1 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | February 10, 2025
Ethics, being concerned with the issue of living *rightly,* necessarily requires some kind of system for evaluating decisions and sorting them into groups of *right* and *wrong.* If more than one system *can* be established, then those systems may themselves require another system for evaluating systems and sorting them into groups of *better* and *worse.* Identifying the most *right*, or *better*-than-the-rest, system would be an accomplishment for an ethicist.
The issue isn't the idea of a *perfect morality;* the issue is the idea of *creating* it: whatever there is in morality within which to find perfection, it is nonetheless never created but merely discovered. All moral absolutists subscribe to the idea of a perfect morality. All moral absolutists would find such a perfect morality difficult to explain, especially to other humans, if they even had something to explain in the first place for lack of ever discovering a perfect morality.
If you are interested in a framework that could be used to identify a perfect morality, consider Frank Jackson's analytic realism argument that what we call moral properties can be reduced to natural properties. Once you have several moral practices drafted into lists of relationships of these natural properties, you can see where they overlap or even where a given practice is self-contradictory (and, therefore, incoherent and invalid). Processing incumbent normative systems like this is merely one way in which an ethicist may begin to pursue a perfect morality.
A love of wisdom is not a love of information, observation, or experience; a love of wisdom is a deference to the utility of information, observation, and experience used well—used *wisely—*especially when compared with the destructive power of such things used *un*wisely*.* In other words, a love of wisdom is a passionate pursuit of *considered* utility: the utility that comes from making specific decisions on purpose, because you care about the outcome that is created through those decisions. It's not *wise* to merely *ponder* the *existence* of different normative systems: it *is* wise to investigate what that information can do to improve *your* life. Wisdom is not in *knowing*, but in *doing best,* and that requires some definition of what is best. The philosophy of the ancient Greeks centered on the idea of human excellence, and there can be no higher excellence worth pursuing than the idea of *the good life,* whatever that might actually be practice.
I am a moral absolutist and find that moral non-absolutism is incoherent, because the scope of the statement 'XYZ thing is *good*' isn't just *accidentally* or *inadvertently* universal, but *literally* universal, and therefore a lack of that thing or a preponderance of a contradictory thing is *bad:* there is no saying that some otherwise identical thing is good *here,* but bad *over there,* and making sense to yourself or anyone.
Comment by Shield_Lyger at 14/02/2025 at 00:07 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Ethics is not the same as philosophy. If ethics is about fulfilling the obligations that people have to one another, once those obligations are met, then people are free to choose what actions they will take. There can be several courses of action of different degrees of *wisdom* that are all *ethical*.
And just as there need not be a single "most wise" course of action in a given situation, there need not be a "most right." Or, but another way, there need not be a single "best."
In other words, a love of wisdom is a passionate pursuit of *considered* utility: the utility that comes from making specific decisions on purpose, because you care about the outcome that is created through those decisions.
Different decisions may have different outcomes that are of equal considered utility. There is no aspect of life that dictates that no two outcomes may be equal in that sense.