What Are Ethics?
Why it’s actually almost impossible to define any internally-consistent set of rules for human action
Let’s begin with seemingly the easiest question of all: what are ethics? A basic definition can be provided: Ethics are moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or conduct of an activity.
OK, so now we need to ask: what do we mean by the word moral? The standard definition is: Moral principles are standards of right and wrong that a person or group regards as valid.
From this we can deduce that moral values are subjective and will vary greatly between different people and between different groups. It would appear, therefore, unlikely that any univerally accepted definition of the word moral can arise. Yet nearly as far back as we have written records, we see humans attempting to codify behaviors according to some system of right and wrong. We yearn for clear rules by means of which to structure our reactions to the world around us.
As we’ll see in this article, our problems don’t end with the ambiguity of definitions. Even when we arbitrarily decide to define some action as good we can easily find situations in which this defnition doesn’t help us in any way.
Let’s consider the following example: a man whose job is to put tiles on the…
