Ethics: Applied and Care
Applied ethics as the be all and end all of ethics is stupid.
Ethics of Care as the be all and end all of ethics is stupid.
Why?
This is VERY simple. Both effectively resist any sense of responsibility.
If we take the Trolly Problem and side with applied ethics then we veer towards some isolated scenario and such an isolated scenario cannot be applied across numerous other instances. It is an avoidance rather than some useful means to approach any given problem.
If we take the Trolley Problem again and use the Ethics of Care then we dismiss the scenario as unrealistic voicing concerns over the lack of human relationships and viewing humans as quantifiable items. If the scenario is skewed and we have vested emotional attachment to the people tied to the track then there is at least a flicker of a reaction. There is still no responsibility taken as many represent the Care as doing whatever they can to avoid responsibility for actions.
My point here is that justification for an action is a postmortem not reason for taking the action. Humans are very, very good at convincing themselves that they acted in some manner after the fact. Most if the time we actually act before thinking and then shirk responsibility to varying degrees depending on whether or not the outcome of said action is satisfactory or otherwise.
You may ask if we act without thinking then how can we be responsible? Should we be forever stuck in a state of paralysis and decide nothing?
No. Yet this is a common feature too often enough.
How should we live? Is directly at the heart of philosophical thought and therefore ethics too. It is with this questioning that we can employ such hypotheticals to pick apart our actions and imagine scenarios where we are confused and stressed. By taking the Trolley Problem seriously we can adjust it and move towards a hypothetical act that we would be most happiest with seeing ourselves carry out. Although such scenarios will never play out in real life it aids our sense of action to direct more or less towards how we would act without thinking - even if in reality our action turns out to be against our will. It is precise where we fail to act as we would have wished to that the strength of this view lies. Without this view we are more likely to justify our action rather than analyse it and improve upon our possible future actions.
In short, Ethics of Care can too easily be viewed as justification and Applied Ethics as pure unabated relativism in disguise where any form of justification can be readily applied.
The biggest hurdle I have found when approaching the question how should I live? is in how I can recover from the justifications I invent after acts and in how to use both the Ethics of Care (the interpersonal) and the Applied Ethics (the variety of life) without holding fast to either.
A justification you can live with is still just a lie told to placate yourself and others (herein lies the problem with Care Ethics). How we relate is clearly important, yet within our communication and relation we form false judgement to navigate the spectre of the public world and how it imposes upon us through some imagined body.
In a unique situation (which all situations are) one should probably have a touch stone to refer to (herein lies the problem with Applied Ethics). In an ever shifting scheme of ethical problems we are instantly forgiven due to the diversity of experience; justification is a soothing balm that leaves a scar deep within. If we truly wish to act as we would like to act then failure is essential and facing failures in thought puts us in good stead to perhaps fail in a more manageable way. Without assessing some set hypothetical problem with a serious head we miss the opportunity to hone our future behaviour.
The readiness for humans to avoid the uncomfortable is understandable but I see no Justification for doing so other than as a means to slowly destroy yourself and others around you. One possible solution here is to view the uncomfortable as a challenge and chip away at it bit by bit but beware that such an action allows you to justify any future actions you take.
Thanks for reading :)
Ethics of Care as the be all and end all of ethics is stupid.
Why?
This is VERY simple. Both effectively resist any sense of responsibility.
If we take the Trolly Problem and side with applied ethics then we veer towards some isolated scenario and such an isolated scenario cannot be applied across numerous other instances. It is an avoidance rather than some useful means to approach any given problem.
If we take the Trolley Problem again and use the Ethics of Care then we dismiss the scenario as unrealistic voicing concerns over the lack of human relationships and viewing humans as quantifiable items. If the scenario is skewed and we have vested emotional attachment to the people tied to the track then there is at least a flicker of a reaction. There is still no responsibility taken as many represent the Care as doing whatever they can to avoid responsibility for actions.
My point here is that justification for an action is a postmortem not reason for taking the action. Humans are very, very good at convincing themselves that they acted in some manner after the fact. Most if the time we actually act before thinking and then shirk responsibility to varying degrees depending on whether or not the outcome of said action is satisfactory or otherwise.
You may ask if we act without thinking then how can we be responsible? Should we be forever stuck in a state of paralysis and decide nothing?
No. Yet this is a common feature too often enough.
How should we live? Is directly at the heart of philosophical thought and therefore ethics too. It is with this questioning that we can employ such hypotheticals to pick apart our actions and imagine scenarios where we are confused and stressed. By taking the Trolley Problem seriously we can adjust it and move towards a hypothetical act that we would be most happiest with seeing ourselves carry out. Although such scenarios will never play out in real life it aids our sense of action to direct more or less towards how we would act without thinking - even if in reality our action turns out to be against our will. It is precise where we fail to act as we would have wished to that the strength of this view lies. Without this view we are more likely to justify our action rather than analyse it and improve upon our possible future actions.
