路虎揽胜配件价格表:THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY: | Ethics

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

In our first chapter, ethics was provisionally defined as the normative science of the conduct of human beings living in societies, and throughout his book there has been frequent reference to the ways in which the actions of one individual affect other individuals.

Even if we take the view those actions, which do not affect other people, are still the concern of Ethics, so that a course that could never return to human social life would still have moral duties, we would have to admit that the life of society is the normal atmosphere, and indeed the training ground of morality. Our ideas develop in association with those of other people and are being constantly criticized and modified by the opinions of others. The psychological grounds for our regarding our moral opinions and objectives are our discovery. In normal situations and circumstances, a man does any act for his own benefit or for the benefits of other peoples of society or for other human beings. This falls under three discussions in Ethics known as Egoism, Altruism and universalism.

Ethical egoism

Ethical egoism is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought only to do what is in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, in that the last-mentioned claims that people do only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism (which holds that it is rational to act in one’s self-interest) and individualism, neither of which claims that acting in one’s self-interest is necessarily right. Ethical egoism is not, however, necessarily opposed to either of these latter philosophies.

Ethical egoism contrasts with ethical altruism, which holds that moral agents have an obligation to help and serve others. Ethical egoism does not, however, require moral agents to disregard the well-being of others; nor does it require that a moral agent refrain from considering the well-being of others in moral deliberation, for what is in an agent’s self-interest may be incidentally detrimental, beneficial, or neutral in its effect on others. Individualism allows for the possibility of any of these, as long as what is chosen is efficacious in satisfying the self-interest of the agent.

Nor does ethical egoism necessarily entail that, in pursuing self-interest, one ought always to do what one wants to do, for, in the long term, the fulfillment of short-term desires may prove detrimental to the self. Fleeting pleasance, then, takes a back seat to protracted eudemonia. In the words of James Rachels, “Ethical egoism endorses selfishness, but it doesn’t endorse foolishness.

Ethical egoism is sometimes the philosophical basis for support of libertarianism or individualist anarchism, although can also be based on altruistic motivations. These are political positions based partly on a belief that individuals should not coercively prevent others from exercising freedom of action.

Types of ethical egoism

Three different formulations of ethical egoism have been identified: individual, personal and universal. An individual ethical egoist would hold that all people should do whatever benefits them;a personal ethical egoist would hold that he or she should act in his or her own self-interest, but would make no claims about what anyone else ought to do; a universal ethical egoist would argue that everyone should act in ways that are in their own interest.

A philosophy holding that one should be honest, just, benevolent etc., because those virtues serve one’s self-interest is egoistic; one holding that one should practice those virtues for reasons other than self-interest is not egoistic at all.

Proponents

Max Sterner was the first philosopher to call himself an egoist, it is questionable if he wanted to install a new idea of morality (ethical egoism) or argue against morality (amoralism). Others, such as Thomas Hobbes and David Gauthier, have argued that the conflicts which arise when people each pursue their own ends can be resolved for the best of each individual only if they all voluntarily forgo some of their aims — that is, one’s self-interest is often best pursued by allowing others to pursue their self-interest as well so that liberty is equal among individuals. Sacrificing one’s short-term self-interest in order to maximize one’s long-term self-interest is one form of “rational self-interest” which is the idea behind most philosophers’ advocacy of ethical egoism. Noted egoist Ayan Rand contended that there was a harmony of interest among humans, so that a moral agent could not rationally harm another person.

As Nietzsche (in Beyond Good and Evil) and Alasdair Macintyre (in After Virtue) are famous for pointing out, the ancient Greeks did not associate morality with altruism in the way that post-Christian Western civilization has done. The point however is questionable: Christianity’s highest norm is to love others as oneself, not more or instead of oneself, so self love is accepted. Aristotle’s view is that we have duties to ourselves as well as to other people (e.g. friends) and to the polis as a whole. The same is true for Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant, who claim that there are duties to us just as Aristotle did.

The term ethical egoism has been applied retroactively to philosophers such as Bernard de Mandeville and to many other materialists of his generation, although none of them declared themselves to be egoists. Note that materialism does not necessarily imply egoism, as indicated by Karl Marx, and the many other materialists who espoused forms of collectivist altruism.

Ethical egoism lends itself to anarchism and is another way of describing the sense that the common good should be enjoyed by all. It fits perfectly into the anarchist idea of ‘do what you want and harm no other, and then no harm shall come to you’.

Arguments for

James Rachel, in an essay that takes as its title the theory’s name, outlines the three arguments most commonly touted in its favor.

