; the first memory is of what I guess some folks regard as of the self-transcendent (God, I suppose, perhaps, for some folks who "believe in God").

The reason, and I understood it when I was 18 months of age and first invited to transition into childhood, that I declined to so transition is because I recognized and understood that, for me (and perhaps for no one else), my so transitioning would have destroyed any useful access I had to that first of all my memories.

My entire life has been framed by an awareness which incessantly exceeds my self-awareness. How could I have become self-aware if I had not first become aware?

"Wei wu wei" translates into English for me, not as "doing without doing," but as "doing without trying."

I am able to imagine what it might be like were I to suffer. So far, I can only imagine that, for I have never been able to actually experience suffering as I understand other people do, and not at all for lack of sensitivity to harm.

The way (or wei) my life has happened, it is as though I live in a parallel universe, albeit the one that is actually real, and not the imaginary universe of human social consensus tradition.

Do I need to be once more be in a QR, in full leathers?

What if, while in a QR, more than once, and in full leathers more than once, I was given the necessary freedom to let my mind go anywhere it could go while, full leathers kept my body safely alive?

What if actual freedom is not ever wishing any aspect or detail of one's life had been different than it was, is different than it is, or will be different than it will be is the true nature of freedom? If so, I have lived in such freedom for the entire whole of my life.

It is from within that freedom, if it be freedom, that I observe that Ethics is the human social process, as a collection of reality-distorting, ego-serving mental mechanisms of socialization-trauma origin; the function of which is to block people from the awareness of awareness (which is the essence of my entire life thus far).

One scholar, a person who had agreed to be a member of my thesis committee before a "promotion" ruled out the person's being a member of my thesis committee, wrote, in a "To Whom It May Concern" letter, that my work if successful, would undermine many established views.

The main established view that I find my work, if successful, will undermine, is the view that people make mistakes because of some aspect of human imperfection.

In contrast with that view, one which is of the foundation of adversarial systems of law and justice, I find that the nature of human perfection is human ability to learn by doing what has never exactly been done previously.

Thus, in my world view (Weltanschauung?), it is the making of mistakes which is the essence of human perfection, both as condition and as process.

Hi Janekane,

I really enjoyed this post and there is a lot of it I agree with. Being an existentialist, I also believe guilt is a delusion created to control and be controlled by others. Laws, customs, rules, guidelines, etc. are all created to give the illusion that we somehow have choices that we really do not have. Indeed our thought processes, whatever those are, are not something we control, but rather they control us.

When the lioness watching the cubs, while the other lions hunt, kills the cubs, she is not tried for murder and kicked out of the pride. While we may not understand her reasons and they may seem arbitrary and uncalled for, it is part of her nature to kill those cubs. As humans we try to take such things and say the person chose to kill. In reality they had no more choice over their actions than we do ours. We do not control our thought processes, as much as we would like to think so, anymore than the lioness who finds it in her survival instinct to kill the cubs.

In the end, ethics are an abstract concept we invented to explain our otherwise unexplainable thought processes. It's simple, some people are more ethical than others. Good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, acceptable vs. unacceptable, never really stopping to consider if anyone really makes the choices they are accused of making.

There are no "normal" humans. There is a wide variety of behaviors that humans exhibit, but the idea that there is some pattern of behavior that is the model for the rest of us to make a hopeless attempt to mimic, is pretty absurd to me. Nearly 7,000,000,000 people on the planet, all with different genetic codes, with the possible exception of twins and other multiple births, and we want to tell people that if they don't have the "average" genetic code they are somehow defective or "unethical".

Elizabeth

[janekane (imported)]

I am writing this thread reply with two purposes in mind. One is to share some of my thoughts on the chance someone may find some use for some of them; the other is to learn if someone will tear some aspect of said thoughts to shreds through the use of scientific principles.

Hi Janekane,

I really enjoyed this post and there is a lot of it I agree with. Being an existentialist, I also believe guilt is a delusion created to control and be controlled by others. Laws, customs, rules, guidelines, etc. are all created to give the illusion that we somehow have choices that we really do not have. Indeed our thought processes, whatever those are, are not something we control, but rather they control us.

.

.

.

There are no "normal" humans.

.

.

.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth,

Oh, dear.

Oh, dear me. I studied way too much mathematicalisticalismish stuff.

There is the normal distribution function ( of sigmoid shape?) and there is the normal density function (of bell-curve shape?) The normal density function is the slope of the normal distribution function, at least as I learned in my study of maths.

So what?

Well, for one thing, the whole normal curve (whether sigmoid-curve or bell-curve, take your pick with whimsey or something else) is normal. There are not three normal curves, each both sigmoid and bell in shape.