In short, Ethics of Care can too easily be viewed as justification and Applied Ethics as pure unabated relativism in disguise where any form of justification can be readily applied.
The biggest hurdle I have found when approaching the question how should I live? is in how I can recover from the justifications I invent after acts and in how to use both the Ethics of Care (the interpersonal) and the Applied Ethics (the variety of life) without holding fast to either.
A justification you can live with is still just a lie told to placate yourself and others (herein lies the problem with Care Ethics). How we relate is clearly important, yet within our communication and relation we form false judgement to navigate the spectre of the public world and how it imposes upon us through some imagined body.
In a unique situation (which all situations are) one should probably have a touch stone to refer to (herein lies the problem with Applied Ethics). In an ever shifting scheme of ethical problems we are instantly forgiven due to the diversity of experience; justification is a soothing balm that leaves a scar deep within. If we truly wish to act as we would like to act then failure is essential and facing failures in thought puts us in good stead to perhaps fail in a more manageable way. Without assessing some set hypothetical problem with a serious head we miss the opportunity to hone our future behaviour.
The readiness for humans to avoid the uncomfortable is understandable but I see no Justification for doing so other than as a means to slowly destroy yourself and others around you. One possible solution here is to view the uncomfortable as a challenge and chip away at it bit by bit but beware that such an action allows you to justify any future actions you take.
Thanks for reading :)
Comments (36)
What's your point? How would you respond to the trolley problem yourself?
Or have you thought about how you feel about the trolley problem and you find that you're not decided either?
My answers to such Trolley problems are irrelevant here because I do not believe public statements made about how we would act in such a scenario are anything but social posturing. That said, if the case is merely of more lives surviving then I would lean into more lives surviving as I value human lives.
That's fair.
To me, whatever action one takes, there's always an imperfect consequence. But it's not necessarily "wrong". No wrong answer.
Also, to me, I would not intentionally murder a human being who did not cause the situation just to save more people. Circumstances such as that are unavoidable, and luck has to do with it.
Quoting L'éléphant
:up: :up:
Well, if the people were members of your family I think you may think differently. Ethics of Care is kind of stating this is okay and if it was saving your child you would likely sacrifice many lives for one. The justification is @180 Proof where the responsibility is shirked as one is justified without a need to claim responsibility because The Ethics of Care is your back up.
Point being that strict adherence to Applied Ethics or Ethics of Care is a means of justification where their use is truly about exploring how we wish to act rather than applying justification in a social realm before or after the act.
The very idea of some ethical doctrine seems contrary to me.
Subset of Normative Ethics would be more accurate I think? I believe Virtue Ethics is more or less about how we wish to be as a person rather than focusing on our degrees of empathy to those familiar and unfamiliar to us?
Correct me if I am wrong. I generally see Ethics of Care as a very narrow scope of the human condition but certainly an important one when dealing with ethical problems.
I have already in my previous post corroborated with a link to the wiki article on care ethics along with its founder Carol Gilligan.
When I hear Virtue Ethics I tend to think of Aristotle and the foundation of know thyself rather than cleaving to benevolence as the most important item.
Update:
For anyone interested in actually reading a more extensive synopsis of care ethics than the wiki article:
https://iep.utm.edu/care-ethics/#H5
Bye bye.
I will say that the whole development of Care Ethics was someone in opposition to Virtue Ethics which focuses on individual flourishing and it is this precise point where Care Ethics strongly stands in opposition to it.
Gilligan is where the idea originated. Storm compares Care Ethics to Buddhist Virtues. None of this is particularly relevant to the OP and my claims.
First off, I think you misunderstood what care ethics is.
Quoting 180 Proof
:up:
By responsibility I thought it was clear enough? If not the responsibility is shirked when the Ethical doctrine is held up as justification for actions after the fact.
Benevolence is just a vacuous stance that does not intend to do good only to behave as if one is caring and well meaning. No one can truly be well meaning and kind in the face of problems life throws at you. Virtue Ethics is not merely an isolated part of humanity being raised on some pedestal above all other human attributes and characteristics. Nor is Virtue Ethics an isolation of masculinity.
Anyway, I guess I will have to explain the problem with Applied Ethics again as well if that was not clear. The problem with Applied Ethics is that it avoids any kind of definition clinging on to relativism. The perpetual response being it depends true enough generally, but useless overall.
Of course I DO NOT think either idea is so dogmatic. Together Applied and Care Ethics do a damn good job of complementing each other. In isolation they are pretty hobbled.
This fits like a glove with my belief that both deontological & consequentialist ethics were known to but rejected by Aristotle (father of virtue ethics) & other ancient Greek philosophers. It's also possible that the Kantian & Benthamian ethics are subsumed, are a part of, virtue ethics and Aristotle simply didn't mention them separately because it was just too obvious, leaving us to connect the dots as it were.
