ETHICS

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      September 22, 2009 - While assembling this website I landed upon information that not merely substantiates my views, the evidence is quite excellent in it well illustrating the difficulties that are so prevalent in several fields including psychology, philosophy, and much of biology. Though I may be anxious to return to this site to finish the designing and dialog, at the moment there is a greater need to finish compiling the newly discovered evidence so that this site’s topics might be much better understood by the casual reader who has not yet read Logics Origin.

      It is my hope that when I do return to finishing this site, the information made available to the public might be well received.

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      What is, exactly, this thing called ETHICS?

      For over three-thousand years western man has debated the topic of ethics. If man was not capable of settling the question of ethics in three-thousand years, then, logically, if the methods of searching for answers did not work in the past, then the methods will not work in the future.

      "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein

      Ethicsmorals.com is a critical logics-based methodology that searches for answers within the conviction that all healthy minds are capable of discovering the answers to all questions. If a mind possesses sufficient knowledge to form a coherent question, then the mind has sufficient knowledge to coherently answer the question. The trick is, of course, knowing how to sequence the questions.

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      Dictionary definition of ethics: "A system of moral values."
      Dictionary definition of morals: "A system of ethical values."
      The definitions are circular, and without knowing the nature of ethics or morals, an individual cannot know the nature of either.

      In the Greek, "ethos" is defined as "customs." In the Latin, "mores" is defined as "customs." The English word "customs" might be capable of being translated as "ethos" [ethics] and "mores" [morals], but in the English, customs are not synonymous to ethics and morals. It might be customary for men to wear skirts in one culture, but the wearing of trousers does not render a man unethical and/or immoral. Ethics and morals are not customs, but rather must be of a different nature, and thus, neither the Greek nor the Latin words pertain to the English terms of ethics and morals, and if the two English words do not mean what the original Greek and Latin words meant, then there is no reasonable need to pretend that the two words must continue being connected to the original Greek and Latin definitions, or in other words, we are free to toss all definitions out the window and start fresh with new interpretations and definitions.

      The difficulty with western philosophy for over three-thousand years has been that it approached the topic of ethics while under the belief that definitions should be capable of being derived from words, while western philosophy never appeared capable of recognizing the simple reality that words are the symbols of things, not the things symbolized, and that therefore the definitions will be found in the actions themselves, and not in the words.

      Gold existed prior to man's invention of economies that use gold. Animals existed prior to man's invention of zoology that studies animals. If a man can be ethical, under any definition, then man was capable of being ethical prior to the first written words, as well as prior to religions, philosophies, and all other inventions of man's. If a thing existed prior to a philosophy, then the thing's origin cannot be found within the philosophy, nor can a thing's nature be known if its origins are not known, and since ethics existed prior to western philosophy, then the search for an answer to the origins and nature of ethics cannot be found within western philosophy. Western philosophy is dead; only logic can survive.

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      The word "ethics" is a symbol of a real thing, the word is not the thing being symbolized, but what, exactly, is this thing called "ethics?"