1 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | February 10, 2025
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.
Comment by checkdateusercreated at 14/02/2025 at 01:25 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
There is no aspect of life that dictates that no two outcomes may be equal in that sense.
That's what normative systems are *for*. Life doesn't dictate anything except an eventual and inevitable death. The *utilit*arians have specific aspects of value, each with their own given weight, for example. No *two* outcomes, by virtue of being distinct, may be equal by definition: even when you are shopping for a pint of juice, and all pints are identical, you grab the carton that is closer. I'm not a utilitarian, though; I am a kind of Kantian that targets goals and purposes with the categorical imperative, and not actions in themselves. But, any normal person with values can be pressed to put those values in order, and that order dictates the differences between any two outcomes—the arithmetic of ordered values does not simply sum up to *points* of equal merit, which may equal identical sums, and natural (physical/real) things are (conveniently, for me) never identical to anything else.
I would be interested to see what you can offer as a hypothetical scenario, off the top of your head, that would seem to you to show two outcomes that are equal in considered utility. I will, of course, try to show how it would not be equal, without denying anything affirmed in the hypothetical.
And, yes, philosophy is not merely ethics. I would say that ethics is the supreme subdomain of philosophy, though, because Socrates did and I'm a Socrates simp. Kidding. He did champion ethics, though. If we are compelled by our passions, as in Hume's assertions, then it is through ethics that we steel our passions and will ourselves to continue long enough to deal with epistemology, ontology, and the rest. I would also say that human behavior vindicates this hierarchy of philosophical domains: ethics is the fuel of politics. I didn't and still don't intend to assert that philosophy is ethics, but I do assert that a love of wisdom must mean the deepest of concerns, first and foremost, for the ethical.