It is a social convention, one I find to be stunningly unethical, to allow some central portion of the normal curve, wide enough to safely include me, yet narrow enough that I can haul out enough bigotry to find quite a few folks farther out from the middle than I am who I can label abnormal so as to maximize my egotistical prejudices favoring myself to the exclusion of others.

My view, and I have gone through the mathematics, is, to put it simply, everyone is normal.

To me, it is perfectly normal for each and every person to be exactly one-of-a-kind in forever (and beyond).

It is neither more nor less normal for some folks who get outdoors much of the time to need sunblocking (clothing?) to reduce skin cancer risk. It is neither more nor less normal for some other folks who do not get out doors much of the time to need considerable dietary vitamin D to minimize the risk of rickets.

It is socially normal in some social groups to regard those aforementioned who need sunblocking as "white" people and to regard those aforementioned who need vitamin D as "black people."

It is normal for me to question what some social groups regard as normal, especially because I have a lurking sense that such social groups will relentlessly deem me to be intolerably abnormal.

I have a "colored" paper assortment, which includes "white" paper and "black" paper, along with brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and grey paper. When I was much younger, folks kept trying to tell me that I am a white person, something I have never found to be true. Neither am I a black person. Come to think of it, I have seen some folks who were very blond and others who were, by contrast, very dark. However, I have never yet seen any actually white person, nor have I ever seen any actually black person. I have seen many diversely colored people, and never any person who was not of color diversity.

It occurred to me that I may have made a lifelong mistake. So, I decided to make some measurements, the better to find out whether my lifelong view is true or false. Being an engineer, I hold the view that I need to be decently competent in making measurements. Ah ha! In one of the drawers of the desk on which is the computer I am using for writing this is a measurement instrument. General Electric, Model 8DW40Y16 "FOOTCANDLES" meter.

Something which is actually white will not absorb visible light. Keeping the path length the same, I find the incident light to be 37 footcandles. If I am white, the reflectance will be unity, and the light reflected from the skin of my hand will also be 37 footcandles. Reflected light is 7 footcandles. Wow! I was right, but not extreme right. The 7 foot candle reflected light measurement clearly demonstrates that I am neither black (reflected light would be 0 footcandles) nor white (reflected light would be 37 footcandles). Scientific proof! I am neither a white nor a black person. White is every color (not me) and black is no color (not me).

Perhaps someone else who was once a member of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers understands the phenomenon of light better than I do. Absent clarification from someone else who understands light, and measurement of light, better than I do, I shall take it as a demonstrated fact of science that I am, by actual photometric measurement, a colored person.

While it may be ethical to label me as a white person, doing so is demonstrated scientific nonsense at best?

I solve the problem of what is normal and what is not in much the same way as I solve the problem of whether I am a white person, a black person, or a colored person. I make observations and some of the observations I make are measurements. I find that it is normal for some phenomena to not fit the mathematics of the normal curves; some phenomena are multi-modal, some are very asymmetric as contrasted with the normal density curve.

One day, a thought came clearly into my mind. The bell curve (normal density function) has been treated as though only some central portion is normal. What if the problem is, to put it simply, that the bell curve is a density curve, and what if the folks who reside within a standard deviation or two from the mean are simply too dense to comprehend the whole range of what is normal?

If so, such density is situational and not dispositional... Therefore, the dense people are neither at fault nor to blame for their density.

Is it true that, in the final sense, interpretation is the essence of observation, because it is, and only is, interpretation (and not sense datum) that can be noted and remembered?

For myself, I deem guilt to be a delusion, not created to control us, but the simple result of the process of evolution not having yet evolved enough to allow humanity to fully recognize guilt accurately as delusion.

Until someone truthfully describes a mistake/action/choice/decision actually made and also truthfully tells of a demonstrable way whereby the mistake/action/choice/decision which was made could actually have been avoided through an achievable process, I shall take the notion (which I find to be the essence of the traditional infant-child transition) of avoidable mistakes having actually been made to be not only a delusion, but what (I wildly conjecture?) may well be the most stunningly addictive delusion which may ever be possible for people to regard as not a delusion.

I find I need to offer an apology. I do not challenge authority, because I regard authority as being authoritative.

I do challenge authoritarianism, and do so with the whole of my available effort, and do so because I find authoritarianism to be the process whereby the brain-damaging trauma of the traditional infant-child transition is accomplished.

If my notions of child abuse, the infant-child transition, brain damage, depersonalization and deindividuation, and social violence are found scientifically valid, the validity will reside in the authority of rigorous scientific scrutiny, and not in the authoritarian egotism of any person, myself included.