• “The first argument,” writes Rachel, “has several variations, each suggesting the same general point:

1. “Each of us is intimately familiar with our own individual wants and needs. Moreover, each of us is uniquely placed to pursue those wants and needs effectively. At the same time, we know the desires and needs of others only imperfectly, and we are not well situated to pursue them. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that if we set out to be ‘our brother’s keeper,’ we would often bungle the job and end up doing more mischief than good.”
2. To pursue actively the interests of others is to be officious. We should mind our own business and allow others to mind theirs.
3. To give charity to someone is to degrade him, implying as it does that he is reliant on such munificence and quite unable to look out for himself. “That,” reckons Rachel, “is why the recipients of ‘charity’ are so often resentful rather than appreciative.”
4. Altruism denies individual value and is therefore destructive both to society and its individual components, viewing life merely as a thing to be sacrificed. “Moreover, those who would promote this idea are beneath contempt—they are parasites who, rather than working to build and sustain their own lives, leech off those who do.”

• All of our commonly-accepted moral duties, from doing no harm unto others to speaking always the truth to keeping promises, are rooted in the one fundamental principle of self-interest.

Criticisms

Some contend that the view is implausible and that those who seriously advocate it usually do so at the expense of redefining “self-interest” to include the interests of others. An ethical egoist might counter this by asserting that furthering the ends of others is sometimes the best means of furthering the ends of oneself, or that, simply by allowing liberty to others, one’s self-interest is resultantly furthered.

A moralist don’t oppose egoism (or altruism), they just claim there are no reasons to think egoism is or should be ethical. You can just be a rational egoist, a homo economics, adopt instrumental rationality and don’t care about ethics or morality.

Ethical egoism has also been alleged as the basis for immorality. Thomas Jefferson writes in a 1814 letter to Thomas Law:

Self-interest, or rather self-love or egoism has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves, we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed, it is exactly its counterpart.

Ethical egoism is opposed not only by altruist philosophers; it is also at odds with the majority of religion. Most religions hold that ethical egoism is the product of a lack of genuine spirituality and shows an individual’s submersion in greed. Religious egoism is a derivative of egoism, whereby religion is used to validate one’s self-interest.

In The Moral Point of View, Kurt Baier objects that ethical egoism provides no moral basis for the resolution of conflicts of interest, which, in his opinion, form the only vindication for a moral code. Were this an ideal world, one in which interests and purposes never jarred, its inhabitants would have no need of a specified set of ethics. This, however, is not an ideal world. Baier believes that ethical egoism fails to provide the moral guidance and arbitration that it necessitates. Far from resolving conflicts of interest, in fact, ethical egoism all too often spawns them. To this, as Rachel has shown, the ethical egoist may object that he cannot admit a construct of morality whose aim is merely to forestall conflicts of interest. “On his view,” he writes, “the moralist is not like a courtroom judge, who resolves disputes. Instead, he is like the Commissioner of Boxing, who urges each fighter to do his best.”

Baiers is also part of a team of philosophers who hold, in an altogether more serious strain of the above, that ethical egoism is paradoxical; implying that to do what is in one’s best interests can be both wrong and right in ethical terms. Although a successful pursuit of self-interest may be viewed as a moral victory, it could also be dubbed immoral if it prevents another person from executing what is in his best interests. Again, however, the ethical egoist could retort by assuming the guise of the Commissioner of Boxing. His philosophy precludes empathy for the interests of others, so forestalling them is perfectly acceptable. “Regardless of whether we think this is a correct view,” adds Rachel, “it is, at the very least, a consistent view, and so this attempt to convict the egoist of self-contradiction fails.”

Finally, it has been averred that ethical egoism is no better than bigotry in that, like racism and homophobia, it divides people into two types — themselves and others — and discriminates against one type on the basis of some arbitrary disparity. This, to Rachel’s mind, is probably the best objection to ethical egoism, for it provides the soundest reason why the interests of others ought to concern the interests of the self. “What,” he asks, “is the difference between myself and others that justifies placing myself in this special category? Am I more intelligent? Do I enjoy my life more? Are my accomplishments greater? Do I have needs or abilities that are so different from the needs and abilities of others? What is it that makes me so special? Failing an answer, it turns out that Ethical Egoism is an arbitrary doctrine, in the same way that racism is arbitrary. We should care about the interests of other people for the very same reason we care about our own interests; for their needs and desires are comparable to our own.”

Rachel fails to see that (as already found by Descartes) I am the only one whose thoughts and feelings I directly experience, while I can in no way have direct access to the mental states of other people, but just make fallible assumptions about their thoughts based on my perception of them.

