I look to Psychology for ethical questions

In much the same way science has advanced since ancient philosophy, I think ethics has advanced within the subject of psychology.
Response to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8llseuE5ks

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News & Politics

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• Ethics
• Psychology

[roberto8ag]

I think you're wrong about equating ethics with survival. I see Ethics is in direct contradiction with the theory of survival.

I see the same contradiction between liberalism and statism, though.... I can't explain the union of those two but saying is ignorance or hypocrisy.

You can be right about ethics being independently of philosophy.... and that can be seen from the psychology perspective like religion.

[j0hnwi11iams]

When I speak of survival, I am talking about survival on multiple scales. Most people think survival relates only to individuals, but it applies to families, communities, organizations like church, corporations, unions, nations, the whole species, the entire biosphere. All are mutually dependent.

[roberto8ag]

@j0hnwi11iams "When I speak of survival, I am talking about survival on multiple scales."

I understood that, its all about the individual's identity.

Maybe you are right, an ethic can be compatible with survival. Probably I was talking about the "true" ethic, which I see as being in contradiction with survival (like Stoicism or the Christian Ethic)

However, if a particular ethic is compatible with surival then is not psychological nor philosophical but instinctual?

Interesting topic.

[j0hnwi11iams]

I wouldn't call it instinctual per se, because our instincts evolved in a different environment and in many cases are maladaptive. Out instincts are easily fooled by technology, like fish are attracted to lures. To act in the interests of survival requires cognitive skills far beyond instinct if one is to reconcile the conflicts of interest that arise between levels of scale - from individual to family, family to community, community to country, and so on.

[JohananRaatz]

I agree with you about the non-aggression principle not being the most fundamental though.

[JohananRaatz]

Isn't the whole point of ethics to be within a rigid abstracted framework though? Granted ethical philosophy and biology overlap a great deal with Aristotle, but you can't divorce the philosophic component to ethics. If you did, it would by definition not be "ethics" anymore.

[1140Cecile]

Philosophy is still useful when questioning root paradigms under which we have been or could be organized. Psychology and science generally tend to be reductionist in nature and are necessary for understanding how we function within a paradigm. For example, having accepted families as the first organizational structure, psychology is best at analyzing family dynamics. But philosophy is best at dealing with the question of whether or not families are even optimal as a base organizing structure.