Ethics

[Jon Miller]

I was in a discussion with my freinds

and discovered that they were all ethical relativists

I am wondering how many are relativists here?

if you have an interesting other please post it

and of course post your thread jackings and discussions

Jon Miller

[The Eliminator]

My favourite book is The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand..... what does that say about me? LOL

[Dimorier Maximus]

Please tell us...

What is an ethical relativist, and what is an ethical absolutist?

[Imran Siddiqui]

If you believe their are absolutes in ethics, then you are an ethical absolutists .

If you believe that ethics are different for different people, societies, etc... then you are a relativist.

[Victor Galis]

A friend successfully convinced me that there were no absolutes. (Except that there are no absolutes, and that is a relative statement since there is an exception to it, but is otherwise fairly absolute.)

[David Floyd]

Ah, but is there an exception to the exception? Deep thoughts

[connorkimbro]

in logical systems there are absolutes, of course.

however, if you do not think that ethics go by logic, then it's easy to see how one can think there are no absolute ethics.

[SlowwHand]

If you listen to nothing else, listen to me on this.
Being unethical will slice your own throat.
You absolutely can't go wrong being ethical.

[Victor Galis]

I can't remember what arguments my friend used, but I was unable to prove that a single absolute exists... including universal constants, etc. I think he even had an argument to shoot down absolute 0 (and if that 0 doesn't exist as an absolute all 1s and 0s are relative, and logic is relative. I might not have argued in that direction because I know well enough what can be proven with "logic." I did do high school debate after all.)

[SlowwHand]

I'm sorry. I thought we were talking in the real world.

[Victor Galis]

All debate on absolutism/relativism are highly theoretical anyway. It's quite obvious we can have relative absolutes, since our particular frame of reference is relatively stable.

[Imran Siddiqui]

You absolutely can't go wrong being ethical.

Depends on what ethical is... hence the whole poll.

[SlowwHand]

You would say that, Imran.

[connorkimbro]

I'd be intersted in seeing those arguments. It would seem to be kinda hard to prove (presumably using logical arguments) that logical arguments are inconsistent/relative.

[Victor Galis]

Well, I wouldn't say you could go absolutely wrong with anything