“Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.”
I have talked about human nature – which is about all of us- and I have talked about free will – which is about each one of us. Now, can we combine the two in a coherent system of ethics? We can at least try, which is precisely what I plan on doing. This post is mostly intended as general musings on systems of ethics, not the definition of one.
Now in regards to ethics the million steem question is – can a universal, objective system of ethics be derived directly from human nature? Not an easy question – this depends on where one stands in investigating the classics, like Hume’s is–ought problem or Moore naturalistic fallacy – writing tip: randomly name calling past philosophers makes you seem smart and well read.
One thing is certain: ethic systems are generally based on a first premise - some basic axioms - which, in the real of ethics, cannot be easily claimed as universal. This should be obvious by simply analyzing human civilization and finding wildly different systems.
Now the fact that there are different systems of ethics does not mean they are all valid. Are all systems equal, or are some better than others? The tendency is to say that, obviously, some are better – I believe that some are better than others, as do most people. Most of us wouldn’t believe something if we didn’t think it is good.
Some of those axioms will be better than others, in the sense that they are self-consistent, seem to be generally agreed upon, are easier to apply universally, but some things have to be asserted. A good place to start would be to see which things are present in most systems, a common denominator so to say, and move on from there.
Ethics systems have changed. Has human nature evolved in time? Hard to say if the nature part did, or just the nurture bit, driven by technology, information, education, outlook change and all that jazz . I don’t think it changed substantially, and me it seems to me that systems who tried to change some very basic facts of human nature have failed to take hold.
Humans have the need to eat and to do that they hunted, but after some time they learned how to satisfy hunger through agriculture – though some still claim we were better off as hunter gatherers. This often made humans much less nomadic then they were as hunter-gatherers – can this be considered a change in human nature? I think not.
As society evolves, some types of violence tend to decrease, but not disappear – is violence human nature or is it mostly determined by circumstances? Some people are inherently aggressive and that does not change, but as society evolves that aggression can be channeled differently or kept in check by isolation. Culture matters obviously, children learn from parents, society or religion affects people, and these evolve faster than the human creature.
A strong influence in modern times is availability of information. When people lived isolated in small town and villages, they didn’t know much about foreigners, so it was easy to view different as dangerous or evil, but as people learn that the inhabitants of other lands are people just like them, they may be inclined to more tolerance of The Others.
So the conclusion thus far: Humans have various views on morality, some better than others, and the views change in time. How can we craft this into a coherent universal system? Stay tuned for our next exciting installments in the series Homo homini lupus!