The Wonderful World of Secular Ethics

Welcome to

The Wonderful World of Secular Ethics!

     My goal with this series of posts is to outline my moral system and show various philosophical points along the way. I also wish to put my view in text as a way of sorting all of this out for myself, so I may seem to argue with myself...this is intentional. I consider myself, and anyone else who loves wisdom and actively seeks it, a philosopher but I am by no means a good one. I will likely make logical blunders or miss something. Please view my work with a critical eye and let me know when you find anything that isn't right, I welcome criticism as an opportunity to improve myself. I see this as the proper attitude to approach such topics. 

"Now if you are one of my sort, I should like to cross-examine you, but if not I will let you alone. And what is my sort? you will ask. I am one of those who are very willing to be refuted if I say anything which is not true, and very willing to refute anyone else who says what is not true, and quite as ready to be refuted as to refute, for I hold that this is the greater gain of the two..." 

-Socrates (Gorgias dialogue)

A little tangent on the word "Secular"

     As a christian I had a gut reaction to the word "Secular". I associated "Secular" with atheist, worldly, evil, or sinful. I feel it is important to note at the start I am not proposing "Atheist Ethics". When I use the word secular I mean simply that this ethical system does not require religious belief to work. Religious people are welcome to use this system while maintaining belief in souls, heaven, hell, God, or the supernatural. In this context secular simply means "open to everyone regardless of their religious beliefs". 

Philosophy, a brief overview

     Philosophy comes from the Greek root words philo (loving) and sophia (knowledge, wisdom). Philosophy is commonly broken down into several subcategories or branches.

Aesthetics‎ - The philosophy of beauty, art, and taste.

Epistemology - The philosophy of what we know and how we know it.

Ethics‎ - The philosophy of right and wrong action or behavior.

Logic - The philosophy of reasoning and argumentation.

Metaphysics - The philosophy of the ultimate nature of reality.

Political philosophy - The philosophy of society and government.

     The bulk of my posts will deal with the study of Ethics (Hey, it's in the title) but It is impossible to talk about one branch of philosophy without wandering onto another branch from time to time. I will try to narrow my posts as much as possible... it's easy to get off topic here.

How do I... Ethics

     Ethics comes from the greek word ethos meaning "habit". This is because the illustrious Aristotle believed that in order to be moral you must perform right actions out of habit... don't worry I'll go into much more detail on this in the section Moral Theory: Virtue Ethics.

     For the scope of my posts ethics or moral philosophy, the terms are interchangeable, is the study of how we ought to act, what is right, and what the good life is. I've also heard it defined as the criteria by which we sort actions into the categories of the morally acceptable, the morally unacceptable, and the morally obligatory. Either definition will serve us perfectly well for our purposes here.

The field of ethics is broken down further into 3 main categories.

Meta-ethics - The study of the nature of moral theory.

(What is goodness?)

Normative Ethics - The study of moral prescriptions.

(How should we act?)

Applied Ethics - The study of actual moral questions people face in certain situations.

(Is abortion wrong?)

     These 3 categories will likely melt into each other through my posts but it's important to be able to spot the difference when you see it. Asking "is murder wrong?" is very different from asking "Why is murder wrong?". 

Why do ethics?

     There is a deep seated desire in myself to be moral. I wish to live the best life I can while providing that same opportunity to others. I simply care about my own wellbeing, the wellbeing of my friends and loved ones, and the general wellbeing of society. Perhaps this feeling or one like it is genetically innate in humans, the result of our large brains or maybe it is taught.

     I had the benefit of being raised by people who highly valued morality, though they  profoundly disagreed on what exactly that was. My mother is a christian, and though she has relaxed her views in later years they were much more fundamentalist during my childhood. She stressed compassion for others, self sacrifice, courage and strength of convictions. My father is an agnostic with a buddhist bent who always stressed respect, tolerance, peace and love. My step mother, an avowed atheist,  helped shape my later childhood with secular values like democracy, feminism, and critical thinking... though I fought her tooth and nail in the beginning it seems they rubbed off on me after all.

     So why do I do ethics? After losing my faith I also lost my moral theory... It's hard to follow divine command theory when you don't believe in any gods. Before all out apostasy there were cracks in my moral philosophy, I reasoned that homosexuals did not deserve to be shamed for who they love, but instead of reevaluating my whole philosophy I just put a band-aid on it and put it aside in my mind. Now, however, I am forced to either adopt a new moral theory, build my own, or float on without one and lean solely on my moral intuitions. 

     The question "Why do ethics?" should not be confused with the question "Why be good?". "Why be good?" is a question I often get from fundamentalist christians when discussing the fact that people can be good without a god. It often seems to be an issue of insufficient reward/punishment motivation, the phrase "What if I don't care about harming others, going to jail, or getting killed?" seems like a show stopper to some christians but my response of "What if I don't care about going to hell?" seems ridiculous to them. I will talk about moral motivation in greater length later on, it's just not what I mean here.

Thank you for reading. Any comments, questions, or corrections are greatly welcome.
-Adam