This is an attempt to answer the question "What is ethics, exactly"

1. 😇 😈
What is
ETHICS
Alexei’s Primer on Ethics | Part 1

2. 🤰 Abortion
🐂 Animal rights
🏳🌈 LGBT+ rights
🌡 Climate change
👬 Cloning
🧬 GMO
🤖 AI & Robotics
📸 Surveillance
Most of today’s ⚠important issues
seem to be the issues of ethics:

3. ETHICS
But what is
? ? ? ? ? ?
?
? ? ? ?
?

4. Very broadly, ETHICS
is a 🧭compass that
tells you what’s
😇right and 😈wrong

5. ETHICS
MORALITY
In most cases,
is the same as

6. Ethical = moral. I know, some
people would 🙅disagree, and
perhaps there are situations
where these are not the same
REALLY? YES.

7. Like, when a 👨💼public of
fi
cial
sleeps with a 💋sex worker
it’s immoral, but if he hands
a contract to his cousin’s
🏗company, that’s unethical

8. Right? No.This makes no sense!
Both behaviours are 😈bad and
describe the same phenomena,
even though one is about 💰money
and the other is about 💃sex.

9. Non-experts often claim that
ethics is 🏟communal, while
morality is 🧍private*. But
🎓professionals mostly use
these terms interchangeably.
* For some bizarre reason the claim is reversed in Russian

10. The word moralis was
invented by Cicero when he
was trying to translate the
Greek word ethics to Latin.
They both meant the same:
manner, custom, law.

11. Generally, the terms
ethics and morality are
used interchangeably.
https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-between-morality-and-ethics
Encyclopedia Britannica

12. DESCRIPTIVE
ETHICS
Non-judgementally
studies morality
in human communities
Here’s a really ⚠important distinction:
NORMATIVE
ETHICS
Passes moral judgement
and tells what’s good,
bad or non-moral
🔬 ⛔

13. Moral
Philosophy
Moral
Psychology
HOW MORALITY
⚙WORKS
WHAT’S 😇GOOD
OR 😈BAD
So, if you want to study
Moral
Theology
Moral
Anthropology
DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS NORMATIVE ETHICS
The Discipline of Ethics

14. QUESTION:
How do you
draw the line?
😇 Moral
😈 Immoral
😐 Amoral or
non-moral
Ethics: Not ethics:

15. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/
fi
gure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0231794.g002
OPINIONS OF 🟥REPUBLICANS AND 🟦DEMOCRATS ON ABORTION AND ALCOHOL
BAD NEWS: THERE IS NO CLEAR LINE
Believe it or not, a substantial minority of republicans
(yes, republicans!) think that 🤰abortion is 😐non-moral

16. If you ask 🧐philosophers,
the situation, quite predictably,
is even more 🤔confusing.

17. In the 1970’s they
published a 272-page
book, containing
various de
fi
nitions
of morality.

18. There does not seem to be
much reason to think that a
single de
fi
nition of morality
will be applicable to all
moral discussions.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-de
fi
nition/

19. We don’t know what ethics
is, but there is some
consensus on what it’s 🎯for,
what it 📦contains and what
it is probably 🚫not
GOOD NEWS

20. Morality is a set of
psychological adaptations
that allow otherwise sel
fi
sh
individuals to reap the
bene
fi
ts of cooperation
Joshua Greene
In
fl
uential moral philosopher

21. So, morality evolved to foster
🤝cooperation. Some people
disagree but there seems to be
a lot of consensus on this.

22. Theory of ☯dyadic morality
suggests that what makes
judgements moral is
perceived 👊harm or 🍼care.

23. A man intentionally gished
a little girl, who cried.
Is the man good or bad?
This man is unmistakably 😈bad, even
though to gish is not a real verb.
We are attuned to sensing harm.

24. Also, we know that
ethics is not the same
as 👨⚖ law, 🏟 customs
or 🤮 emotions

25. ETHICS IS NOT LAW
👨⚖
Although law is based on morality,
it doesn’t prohibit all immoral acts,
lying is one example. Laws can also be
immoral, Nazi laws most certainly were.

26. 🏟
ETHICS IS NOT CUSTOMS
The word ethics originally meant customs,
but customs can be barbaric. Ethics is
not whatever the crowd says. In the
Soviet Union going against the crowd was
often the hallmark of moral behaviour.

27. 🤮
ETHICS IS NOT EMOTIONS
“These people are just disgusting to me!”
A lot of morally wrong acts are disgusting,
but not all disgusting acts are wrong.
What disgusts people varies from person
to person and from culture to culture.

28. 🤮
emotions
👨⚖
written law
🏟
community
opinion
ETHICS
is not any of these things,
but there’s a considerable overlap

29. 1
Is a 🧭compass that tells
you what’s 😇good, 😈bad
or 😐non-moral
2
Exists because 🤑self-
interested 🧍humans need
to 🤝cooperate
WHAT IS ETHICS?
4
Not de
fi
ned solely by 🏟community
opinion, 👨⚖law or 🤮emotions but
probably has something to do with
all of these things
3
Deals with questions
of 👊harm or 🍼care
Ok, let’s do a quick recap

30. Next: why ethics becomes
particularly important
TODAY
Spoiler: it’s because of rapidly disintegrating religion

31. kapterev.com
ALEXEI KAPTEREV