Altruism

Altruism is selfless concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures, and a core aspect of various religious traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Sikhism, and many others. Also, altruism is a key aspect of many humanitarian and philanthropic causes, exemplified in leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Mother Teresa. This idea was often described as the Golden rule of ethics. Altruism is the opposite of selfishness.

Altruism can be distinguished from feelings of loyalty and duty. Altruism focuses on a motivation to help others or a want to do good without reward, while duty focuses on a moral obligation towards a specific individual (for example, God, a king), a specific organization (for example, a government), or an abstract concept (for example, patriotism etc). Some individuals may feel both altruism and duty, while others may not. Pure altruism is giving without regard to reward or the benefits of recognition and need.

The concept has a long history in philosophical and ethical thought, and has more recently become a topic for psychologists (especially evolutionary psychology researchers), sociologists, evolutionary biologists, and ethnologists. While ideas about altruism from one field can have an impact on the other fields, the different methods and focuses of these fields lead to different perspectives on altruism. Research on altruism was sparked in particular after the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964, which was stabbed for over half an hour in front of passive witnesses who refrained from helping her.

Altruism in social sciences

If one performs an act beneficial to others with a view to gaining some personal benefit, then it is not an altruistically motivated act. There are several different perspectives on how “benefit” (or “interest”) should be defined. A material gain (for example, money, a physical reward, etc.) is clearly a form of benefit, while others identify and include both material and immaterial gains (affection, respect, happiness, satisfaction etc.) as being philosophically identical benefits. Knox (1999) ultimately argues that “Altruistic volunteers are either not truly altruistic or not rational.”

For illustration of this, Knox (1999) describes circumstances which he terms as “the volunteer’s folly”. In his example a lawyer volunteers his time on the weekends to help build low cost housing -professing that his motivation to do so is to help provide housing for the needy. However, Knox identifies that this is not the proper way for a lawyer to serve that particular interest. Since the lawyer’s work as a lawyer generates far more money than his work on the building site is worth, Knox suggests that he should simply put in more work as a lawyer and donate the proceeds of that work. This would serve his professed purpose to a higher degree, since that money would afford the project several times more work than he himself could provide to the project directly.

Some may find this logic disagreeable or counterintuitive as an ideation of altruism, because it seems to require that martyrdom — or fatal sacrifice for a greater cause — be the only actualization of altruism.

Psychological egoism can be accused of using circular logic. For instance, an egoist would not disagree with the following syllogism: “If a person has willingly performed an act, then he/she has manifested such intent in the form of that act. Fulfillment of one’s desires is the primary requisite of satisfaction. Ergo, a person can only willingly perform acts that result in his/her personal enjoyment.” This logic is sometimes viewed as circular or presumptuous. Specifically, egoism leans on the assumption that satisfaction is synonymous with self-satisfaction. Such a precept automatically sidesteps counterpoint, however, and remains unfalsifiable. Thus, until empirical evidence favors one view or the other, egoism must acquiesce to uncertainty.

Humans are not exclusively altruistic towards family members, previous co-operators or potential future allies, but can be altruistic towards people they don’t know and will never meet. For example, some humans donate to international charities and volunteer their time to help societies less fortunate. It can however be argued that an individual would contribute to a charity to gain respect or stature within his/her own community.

Beginning with an understanding that rational human beings benefit from living in a benign universe, logically it follows that particular human beings may gain substantial emotional satisfaction from acts which they perceive to make the world a better place.

Altruism in ethology and evolutionary biology

In the science of ethology (the study of animal behavior), and more generally in the social evolution, altruism refers to behavior by an individual that increases study compatible, however, with Darwin’s theory of evolution. Insistence on such cooperative behaviors between animals was first exposed by the Russian zoologist and anarchist Peter Kropotkin in his 1902 book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. The fitness of another individual while decreasing the fitness of the actor. Researchers on alleged altruist behaviors among animals have been ideologically opposed to the social Darwinist concept of the “survival of the fittest”, under the name of “survival of the nicest”—the latter being globally

Recent developments in game theory (see ultimatum game) have provided some explanations for apparent altruism, as have traditional evolutionary analyses. Among the proposed mechanisms are:

• Behavioral manipulation
• Bounded rationality (for example, Herbert Simon)
• Conscience
• Kin selection including eusociality
• Memes (by influencing behavior to favor their own spread, for example, religion)
• Reciprocal altruism, mutual aid
• Selective investment theory- a theoretical proposal for the evolution of long-term, high-cost altruism
• Sexual selection, in particular, the Handicap principle
• Reciprocity (social psychology)
• Indirect reciprocity (for example, reputation)
• Strong reciprocity

Pseudo-reciprocity

The study of altruism was the initial impetus behind George R. Price’s development of the Price equation which is a mathematical equation used to study genetic evolution. An interesting example of altruism is found in the cellular slime moulds, such as Dictyostelium mucoroides. These protests live as individual amoebae until starved, at which point they aggregate and form a multicelluler fruiting body in which some cells sacrifice themselves to promote the survival of other cells in the fruiting body. Social behavior and altruism share many similarities to the interactions between the many parts (cells, genes) of an organism, but are distinguished by the ability of each individual to reproduce indefinitely without an absolute requirement for its neighbors.

