Considerations in the Philosophy of Ethics
                             "beta" rough draft



Part I:         Goodness as the Standard

When something is said to be "good", and thus to have goodness, we mean to say
simply that the thing in question conforms to some standard.  By this we see
that, since ethics deals with the realm of the ought, and a standard is an idea
of a thing, ethics would then be a subset of standards, namely those standards
by which things are correctly and rightly, judged. For instance, when we
say that a piece of pie is good, we hold the pie to the standard of
pleasantness, or tastiness, finding that the pie indeed fits this standard, and
thus call it good.

Further, when we choose this standard by which to judge a thing, we also say
that the standard in question is the correct one.  Perhaps correct for this
situation, for this person, etc., but essentially that the standard is correct
in its use.  For the pie again, we may say that the pie is good or bad
dependent upon how it holds up to the standard of tastiness, but when another
eats the pie and finds it wanting for the standard, they may say that the pie
is not good or bad.

It seems then that the first distinction which needs to be drawn in the
elucidation of some standard of goodness is to what it applies.  Clearly we
cannot reasonably say that the pie is BOTH good and bad, and yet disagreements
among tasters may claim it so.  The solution in this case is to clarify by
saying that the _eating_ of the pie by person X is good, while the  _eating_ of
the pie by person Y is bad (for example) because of the differing tastes of the
eaters.  This would solve the delima by no longer claiming that the pie in
itself is good or bad, but pushing the application of the standard back to the
taster.  By thus we see that clarifying how some standard rightly applies can
solve seeming paradoxes in goodness and badness.

As another case of clarifying a standard, we may find those who judge things by
their fitness to the arbitrary whims of man.  Should someone at one time find
the pie good because of it's taste, and later bad because of the weight it puts
on the eater, and then later good because of the pleasure it brings as an applicant
to a clowns face, we would seem to have brought on another delima where the use
or eating of the pie by some person is both good and bad.  In this case,
though, we find that the standard is actually a more complex one, where the pie
is good when eaten, but only if the eating would not add weight, and only when
the opportunity to apply the pie to a clowns face is not present.  A standard
fitting the whims of man, often called "usefulness", might cover such a case,
but may simply be complex, as was stated.

A standard, however, is always present in the judging of the goodness of some
thing, and the falling short of such a standard is then called bad. The
standard, however, is also considered the correct one, since one does not hold
something to a faulty standard without knowing it as such, and would call such
an irrelevent standard.  Incorrect standards, while still standards, would be
those not included in the considerations of ethics or a  subject for debate
in ethics.  It is the inquiry into the correctness of the standards used which
is the subject of the philosophy of ethics, and the standard of human conduct
which is the more particular subject of ethics.



Part II:        Being

In understanding the ethical standard as being a standard by which a thing is
judged, we must admit the distinction between a standard as a notion of how a
thing ought to be, and between things as they are.  Often referred to as the
distinction between the IS and the OUGHT, we find that this difference is
indeed true, and indeed needs to be if ethics and standards are to be
understood at all.

To make this clear, let us consider the broken car.  To some end, we tend to
call a car good when it runs correctly, and operates as it ought to.  Yet, as
many of us are only too aware, a car does not always operate so simply because
it ought to.  Bad engines and leaking radiators provide a clear case of the
distinction between standards and existence.  Indeed, were there no such
distinction at all, we would fail to judge things at  all, since things would
necessarily be as they ought to, and all things  could be said good or bad
without the need to judge them.

Wouldn't the standard itself be, exist, in the mind of the thinker, however?
Certainly, the idea of the standard is necessary to judging the goodness or
badness of things, yet we realize that a thing goes on being good or bad
(according to the standard) irregardless of whether we, or anyone, is
considering it at present.  Indeed, even if the standard by which we judge
things is incorrect, we know that something would go on being good or bad by
the correct standard, and would not depend on our knowledge of it as such.  And
so, just as the standard is distinct of existence, so the idea of the standard
does not conflict with this insight.

