ethics…
How often are we placed in a situation where we have to do the right thing? ethically right, morally right? how many of us actually think before doing if whether what we are doing is ethically right? is it morally right?
The concept, the idea of Ethics is a very fragile one, it changes from person to person and from situation to situation, we build a frame of reference throughout our lives as we go forward and keep referring to that when faced with situations where we have to decide, what happens when we come across a situation where there is no frame of reference or we come across a situation we’ve never encountered before nor have we heard of someone coming across something like that.
At what cost should you draw a line while doing what is “ethical” for that situation?
Does not doing the right thing mean doing the right thing even when no one is watching? is the fact that we are doing the right thing motivation enough to do the right thing even when we know that nobody is watching or nobody will ever know?
At my age I am still building a frame of reference, I can hardly say that I have enough reference points but what i do have is too many situations which make me think almost on a weekly basis and at times on a daily basis and it feels as if this is a never ending quest for reference points, there are too many different people in the world and too many points of views, and one man’s poison is anothers meat. The reference points keep on accumulating and at times even shifting.
What I need is another way to actually figure out what is right. I am by no means a saint nor do I claim to do the right thing always, although I do make an effort, but I am also guilty of actively skirting the ethics issue many a times.
And this in itself raises a question in my mind, how often do we have moments when we can say in retrospect that we did the right thing? Do morals hold any value these days?
How do you decide at times when you have no previous frame of reference, how much are you willing to pontificate on a decision for which you are not sure of the right moral or ethical ground? Is it easier to just go by what your gut feeling tells you is a lot less stressful but maybe not completely ethical?
I am reading Mahatma Gandhi’s “My Experiments With Truth” and in one chapter he talks about how he stole some gold from his brother’s chain to pay off a debt but then his conscience riddled him so much that he had to tell his father about it. And what affected him more was his father’s reaction, instead of getting angry his father was surprised and couldn’t help himself from crying at his youngest son’s honesty and this affected the young Gandhi more than a reprimand from his father would have.
What stayed in my mind from this episode is the fact that Mahatma Gandhi was only around 14-15 years old at the time of this incident, how does a child that young formulate a frame of reference what does he look towards when deciding what is the right thing? Can a child that young even have a conscience which is developed enough to needle him when he does the wrong thing?
Is it enough to trust your instinct when trying to be ethical? Can you be ethical all the time? Can you justify not being ethical at times?
Is it enough to do the right thing as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody? What if doing the right thing will hurt somebody else? What if doing the right thing will not hurt anybody except you?
Doing the right thing doesn’t mean that you have done something wrong for which you have to make amends, rather, the way I define it, is more of a situation where you are in a dilemma about what is the right course of action and each such situation is unique in its own way, each situation has to be dealt with in its entirety and a particular context and after the situation has finished we may decide how, if at all, it may serve as a reference point.
ethical dilemma.
The concept, the idea of Ethics is a very fragile one, it changes from person to person and from situation to situation, we build a frame of reference throughout our lives as we go forward and keep referring to that when faced with situations where we have to decide, what happens when we come across a situation where there is no frame of reference or we come across a situation we’ve never encountered before nor have we heard of someone coming across something like that.
At what cost should you draw a line while doing what is “ethical” for that situation?
Does not doing the right thing mean doing the right thing even when no one is watching? is the fact that we are doing the right thing motivation enough to do the right thing even when we know that nobody is watching or nobody will ever know?
At my age I am still building a frame of reference, I can hardly say that I have enough reference points but what i do have is too many situations which make me think almost on a weekly basis and at times on a daily basis and it feels as if this is a never ending quest for reference points, there are too many different people in the world and too many points of views, and one man’s poison is anothers meat. The reference points keep on accumulating and at times even shifting.
What I need is another way to actually figure out what is right. I am by no means a saint nor do I claim to do the right thing always, although I do make an effort, but I am also guilty of actively skirting the ethics issue many a times.