Jorge Moll and Jordan Graf man, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health and LABS-D’Or Hospital Network (J.M.) provided the first evidence for the neural bases of altruistic giving in normal healthy volunteers, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In their research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA in October, 2006, they showed that both pure monetary rewards and charitable donations activated the mesolimbic reward pathway, a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food and sex. However, when volunteers generously placed their interests of others before their own by making charitable donations, another brain circuit was selectively activated: the subgenual cortex septal region. These structures are intimately related to social attachment and bonding in other species. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.

A new study in which it is seen by some as breathing new life into the model of group selection for Altruism, known as “Survival of the nicest”. Bowles conducted a genetic analysis of contemporary foraging groups, including Australian aboriginals, native Siberian Inuit populations and indigenous tribal groups in Africa. It was found that hunter-gatherer bands of up to 30 individuals were considerably more closely related than was previously thought. Under these conditions, thought to be similar to those of the middle and upper Paleolithic, altruism towards other group-members would improve the overall fitness of the group.

If an individual defended the group but was killed, any genes that the individual shared with the overall group would still be passed on. Early customs such as food sharing or monogamy could have leveled out the “cost” of altruistic behavior, in the same way that income taxes redistribute income in society. He assembled genetic, climactic, archaeological, ethnographic and experimental data to examine the cost-benefit relationship of human cooperation in ancient populations. In his model, members of a group bearing genes for altruistic behavior pay a “tax” by limiting their reproductive opportunities to benefit from sharing food and information, thereby increasing the average fitness of the group as well as their inter-relatedness. Bands of altruistic humans would then act together to gain resources from other groups at this challenging time in history.

Altruist theories in evolutionary biology were contested by Amotz Zahavi, the inventor of the signal theory and its correlative, the handicap principle, based mainly on his observations of the Arabian Babbler, a bird commonly known for its surprising (alleged) altruistic behaviors.

Altruism in religion

Most, if not all, of the world’s religions promote altruism as a very important moral value. Hinduism, Jainism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and Sikhism place particular emphasis on altruistic morality.

Altruism was central to the teachings of Jesus found in the Gospel especially in the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain. From biblical to medieval Christian traditions, tensions between self-affirmation and other-regard were sometimes discussed under the heading of “disinterested love,” as in the Pauline phrase “love seeks not its own interests.” In his book Indoctrination and Self-deception, Roderick Hendry tries to shed light on these tensions by contrasting them with impostors of authentic self-affirmation and altruism, by analysis of other-regard within creative individuation of the self, and by contrasting love for the few with love for the many. If love, which confirms others in their freedom, shuns propagandas and masks, assurance of its presence is ultimately confirmed not by mere declarations from others, but by each person’s experience and practice from within. As in practical arts, the presence and meaning of love become validated and grasped not by words and reflections alone, but in the doing.

Though it might seem obvious that altruism is central to the teachings of Jesus, one important and influential strand of Christianity would qualify this. St Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica, I: II Question 26, Article 4 states that we should love ourselves more than our neighbor. His interpretation of the Pauline phrase is that we should seek the common good more than the private good but this is because the common good is a more desirable good for the individual. ‘You should love your neighbor as yourself’ from Leviticus 19 and Matthew 22 is interpreted by St Thomas as meaning that love for our self is the exemplar of love for others. He does think though, that we should love God more than ourselves and our neighbor, taken as an entirety, more than our bodily life, since the ultimate purpose of love of our neighbor is to share in eternal beatitude, a more desirable thing than bodily well being. Comte was probably opposing this Thomistic doctrine, now part of mainstream Catholicism, in coining the word Altruism, as stated above.

Thomas Jay Lord has argued in several books that altruism is but one possible form of love. And altruistic action does not always love action. Lord defines altruism as acting for the good of the other, and he agrees with feminists who note that sometimes love requires acting for one’s own good when the demands of the other undermine overall well-being.