Confusion occurs from time to time concerning judging according to a standard
and things as they are.  Indeed, we call the very perception of things as they
are to be judging, after a sense, as when we say that we judge this to be a
car, and that to be a man.  In this, however, we are holding our perception of
a thing up to our notion of the thing we call it. In judging a car to be a car,
we hold the collection of perceptions we receive with the standard of carness,
judge the two to match, and call the perceived thing a car accordingly.  Since
our standard here is of what a car is, and not how it ought to be, we cannot be
said to be considering ethics in this sense of "judging".  "Judging" in the
sense it is meant in ethics is similar though, as some notion of how a thing
ought to be is held in to the way it is, if the two match, then the thing is
judged good, and otherwise it is judged bad, having some deficiency.

The consequences of this realization of the distinction of existence and ethics
are significant.  Consider the very common question in ethics: "Ought this be?" 
and "Ought we make this or that to be?".  In this case, the standard being
judged is one of the existence of the thing itself-- a thing's very being is
the standard being questioned.  This, in itself, should not be considered
examples of is-ought confusion firstly, since indeed a standard _outside_ of
existence is still being used to judge the existence of some thing. Secondly,
it seems certain that however we might affect the forms of things, we human
beings are not ourselves responsible for the existence of things, the laws of
nature we take advantage of, or of the cosmos in general.  With  these in mind,
it is likewise certain that these particular questions of ethics mentioned
above cannot themselves be counted among considerations of human ethics,
although they very often are.  While these are indeed important considerations
in the philosophy of ethics, they do not concern human ethics, and are thus
put aside for the present.

With all of this in mind now, we move to the next topic, that of human blame.



Part III:       Blame 

Blame is the problem of judging what is the ultimate, efficient, or agent
cause of some act which is good or bad.   Consider a shard of glass from a
broken window on a table.  The glass itself, not being the cause of its own
location, would not then be blamed for being where it is.  Its location is
the result of the breaking of the window, caused in turn by the striking of
the window by the baseball, caused in turn by the swinging of the bat, 
caused in turn by the movement of the arm, by the signal from a boy's brain.
Of course, the laws of physics and nature also come into play, but we will
place these questions aside for the moment.  And so, is this signal from the
boy's brain an agent cause?  Ought we then blame the boy?

Since human ethics deals with the standards by which we judge human action,
and since these judgements require that the humans judged are able to be 
blamed for these actions (are the efficient cause of these decisions to act),
we must conclude then that proper human ethics requires that human beings 
be initiators, or uncaused (free) agents-- the efficient cause of their 
decisions.

Much debate has dealt with the question of the human free will, and it seems
concluded by modernity that man is without such an aspect, and does not differ
from the animals in this respect.  How human ethics can be considered at all
without this benefit of blame is difficult to see, however.  Consider the
fatalist view.  Mankind, like the broken window, is but an intermediary in
an endless series of causes.  To blame one link in this series of inefficient
causes would then be an incorrect understanding of blame.  The question still
remains then, is blame required for ethics?

Consider the notion of deciding goodness and badness of action without the
free will.  In the first place, we would lose our objective judgement, as 
the very act of judging (in itself a free act otherwise, with the will to
think and consider one aspect of a question or another entirely in the
thinker) would have its cause in nature, whose good will and accuracy we would
be impotent to consider.  In the second place, and quite simply, morality is
understood as those acts which ought to be chosen, but choosing can not in
turn be understood without a chooser as an agent cause.  And so, in either
case, it seems that human ethics requires a free will to be present.  

Our present topic aside, the dispute over the existence of a free will in man,
shown to be a requirement for our moral considerations, is still denied or
doubted by some.  Of these, some attempt to explain a basis for morality 
without a human will, and do so in vain.  Of others who hold this view, they
derive from their assumption, and rightly derive, that this assumption is
destructive of ethics, and they assert moral relativism.  

Consider now the boy as an agent cause of his own actions.  Moving the body
to act, he becomes the cause of the shard of glass upon the table. He is
not the efficient cause, however, which means that he may not be entirely
blamed for the glass.  The glass itself is an effect of its creator, and
the ball's flight an effect of the laws of nature and physics.  How then do
these bare in ethical questions?  Here it is difficult.  Some say that these
effects ultimately go to God, and that since He is good, his acts are also
so (such as the creating of the laws of nature, and the sand of the glass,
etc.)  Others say nature is eternal or cyclical, and the laws of nature 
without an agent cause, and thus there is none to blame for them.  In either
case, the deciding case for the ultimate cause of the glass' location, where
a moral question is concerned, remains in the boy.  He is blamable, unlike
a cyclical nature, and he may act good or bad, and thus is unlike the acts
of God.  

