It is my favorite description because it covers--in general--everything ethics is concerned with. The "Dictionary of Philosophy," (Runes; Ed.) goes on, in much longer detail as to what all those sub-descriptions mean, and how different philosophers have dealt with it, etc.
Ethics is a "study" or a "discipline," as it says above, but before it ever came to be studied in any academy in Ancient Greece, it was an informal idea for tens of thousands of years, as primitive men tried to live side by side with rules that had value for the tribe or community. But as a branch of philosophy, it could not be formalized until philosophy itself was discovered and formalized.
"[M]etaethics [is] a removed, or bird's eye view of the entire project of ethics [,] as the study of the origin and meaning of ethical concepts...Two issues, though, are prominent: (1) metaphysical issues concerning whether morality exists independently of humans, and (2) psychological issues concerning the underlying mental basis of our moral judgments and conduct." "The Internet Enclyclopedia of Philosophy"; http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/ethics.htm
Formalized ethics is what we find in the fields of professions such as medicine and law:
"Though law often embodies ethical principals, law and ethics are far from co-extensive. Many acts that would be widely condemned as unethical are not prohibited by law -- lying or betraying the confidence of a friend, for example. And the contrary is true as well. In much that the law does it is not simply codifying ethical norms." Cornell University Law School http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/ethics
And so, in ethics, naturalism forces us to use our own best judgment. We cannot always rely on the "conventional wisdom" of our family, friends, or community. Sometimes we must act contrary to the law. And sometimes our own judgment is going to be wrong; however, being wrong is part of being human and the object is to learn from it. We cannot not make mistakes, but ethically they must be mistakes of honest judgement or ignorance of data that would have caused our judgment to be more correct than it may have turned out to be. With all of the correct and necessary information, our mistakes would only be committed by poor judgment.
"Natural law" is based on what are posited to be the characteristics of human nature qua human nature. The fundamentals are applicable to any tribe or any modern civilization that aspires to that standard. It is the details above and beyond the fundamentals that are ever-changeable and which are designed by a civilization specifically for that civilization.
As "the study of the origin and meaning of ethical concepts," we are necessarily brought to the subject of what is right, meaning "good." Is something good for its own sake (inherent); good by some subjective standard (perspective); or good by an objective standard? Aristotle formulated the idea that things are good which are good for the species involved, (species qua species,) so therefor they are not inherent and not subjective, but objective. What is poison to a human is, in some cases, very nutritious for certain flora and fauna, like rotting meat. It's a great fertilizer and some birds won't eat meat until it is good and rotting. So in that case, the "good" is good by an objective standard.
Which bring us back to "right and wrong." For the same reason as objective standards in "good," they exist in "right and wrong," but now it comes down to "context." If you shoot a good guy, the context is wrong because you shot the wrong guy and that is not is not good for the survival of the species, to be shooting the good guys. But if you shoot the bad guy, then shooting is not wrong, it is right. Every thing is objective, but sometimes the objective is contextual.
Lysander Spooner, nineteenth-century lawyer, abolitionist, entrepreneur, legal theorist and political radical, was elegant on the subject; elegant, yet as clear and as black-and-white as any individual could be on the nature of what constitutes the "good" and the "just" for the species Man, which means he found, in contextual terms as uniquely American as the Founding Fathers' concept of "individual sovereignty."
Natural law, according to Spooner in his work, "Natural Law,": "is the science of all human rights; of all a man's rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..." [and] "which alone can tell any man what he can, and cannot, do; what he can, and cannot, have; what he can, and cannot, say, without infringing the rights of any other person."
These are the political standards of Man qua Man, and are the fundamentals which ought to be codified, and nothing less than this will do as a basis. But it becomes the terrible duty of any legislative or judicial body to determine what those are. I say it is terrible because, to continue with Spooner:
continuation How Do We Learn to Identify Natural Law and Ethics?
Note:
I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CECmailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com
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