Universalism

Universalism has many aspects and can be classified as a religion, theology and philosophy that generally hold all persons and creatures are related to God or the Divine and will be reconciled to God. A church or community that calls itself Universalistic may emphasize the universal principles of most religions and accept other religions in an inclusive manner, believing in a universal reconciliation between humanity and the divine. For example monotheistic religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam still claim a universal value of their doctrine and moral principles because they feel they are inclusive.

A belief in one common truth is also another important tenet. The living truth is seen as more far-reaching than national, cultural, or religious boundaries.

The term universalistic religion has been used to refer to religions which are open to all and have no ethnic considerations which would bar or limit anyone from being accepted as a member.

Christianity

In Christianity, Universalism refers to the belief that all humans can be saved through Jesus Christ and eventually come to harmony in God’s kingdom. A related doctrine, apokatastasis, is the belief that all mortal beings will be reconciled to God, including Satan and his fallen angels. Universalism was a fairly commonly held view among theologians in early Christianity: In the first five or six centuries of Christianity there were six known theological schools, of which four (Alexandria, Antioch, Cesarea, and Edessa or Nisibis) were Universalist, one (Ephesus) accepted conditional immortality, and one (Carthage or Rome) taught the endless punishment of the lost. The two major theologians opposing it were Tertullian and Augustine.

History of the Universalisms in the Seventeenth-Century and Eighteenth-Century

In the seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century Europe and America, other Christian reformers discovered little biblical support for the Christian concept of hell. These reformers came to believe in a universally loving God and felt that God would grant all human beings salvation. They became known as the Universalists.

Hinduism

Hindu Universalism denotes the ideology that all religions are true and therefore worthy of toleration and respect. Veneration for all other religions was articulated by Gandhi:

“After long study and experience, I have come to the conclusion that all religions are true; all religions have some error in them; all religions are almost as dear to me as my own Hinduism, in as much as all human beings should be as dear to one as one’s own close relatives. My own veneration for other faiths is the same as that for my own faith; therefore no thought of conversion is possible.”

In Ananda Marga, a branch of Hinduism, Universalism refers to the idea that energy and matter are evolved from cosmic consciousness. Thus, all created beings are of one universal family. This is an expansion of humanism to include everything as family, based on the fundamental truth that the universe is a thought projection from the Supreme.

Judaism

Judaism teaches that God chose the Jewish people to be in a unique covenant with God, and one of their beliefs is that Jewish people were charged by the Torah with a specific mission — to be a light unto the nations, and to exemplify the covenant with God as described in the Torah to other nations. Not explicitly a Universalist theology, this view, however, does not preclude a belief that God also has a relationship with other peoples — rather, Judaism holds that God had entered into a covenant with all mankind as Noachides, and that Jews and non-Jews alike have a relationship with God.

Islam

Muslims believe that ALLAH has sent revelations to prophets throughout human history, of which the Holy Qur’an delivered to Muhammad is the last, intended to reiterate and bring final clarity to God’s instructions, in order to bring peace and harmony to humanity through Islam (submission to God). Islam expressly recognizes the legitimacy of prior monotheistic religions, such as Judaism and Christianity, at least as they were originally revealed. Muhammad(The last prophet, peace be upon him) and his successors in the Khilafat sought to put into practice the regime of justice commanded by God in the Qur’an to ensure the security of the lives and property of non-Muslims under the dhimmi system, as well as according them certain rights of worship. The Qur’an identifies Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and “Sabi’un” or “baptists” (usually taken as a reference to the Mandeans and related Mesopotamian groups) as “people of the book” entitled to recognition and protection as religious communities. At various times this status has been extended to other religious groups, such as Manichaeans and Hindus, although other Muslims have disagreed with their dhimmi status, and even rejected it for Zoroastrians and Mandeans despite the fairly clear command of the Qur’an.

Thus Islam carries a kind of universalist idea in its core concept of God’s revealing work to all humankind, even though for most Muslims this does not entail the belief that all will be saved in the end. It is believed that Islam, as the final form of religion God revealed, offers the best system by which salvation can be attained, and its worldwide spread is seen as a development towards a final unity of humankind within this religion. The Muslim ideal of universal brotherhood is the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) prescribed by Islam. Each year close to three million people from every corner of the globe assemble in Mecca to perform Hajj and worship God. No individual can be identified as a king or pauper because every man is dressed in ihram clothing. Although some forms of Islam espouse predestination ideas, most schools of thought within the religion place ultimate responsibility with individual human decision; and since Islam has no concept of human debilitation comparable to the Christian concept of original sin, in theory there is nothing preventing a Universalist resolution of human fate within the Islamic belief system.