Now, do not confuse our topic as pertaining to the goodness or badness of
the location of the glass.  As mentioned previously, the shared blame is
only partially the boy's, and the others become irrelevent as stated.

This concludes this discussion of the nature of ethics.  Now some particular
opinions and observations about virtue, or correct action by an agent, and
the relationship of ethics to the philosophy of man are considered.



Part IV:        Passions 

Irregardless of whether one acknowledges the free agency of man necessary
to the consideration of him morally, all recognize the animal aspect of
man, and how it is subject to certain passions.

A passion is understood here as the subjection of the body to certain things
in nature.  The light to our eyes, the sound to our ears, and the ground to our
feet are all causes of our passions.  But less obvious things, such as chemicals
and drugs of various sorts, also subject the body to their  dispositions, and we
feel them.  Of the passions, it seems there are two sorts.  One is a violent
passion, such as being forcibly held down, or being drugged.  These are known by
their taking away from the man some ability to act, though they do not always
affect the will to act.  The other would then be the nonviolent, such as sight
or sound, which neither takes away an ability to act, or the will to act.  
Some might argue, however, that all passions affect ability in some way, and
that even the seemingly passive passions, such as sight and sound, affect the
ability to hear and see other things also.  This might be granted, so long as
it is acknowledged that the will to act is unaffected by neither sort.

It might also be said that certain passions affect the will, and that those
which bring death are among them.  This might also be granted, though it
is a bit beyond the scope of this discussion at this time.

With this understanding in mind now, we find that the passions affect 
discussions of ethics in a couple of ways.  One of these ways is in arguments
concerning what an ethic is.  Typically it will be said that because of some
passion, say that of sexual urges for instance, one ought take steps to
alleviate their circumstances.  In this case, as others, it is typically
granted that since one's urge is to do something, they therefore _will_ do
something, and (by implication) it is correct to do so.  Clearly, however,
when a statement of being, such as "man has such and such an urge" is used
to defend an assertion "man therefore ought to do such and such", a fallacy
of confusing the is with the ought is being committed, as was discussed before.
This argument also points to a more subtle assumption also, hinted at above,
that because some passion exists, that the passion will therefore be followed.
However, this assumption is antithetical to the assertion defended above that
man's will is free, without which blame and ethics can not be considered.

Another way in which the passions enter discussions of ethics concerns more
closely the ability of violent passions to prevent moral actions from being
done.  Here an important point about the relationship of the will to morality
needs to be made.  It is true that some passion or another may prevent someone
from acting as they ought, but this brings up the all important point mentioned
previously, that man can not be held responsible for the acts of nature around
him, or the circumstances of both nature and body which may prevent him from
acting.  Like the ball breaking the glass, even if the existence of the ball and
its flight could be wholey placed in the thrower, surely the placement of the
window can not, and the boy can not for this be blamed.  Likewise the very laws
of nature which governed the balls flight are not the fault of the boys.  For
what then _can_ he be blamed.

It seems indeed that one aspect of man's nature is above the simple passions,
both violent and passive, and beyond the laws of nature and the existence of
things wholey out of his control.  This is the human will, and it is from this
morality springs.  We call the simple efficient chosing of the will an
intention, and it is intent indeed from which blame springs.  We can not blame
the boy that nature did not cooperate with his intentions, but we can blame him
for those intentions more assuredly, as these intentions have their sole
efficient source in his agency.  We can likewise blame him for not intending to
consider his actions before willing them, and for not choosing to be careful.



Part V:         Authority

Here we consider how one comes to know of moral things, and from where moral
edicts spring.

In the first place, we must recall the state in which any moral edict exists may
not be as an essence of some existent thing.  Were this so, we would be back to
the state mentioned previously, in which goodness and badness is part of the 
nature of things, fails to be a standard by which things may be judged, and thus
things are no longer truely capable of being good or ill.  Now, this is fine for
things not morally considered, such as the standard for existent things in
themselves, for  which we may not be blamed.  However, such a position for the
acts of men is anachronistic to ethics.

