Hermes

Thanks for your thoughtful and cogent reply. As I said elsewhere, I have had college and university classes in ethics (for law enforcement and for physics), and, as many others of us, have written about the subject for term papers, class themes, etc., (business ethics for a sociology class, e.g.). However, this all came together for me in that final class in physics ethics as I was completing a master's in social science. I agree completely with the general view here and on the other boards when I posted this topic: lack of objective morality is the source of our ethical problems in society. Professional societies have codes of ethics that are vague feelings of a need to help others and not hurt them. More technical groups also demand (require, request, plead for) honesty in carrying out and reporting experiments. I think that by recognizing this distinction between morality and ethics, it is possible to reduce the rampant fraud and misconduct in scientific research. The same would apply to corporate culture. Objectivism aside, the first college class I had in ethics was for law enforcement and it is peculiar that police departments have 40-page applications, background checks and psychological evaluations, and still have so much corruption that we no longer speak of rotten apples, but of rotten barrels. The problems of morality and ethics are deeper than the abject inabilities of Sunday schools to make altruisms work. Thanks, also, for recognizing the power of English to absorb and use words from other languages. A cottage does not need to be dawbed with mud; nor does it need to be in Greece to have an attic; nor does a bungalow need to be in India to have a verandah. Thanks, finally, for the encouragement to think in pictures. I came to it late in life and if I had learned it as a child, I would be much farther down the road. Public education is oppressed by linear verbal expression and so it our society... one reason among very, very many for our problems.

And yet Ayn Rand said that alone on an island is when man needs morality most. Ethical social interactions ultimately depend on such a Crusoe Concept of morality. And yet we do commonly make that distinction, and ambiguously so, which is my point. We use the words interchangeably, except when we do not. For instance, professional societies have codes of ethics, not statements of morals. As I said elsewhere, this is true in English for historical reasons. That richness of vocabulary is perhaps the greatest strength of our language. In German, die Sitte (plural: die Sitten) means customs, habits, usage, and morals. The point of that being that historically, most people in most times and places considered morality (or ethics) to be what everyone does when they do what they are supposed to do. That assumption of implicit social sanction is evidenced also in the ethics statements of professional societies. Those are my observations of social facts. Personally, I believe that morality is the source of ethics. A behavior may be ethical or unethical depending on the social context. You work as a research engineer as an employee of a chemical firm. You develop a new adhesive for plastics, but keep it secret and go on with routine assignments given to you. That would be unethical But what if you discovered a plastic eater? Keeping that secret might be unethical, but morality might demand that you do so. Tough choice. You have a farm. A high-tech kind of hayseed, you read about a way to increase the yield of celery. You try it... and fail... a few times... You are pretty sure the researcher made this up (not uncommon, sad to say). Do you report your own findings? Not to do so would be unethical. But there are only 24 hours in a day and you do not see your place in the universe as the policeman of celery research. ... or maybe you do... Tough choice.

As I said the beginning, I investigated several codes of ethics for national and international professional societies. They are called "Codes of Ethics." I found no Code of Morality. Ethics are specific social actions and it seems that what is ethical or unethical for a geographer is not what matters for good conduct among physicists or counselors. I also just checked the words in German, my second language; I know several others. I choose German because it is Indo-European, culturally very close to us and not given so readily to Latin. There, "die Sitte" (plural: die Sitten) ambiguously means morals, ethics, or customs. Thus, at that level, when the primitives toss the virgin into the volcano, they are behaving morally. I trust that you would disagree. In English -- the common second language of our planet -- we have two different words. They sound different. We lost their roots over time. Yet, we use them interchangeably... except when we do not: no "Codes of Morals" for geographers. Even Ayn Rand used the words ambiguously... except when she did not. So, all I seek to do here and now is to identify how in common English we do, indeed, differentiate ethics from morals. I find that most often, we mean social behavior by "ethics" and personal standards by "morals." My purpose in discussing animal behavior was only to show that ethnologists and ethologists describe behavior without needing to consider its morality. I also said at the top that I was assuming familiarity with the works of Ayn Rand. So, no, I did not quote her definition of morality or her essays on it. According to Objectivism, animals are incapable of moral choices. However, I showed that they do make unethical decisions, as when a cat adopts a squirrel. I am not interested in discussing animals here, only to show that descriptions of behavior are not prescriptions of right action. Over on RoR, I gave the example of coming to a theater and finding a long line. You have many options that are fully moral, but unethical. You can just take the first place. There is nothing inherent in the nature of human action that mandates time-preference as the only standard of economic choice. We might as readily reorganize ourselves as people arrive better or less dressed-up. (If you did not care to dress up, then getting in must not be important to you.) You might pay the first person in line to step in front. You might pay off anyone else who complains. You might offer the cashier $100 to take you first. In many clubs, hoi poloi wait in line while VIPs get special treatment. Standing in line at the movie theater is the ethical action, even though for you and me as Objectivists, creative solutions would not be immoral. Attempting to do business with Japanese or Greeks, pressing them for decisions while socializing is unethical, though fully moral for an Objectivist. Conversely, forcing an American to string along for dinner after dinner until you sign or until you allow them to, just so you can get to know them is unethical, but may be moral if you have a rational self interest to pursue by this. Again, tipping: If you don't like the waitress, don't tip her. It would not be immoral. She did not meet your expectations. That is your right. However, that is unethical. Even if I am dissatisfied, a modest 10% tip meets my obligations and sends the message I intend. You might feel differently. We have different ethics. I trust that we have the same morality. By our shared standards, we arrive at different solutions, thus ethics is different from morality. Again, see the works of Ayn Rand on the importance of morality. You seem to have an aversion to "the unearned." Myself. I pick up money off the ground all the time. In being observant, I earned it. Even "luck" (so-called) is earned. As I said before (twice), when solutions do not obtain in the ethical sphere, then identifying and applying a moral principle is required.

