{"id":6165,"date":"2021-03-03T22:47:48","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T03:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/?p=6165"},"modified":"2021-03-03T22:47:48","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T03:47:48","slug":"3-3-ethics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/2021\/03\/03\/3-3-ethics\/","title":{"rendered":"3\/3 Ethics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ethics is a tricky subject. Nearly everything we do individually and as a society is based on morals, yet nobody can agree on a single moral code. When I was growing up, my ethics were mainly influenced by my family, my religion, and my schooling. As a kid we are taught that everything is normative. Don\u2019t lie, don\u2019t steal, don\u2019t cheat, don\u2019t push over your classmates on the playground. You won\u2019t find any classroom in the world that teaches children to lie, steal, and cheat (or at least I really hope not). But growing up, things become less simple. We start asking ourselves, \u201chmmm well I was taught not to push over my classmates, but what if they push me first?\u201d We question our ethical teachings and learn that, really, there is nothing normative about ethics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have a hard time believing that any ethical ideas can be normative. Ethics are the core of every society and every person. While listening to the podcast, I was very interested by how Professor Bezio explained the differentiation in cultures and religions and how that related to the world\u2019s ethics. Moral codes apply differently across different cultures which is why we are forced to function in the in-between-land of normative and relative ethical frameworks. I don\u2019t think anything is ever completely normative. Because each culture and subculture have different versions of the \u201ctruth,\u201d there can never be completely agreed upon moral standards. For instance, every religion preaches that they know the truth or are close to knowing the truth but there are so many religions in the world. That is thousands of versions of the \u201ctruth.\u201d This is why I think that there is no truth, or at least no truth that we are going to figure out any time soon. Societies across the globe will never be able to agree on what is universally right or wrong, and I think that\u2019s okay.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, unrelated to my previous points– I have also always wondered why attempted murder was a lighter sentence than a successful murder. I always thought that intention was the only thing that mattered in ethics. If someone tried to poison me, I always thought it would be just as bad whether they were successful or not, because the fact that they were trying to poison me would be bad enough. Understanding how intentions intertwine with actions made me rethink my position on consequences. I\u2019m still thinking about it though. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ethics is a tricky subject. Nearly everything we do individually and as a society is based on morals, yet nobody can agree on a single moral code. When I was growing up, my ethics were mainly influenced by my family, my religion, and my schooling. As a kid we are taught that everything is normative. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6166,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6165\/revisions\/6166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}