11.ii.08 Ethics

In Ethics, we have been moving back and forth between discussion of individual student topics for the descriptive ethics project, presenting major criteria of ethical consideration, and examining Plato's Socratic dialogues.

The basic sense I have of these lessons is that they are a bit disjointed, and I imagine that the student experience may be the same. One of the points I hoped to avoid in the course was the problem of students acting without a clear notion of what they were to do, and to know what to do in respect to ethics requires that one have some notion of

1. the nature of ethical problems, or what sorts of acts and ideas about acts are given moral weight (that is, what sorts of acts or ideas about acts may be construed as having to do with right and wrong, with good and evil)

2. the nature of ethical principles, or what sorts of fundamental ideas govern thinking about moral problems, and

3. the nature of ethical method, or what way one can or should approach either discovering principles or interpreting problems of the moral variety.

My greatest concern at this point in the course is to find a way to achieve a clear and complete presentation of each of the matters listed above. In the future, I must consider ways to present more basic information sooner in the course, so that we have a common vocabulary and common information about ethics within the first three or four weeks of the course.

For now, I think the best approach is to continue to move back and forth between the presentation of criteria and the presentation on Plato.

Last class session I spent some time talking about the difference between fact and value which is worth summarizing.
"Persons committed to Buddhism are to engage in right livelihood, which argues against, for example, work as a butcher, or as a soldier, or as a sex-worker": this is a factual statement. It asserts something about the values of Buddhism. A committed Buddhist will generally declare that sex-work, for example, does not lead to the ultimate goal of the end of suffering, and may indeed lead the sex-worker and others to increased suffering. This, again, is a factual statement about Buddhists, but it points to ethical principles, which are values.

However, so long as the statement is about Buddhists or Buddhism, it is not a value-assertion, but a fact-assertion.

If I were to say "Sex-work is wrong because it may lead to suffering," I make a value-assertion. I am no longer proposing something which can be assessed both logically and empirically, that is, both by the rules of thought and the evidence of the senses.

In making a statement about Buddhists, I say something which can be tested by the senses: I can watch what Buddhists do, I can read what Buddhists write, I can hear what Buddhists say. I can judge by my senses whether what I learn about Buddhists has logical consistency and coherence. If it has, I can accept it as being logically valid and factually correct.

But I can only assess the logical validity of the statement "sex-work is wrong because it may lead to suffering". I might be able to judge whether I myself suffer because of sex-work, and I might extrapolate that this makes sex-work wrong -- but I cannot assess this conclusion as a fact: it would be value.

This is one of the important points made in Plato's dialogue "Euthyphro": it is on points of value that the gods differ, not on matters of fact. Therefore, on the very point to which one might wish to appeal to the gods for counsel -- moral problems -- the gods differ, and therefore if the gods define morality one is certain to give offense at some level.