I wouldn't want to say ethics is not about consistency (Kant) and numbers (Bentham-Mill) and I'm fairly certain Gilligan will agree; what care ethics, a type of virtue ethics, does is point out that ethics is beyond such considerations i.e. they matter, true, but even together they fail to capture the essence of ethics. Care ethics is an attempt to expose and fill in the gap in our understanding of ethics.
And I'm still stuck here until I articulated enough that this kind of thinking is what we do when we discard ethics and start playing the zero-sum game. Ethics is not zero sum.
The trolley problem is meant to remove your personal interest out of the equation and lets you decide for yourself what to do -- you're not supposed to be personally invested in those people.
Please let me remind you that this is not an example of a zero sum game. The doctor's situation and the man's wife situation are not on par. They're just not disadvantaged on the same level.
If the cancer problem was framed if you do not kill and steal the cure your wife will certainly die then it is similar to the Trolley Problem. The biggest difference being the hands on element of committing homicide whereas with the Trolley Problem you are in the situation with no vested interest but that can easily be altered by saying your wife is on one track and the inventor of the cure for cancer is on the other.
Why on earth is murder the first thing that springs to mind in your head? How about just stealing the cure and facing the consequences if caught?
Also, I am nit quite sure how any of this is addressing my claims in the OP?
All ethical systems are ethical. That is why they like degrees of accountability. The blame lies with the system rather than the individual - if there is any poor outcome.
Okay that's correct -- murder is not the first reaction.
Quoting I like sushi
I'm trying to tell you that what you think is ethics, it's really not. When you use the family relationships as a measure of your ethical decision, you're no longer talking about ethics, but something else.
Quoting I like sushi
All ethical systems are ethics. But not all decisions are ethical or ethics. One could decide based on height who to deprive of benefits, this is not ethics.
I am not here to waste my time or yours so spit it out before I lose patience then address the OP more directly perhaps rather tell me what I think?
:grin: I try ...
My point - which is overall irrelevant to the OP - was that the primary difference between care and virtue ethics is that care was set up in stark opposition to virtue ethics focusing on relationships whereas virtue is more about the individual.
And yes I am aware that philosophers have claimed that our relationships are who we are therefore care ethics is about the individual.
I guess I will need to rewrite the OP and start again as there is too much distraction.
That's a pretty central issue in my own considerations, too. The advantage of virtue ethics seems to be in the recognition that ethics is too complex to be captured in some finite set of rules; one has to trust one's judgement, and so one ought work to develop the capacity to judge. Hence cultivating virtue becomes the mark of a life well lived.
Care ethics serves to bind virtue to context.
So I don't see any opposition between care ethics and virtue ethics. But you seem to be juxtaposing them...
And I don't see justification as a negative thing; isn't giving leisurely consideration to your actions post hoc a good idea, if it is done with an eye to improvement? Seems to me to be an essential part of the process of developing one's virtue... A feedback loop.
Seems that the OP has some quite complex and intriguing consequences.
:fire:
:up:
Ok, explain then, what different things do men & women care about? Also, how does this difference impact ethics?
[s]Data is a collection of very personal individual experiences.
I'm at least one data point, oui monsieur?[/s]
Well, we are unlikely to see justification for an action as a negative thing. We know from the neurosciences that we are bias in terms of authorship to basic actions; meaning we deny or accept responsibility depending on how the outcome is perceived.
This is why I state that Applied Ethics and Care Ethics both shift the responsibility from the individual, in favour of the individual scenario or in favour of the nebulous interpersonal relations tied hard into societal norms and adherence there to.
The point being there are some differences and the fact that women are more interested in people than men (overall) does not necessarily translate as them being more caring. Also, caring too much is not really caring - assuming you were framing caring in a more positive sense that is.
I did already tell you. But you seemed to have not grasped what I'm saying.
So, please refer to Agent Smith and Banno's explanation of care ethics.
You have not addressed the OP because maybe you did not understand. Ever consider that? If your answer was yet another rant about me not knowing what ethics is that is not addressing the OP.
My point was - to repeat for the last time - that Applied Ethics (case determinate) and Care Ethics (interpersonal focus), as they stand alone, both resist any sense of responsibility.
Banno appears to have actually understood. He does not see how Care Ethics is opposed to Virtue Ethics though and it DOES NOT MATTER as I have stated several times already. I am not pursuing this to be constantly sidetracked by insignificant points. Either way I have already stated that Care Ethics was set up in opposition to Virtue Ethics because it was deemed as personal rather than interpersonal.
If you again keep on about that I will just ignore you so for the sake of an actual discussion how about addressing the OP? Last chance.