Ethics

Okay, so I've been thinking about ethics lately. Please don't ask me why, because I really don't know. Perhaps it was a quote from Alias when one character says, "Legally, he's right. Morally, he's a jerk." So anyways, onto ethics.

Plato said that if we know the good, we'll do the good. Now, all talks of incontinent actions aside, the real problem that ethics tries to address isn't how do we do the good, but how do we know the good. So many of the ethical frameworks out there focus not on how to do the good but on how to know what it is that we're supposed to do. Like Untilitarianism just takes for granted that you'll do what you should, as does Kantian(ism).

I guess I just always thought that we kind of threw Plato's ethics out due to his lack of ethics, but really, all the people that have come after him have tried to do is figure out how to know the good. Now, this doesn't take into account weakness of will, which is when we don't do what we think the good is. Or at least I think that's what it is. Keith gave us a cursory glance at weakness of will, even though its his area of expertise.

I don't really have anything to say on ethics except that I think you should be thinking about it, but not just like the philosophers do, as in what is the good, but also as in, how do I do the good. Because that's the hard part. And perhaps especially, how do I want to do the good, because no matter what Kant says, an action is more ethical if it is inline with your desires than if it isn't. As in, an action is better if you want to do it rather than if you do it out of a sense of duty.

And I'm really trying to live up to this site's claim of incoherentness and rambling, so I'm going to leave it at that. Just thought I'd let you know what I've been thinking about.