With an ethical edict then as a standard, devoid of existence, we find that 
the form a standard can at best take on is as an idea, from which a judgement
may be made about goodness and badness.  This requires then that a mind be
present to receive the standard.  Without a mind in which ethics is contained
for the purpose of judging, it cannot then be said that there is an ethics
at all.  Why is this?  For the reason stated before-- an ethic is a standard
devoid of necessary being, either as some mystical Platonic "form", or as
actual existence.  We call these notions then, which may or may not be
existing, but which are comprehended and considered, "ideas", of which a
standard is certainly a subset.

Now we must consider how these edicts indeed become necessary, and from where
they spring.  Clearly, since a standard exists firstly and by nature as an 
idea, and states how a thing (and more particularly an act) is to be judged
good or bad, we find that it must indeed be a particular conscious thing which
first holds this idea.  This is the mind holding the ethic, previously
mentioned.  When considering the nature of the mind holding such an idea, 
certainly an omniscient mind is sufficient for the purpose, but not necessary.
If a particular standard is indeed a true standard, and one by which actions
and things are judged, then the mind holding it would, by definition, be an
authority on the ethics of the thing in question.  An omniscient mind, in
turn, would be an authority on goodness in general, as it would hold all
standards.

However, this does not assist in the determination of what a true ethic is. 
After all, many claim to be authorities on these very subjects, though their
assertions contradict.  This is to say that there is nothing in the nature of
consciousness which requires that it know moral answers, though the existence
of moral answers requires that there be a mind to know them.  But then we find
that an omniscient mind is the only necessary authority, while all lesser minds
are only incidental authorities on moral questions.  Now, since nothing 
necessary (such as a true moral standard of good) may come from an incidental
source, we find that moral answers require a necessary source.

Now, as to the source of moral edicts, let us again consider what their source
may be from their nature.  In the first place, from what we know above about
false authorities; we know we require an authoritative mind to know a moral
standard.  Again, a standard may not be an existant form to maintain it's
meaning as a standard, but can only be an ideal of some perfection in a mind,
whose authority we can derive from the true knowledge of moral answers it
contains.  Secondly, to be a source of moral edicts, the authoritative mind must
be prior to the matters to which the standards pertain.  This can be seen since
while the things to which morality and standards apply to are contingent things
(some act can not be considered good or bad if it is never done, and a dog can
never be a good thing if its parents never mate), while moral standards are
necessary, these standards then must be with regard for their incidental 
subjects.

It is from the matters discussed above we find our most important insight
thusfar-- for there to be morality, there must be a necessary, authoritative
mind which exists, and this mind must be prior to all things which may be
judged.



Part VI:        Nature 

Underlying some thought is a notion of the goodness or badness of 
bringing things to be, and how human ethics is to be judged thus.  It is
usually said then that since the existence of some thing or event is good
or bad, then the acts of men preceding these things and events in nature must
also be good or bad.  An example would be that of poverty, which many 
universally believe ought not exist.  It is then said that that which 
precedes, causes, etc the elimination of poverty must therefore be a good act.
This is then brought back to the discussion above  by noting that
in every case some condition of man is considered to be a bad or good
condition, and that good or bad acts can be therefore derived.

The error here begins with an understanding of incidental effects. 
Certainly when one wills to move his arm, the arm moves.  However, when one
wills to fly, one does not necessarily rise.  We find then that the effects
following an act of willing are indeed incidental to the act of willing in 
itself.  Since ethics deals with good and bad acts of willing, it would seem
to cover these acts only, without regard to the fact that they may or may not
have incidental effects.  Even on fairly clear cases, such as one man killing
another with a gun deriving that it was a bad act to will to pull the trigger
(which would seem to cover a true ethical matter), we find that were the man 
limp in his hand, his willing to pull the trigger would suddenly not be a bad
act (since it results in no death), which is an absurdity with the above
statement that willing to pull the trigger IS bad.  Saving our obhorance of
murder, it should be noted that it is willing to murder which is the bad act,
not the willing to pull the trigger.

Hypocracy.
Naturalism & the mean.


Part VII:       Modernity

Part VIII:      God 

Part IX:        Political Theory

Part X:         Ignorance