And this in itself raises a question in my mind, how often do we have moments when we can say in retrospect that we did the right thing? Do morals hold any value these days?
How do you decide at times when you have no previous frame of reference, how much are you willing to pontificate on a decision for which you are not sure of the right moral or ethical ground? Is it easier to just go by what your gut feeling tells you is a lot less stressful but maybe not completely ethical?
I am reading Mahatma Gandhi’s “My Experiments With Truth” and in one chapter he talks about how he stole some gold from his brother’s chain to pay off a debt but then his conscience riddled him so much that he had to tell his father about it. And what affected him more was his father’s reaction, instead of getting angry his father was surprised and couldn’t help himself from crying at his youngest son’s honesty and this affected the young Gandhi more than a reprimand from his father would have.
What stayed in my mind from this episode is the fact that Mahatma Gandhi was only around 14-15 years old at the time of this incident, how does a child that young formulate a frame of reference what does he look towards when deciding what is the right thing? Can a child that young even have a conscience which is developed enough to needle him when he does the wrong thing?
Is it enough to trust your instinct when trying to be ethical? Can you be ethical all the time? Can you justify not being ethical at times?
Is it enough to do the right thing as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody? What if doing the right thing will hurt somebody else? What if doing the right thing will not hurt anybody except you?
Doing the right thing doesn’t mean that you have done something wrong for which you have to make amends, rather, the way I define it, is more of a situation where you are in a dilemma about what is the right course of action and each such situation is unique in its own way, each situation has to be dealt with in its entirety and a particular context and after the situation has finished we may decide how, if at all, it may serve as a reference point.
ethical dilemma.
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Oh great sentient being… what a deep post this is…
In a philosophy class in university, the teacher once posed this question…
“if you could make the entire population of the town very very happy for eternity, but in order to do so, you had to kill a young innocent boy – would you?. What if you had to kill the boy not to make the population happy, but to save the entire rest of the population from a disaster that would kill them all (including the boy, or perhaps excluding him) – would you be justified in ‘sacrificing’ one life to save so many… would it be the ‘right’ thing to do? would it be the ‘ethical’ thing to do.”
Needless to say, the class could not reach a consensus… and the teacher never did tell us what the “right answer” was
is anything absolute, or is everything relative? and if “everything” is relative, is that an “absolute” statement, contradicting the statement itself!
I think dilemmas such as these cannot be resolved within their own plane of references. We cannot think of ethical decisions as two dimensional – right or wrong, i believe we have to introduce other dimensions that are not just results based on outcomes (such as “effects of decision”) but view the issue from a different dimension, such as spirituality.
I point you to an excellent article on language, rationality, science, philosophy and faith! where it is claimed: …“is yellow circular or squarish?”. When you try to argue about such questions in language you get nowhere because such questions do not make sense in language…. So we could debate the rights and wrongs, but we are constrained within rationality, and within that frame of reference, we only succeed in asking questions like “is yellow circular or squarish” … of course, yellow is a colour and squares and circles are shapes, and you cannot logically relate the two! (we could get into talking about Synesthesia, but lets leave that for another day
So, let me ask us this… the reference points that you talk about… are we making them in evershifting sand, and hence not able to come up with more absolute truths…
And lastly… laws often try to define right and wrong for us… they base them on common social good generally… but sometimes on pure greed and commercialism (and to keep the machine going)… these laws are made by men, not by god… yet, people think its “morally wrong to drink and drive”… stupid yes, you will hurt others – for sure!, you will be punished… absolutely… but morally wrong just because the government says so… i think not!
So my main question to you is… where is your frame of reference? what is it anchored to?
Well, isn’t time like an ever shifting ocean of sand? i realize that nothing is static, time moves on and so does life. Does it then make sense to have “static values” or “static ethics” which are/were probably defined ages before our time, defined by people who put down what they thought was right and wrong.
