Ethics and
moral are two frequently used words, and often together, and with a positive
flavour. Un-ethical and immoral are adjectives that we use about behaviour and
persons that we don’t like.
Here I use
these words with the following interpretation:
An
individual may belong to many groups, more or less overlapping, in different
roles, and with differing ethical norms:
As
competition develops within a group the individuals become winners or losers in
varying degrees, and in different fields of competition. As conscious humans we
have a faculty for planning for a time horizon beyond our life time. There
is no limit to our desire for ’more’ and ’better’. The old saying ’mykje vil ha meir’ , (much wants more) expresses the
old experience; There is no ‘genetic’
limit to human competition.
Over time
the ‘winners’ will realize that they depend on the group, and that the ‘losers’
constitute an important part of the society. This realization inspires to
develop patterns of conduct that constrains the competition and helps maintain
the integrity of the group. It is such patterns of conduct that I designate ‘ethics’
here. It is initially shaped by the ‘winners’, because they, constituting a
minority, have the largest benefit from a well functioning group. Unlimited
competition will break up the group, and erode the foundation of the success.
A
prerequisite for a group to function well as a whole,
is that a majority of the members, including ’losers’, accept a common ethics. This
is perhaps most difficult for the ‘winners’. Self-imposed competition
constraint requires strong ‘moral’. This becomes more difficult with larger
groups, and with larger differences between winners and losers.
To protect
the majority against those with substandard morals, both on the winner- and the
loser side, ’enforcing’ legal systems
were developed, with Laws and Punishment
for acts that damage the group or individuals in the group. This system allows
the group to continue functioning, with greater winners and more losers.
Globalized
trade removes economic boundaries, while retaining boundaries for people. The
globalized resource base has no expansion potential.. The
differences in living conditions are large. The losers become increasingly
aware of the situation, and they find no reason to respect the competition ’rules’,
neither ethical nor legal ones.
The judicial systems that we have developed to deal with local ethical
deficiencies are too ’weak’ to deal with problems following the ’globalization’,
commonly labelled ’terror’. One consequence of this is the desire for ’exception laws’ for the ’war
on terror’, compromising traditional judicial rights of individual protection in some
countries.
Global terrorism can be seen as a consequence of global competition witout a global ethics. It is the winners who have the responsibility for limiting the competition, and we are among them. We are more dependent on the losers than they are on us.
We must
realize that we all live off the same nature, and that we have to limit our
resource consumption. Lacking individual ’Enough’-genes we may have to
rely on political/economical ’forcing’. This is a BIG challenge for our democracy!
Ivar
Fylling
Hans Ucko i Ethics, law and commitment (excerpt, my underline)
How are law and ethics related? One's interpretation
of law will necessarily influence the interpretation of ethics, and vice-versa.
Given a lack of consensus on what "ethics" refers to, we should not
be surprised that attempts to chain this concept down long enough to see how it
relates to "law" (itself no unitary, unequivocal notion) lead only to
more questions.
Law and ethics form a problematic package but a
package deal nonetheless. When Kant turns to explain what a legal duty is and
how it should function, he appeals to much the same conceptual resources that
he relies on when discussing ethical duties. Laws, he insists, must apply to
everyone equally. It must also be possible for each citizen to embrace the
reasoning behind the law, including any penalties for violating the law, and so
on.
For Kant law functions as a system of externally
imposed constraints on behaviour, whereas ethics functions as self-imposed
constraints. Kant's description of persons as "self-legislators"
when it comes to ethics is apt. Still, it may not get at the interplay of ideas
and interests that arise in e.g. bioethics. Imagine the patient whose wish for
assisted suicide is rejected by hospital staff and law. We face a challenge in
understanding the magnitude of this philosophical problem if we restrict
ourselves to Kantian terms of legislation, self-imposed or otherwise. And in
the case of an apparent conflict between law and ethics, what is one to do? Kant
lived and wrote in a time when protests against what might be considered an
unethical law did not enjoy the social status that they do today. It is now
almost taken for granted that one has an ethical obligation to protest against
laws that are judged to be unethical. What is less clear is how we would distinguish
an ethical law from an unethical one.