How do we convince ourselves that what they thought was ethical is also ethical for us?
Which brings me to another question does it actually make sense to say that morals and values and ethics remain the same over time? or can they change with time? if so then why can’t they change with people, as in why can’t different people have different ethical bents and they all can be right, it is almost as if nobody is wrong, there is a parallel universe for every single point of view and in that parallel universe that particular point of view is right.
Then maybe what we try to do in our present universe is find out the “ethic” which suits the highest common factor or the majority and then label it as the right one.
you make a brilliant point about arguing something with a language, i never thought about it that way, that the medium of expression in itself can be a limiting factor it is almost like somebody trying to explain a fourth dimension with the use of three dimensions.
but what is absolute truth? if everything changes then doesn’t truth itself change with the passage of time?isn’t it just an interpretation of what in our eyes at that time is true?
my frame of reference usually is where i am trying out my ethical capabilities, in that context, which means that my frame of reference is continuously shifting depending on the situation and quite probably i will come across a situation in which a previous incident is completely overturned and i will have to do something that may be totally opposite to what i did previously.
In my opinion the second question, to me, is far more important, or to put it in the right way – more relevant – what is my frame of reference anchored to? my frame of reference is anchored to myself i am the only common factor in all these situations i base my frame of reference on the notion that my interpretation of what is right and what is wrong will lead me to decide what is the ethical/moral action?
maybe what i am trying to find out is how to do something in a given situation which is morally appealing to me as well as does not offend the morals/ethics of others. Is that even possible?
Maybe a common ground does not exist in all situations common sense says that it is not possible to keep everybody happy all the time, or is it?
one amazing line from the essay you pointed me to remains in my mind, “we are not rational animals but rationalizing ones”. That is so true, maybe all this rationalizing is our way of trying to justify our actions to our satisfaction
and may i ask, mr. mandelbrot, who has written the essay
… ?
hmm… i notice a substantial focus on time and the transient nature of it in your comment – but what if the frame of reference was outside time itself?
it is indeed very difficult to explain a dimension without being able to demonstrate it… however, it is possible to give its concept… and to determine what is and is not possible in realms we are not quite sure of yet (eg. sometimes in mathematics, you can prove that a solution does exist… even though a solution has not been found yet!). similary, imagine a two dimentional table top …. just length and width… now imagine a mountain drawn on that table top and imagine again that there are people living in that 2d world… if they want to get from one side of the other, they must “climb” that mountain to cross it. now imagine that one person has discovered a way to get into the 3rd dimension (height)… he can cross the mountain very very easily… he will never need to “climb” the mountain again… he can simply increase his height (even by a mere centimeter) and simply fly across the base… the “tallness” of the mountain is irrelevant to him.
now extend that to our understanding… just like you imagined living in that 2d world and could imagine what a revelation a 3d world might have been… imagine now a dimension beyond time…
what if there were “truths” in that dimension… and what if they were truths beyond time but also encompassed time… in this dimension, we can think of them as absolute!
your saying is scaring me
“my frame of reference is anchored to myself i am the only common factor in all these situations i base my frame of reference on the notion that my interpretation of what is right and what is wrong will lead me to decide what is the ethical/moral action?” … do i detect a possible phase of solipsism?
(that was just a bit of fun, me trying to use a big word… but still being half serious – ahh… the wonders of studying philosophy in university and debating with every teacher (and student) in sight 
that road is a dangerous one my friend… but then again, if you are a solipsist, i am only your imagination speaking
one of my favourite saying is by a philosopher by the name of ludwig wittgenstein who says… “what is true is true by definition and by definition alone!”
as for that article… it was written by yours truly… the chaotic mandelbrot … if you enjoyed that… you might enjoy some of the others at http://www.reflectit.com/ and then click on articles
However, to get into some serious stuff… may i recommend the writings on william james.. in particular on mysticism.
If i were stuck on an island… the writings of william james is what i would want with me