That's fine, but if you return to the store to hand back the money, you inconvenience yourself, running losses of time fuel, etc., beyond what is in your pocket, and consider that the clerk may need to reconcile her till now on her own time, off the clock. She might be better off, logging the shortage as is typical, and just pocketing the money to avoid the hassle. It depends on how much money is involved and how much value that much money might hold for the two of you. If it is Mary at Mary's Hardware and you shop there often enough, it is worth the expense to you in goodwill. If it is "Hi! I'm Bill" at the unionized MegaBox store, you are the only one who cares ... and, as you say, you prefer not to be immoral, so suit yourself. The essential point here is that if these details of how much money and how the clerk relates to the store define the problem, then this is likely a problem in ethics and has nothing to with morality. Again, whether this is Ethics or Morality is becoming confused. If we limit "Morality" to personal choices and "Ethics" to social choices, the confusion is much less. I said above: "For humans, morality is the science of choice. If an ethical problem is not readily solvable within the ethical domain, you can always increase the level of abstraction and seek a moral principle." The extent to which your actions make your community a marginally better place may not be calculable and as a matter of personal preference -- how you live with yourself -- your choices would be based on morality, even though ethically you are under no such obligations. A good example comes from the social convention of "tipping." Whether you tip at all or tip 15% or much more depends on very localized and immediate contexts. If your dinner comes to $36.19, then 15% is $5.43 and whether you leave $5 or $5.43 or $6 depends on factors that may not be calculable and certainly not universal or even "objective." Maybe you did not like the food or the service, but ethically, even if you are dissatified, you should still leave 10%. Not tipping would be unethical. You might argue that. It would be a discussion of ethics, not morality.

You sent me back to my Greek and Latin dictionaries, but what I said still stands. What specifically are you referring to and what exactly do you request in terms of evidence? If you have some other facts, feel free to present them.

Well, I look to one specific discussion. In the "Playboy Interview" Ayn Rand spoke to the need for morality if alone on an island. Throughout her writings, she used the term Ethics as commonly used even in technical philosophy, again, "The Nicomachean Ethtics" is never called "Nicomachean Morality." Is there any reason not to have a technical discussion here? The problem with defining ethics as what you can do by right is that the concept of "right" has a specific meaning. Ethical acts often have nothing to do with "rights" as Objectivists understand that term.

Thanks! It is interesting that you already differentiate the two. I just stumbled on this myself. My recent degrees are in criminology (BS) and social science (MA). As often as ethics and morality came up through all of that, I actually started and ended with classes in ethics: Ethics for Law Enforcement; and Ethics in Physics. My school, Eastern Michigan University, is a middle range, mid-western American public institution -- we offer very few doctorates; our motto is "Education first" because our professors teach -- there are no teaching assistants. The point is, I had the library I had and read what I found and no philosophers seem to have specifically made this distinction and all books seem to use the words interchangeably. Ayn Rand used the words interchangeably, as most people do. So, Objectivism has no position on this. Instead of a comma, how about a semi-colon: "It is possible to act unethically, but morally; and immorally, but ethically."

For what follows, I assume Objectivism as defined by the works of Ayn Rand. Therefore, I will not prove what has been established already. The words "morality" (moral) and "ethics" (ethical) are commonly employed as synonyms, even by philosophers. (See, for example, "Introduction to the Objectivist Ethics," which is in fact an essay on morality.) They are, however, different. Morality is personal. Ethics is (are) social. Morality is a human problem. Animals typically behave ethically by their nature (and most often can do nothing else) but can within limits make choices that seem unethical, but cannot (by definition) be immoral. For us humans, the individual has no moral obligations toward others, but, by our social nature, as we mature, we acquire ever more ethical obligations. As contradictions do not exist, there can be no moral dilemmas. However, ethical dilemmas abound and we humans attempt to resolve them by appeal to moral principles. By disintguishing between morality and ethics, we can better understand and solve problems in what is commonly called (as here in this topic space) "Ethics" but which is in fact "Morality." The words derive from different roots and in their native languages they had similar meanings, as philosophy was not yet well developed. "Ethos" ("ethnos") is a Greek word and refers to the population so that ethical behavior is that which is good within society. Aristotle was not the first or last to use the word in his attempt to define the good life for the individual, as in The Nichomachean Ethics. As Greek philosophy matured and developed from the Ionians through the Peripetitics and further, it became clear that a person could be moral or immoral (ethical or unethical) independent of what happened around him. Morality is a Latin word and means simply manners, again, social custom as the standard for right action. However, this is not the ancient world. Our vocabulary has greatly expanded to allow us to grasp new concepts. For example, a television is not a telescope, even though the root words are synonyms. Ethnologists study the social behaviors of people. Ethologists study the behaviors of animals. For examples of animals behaving unethically browse for headlines such as "Dog adopts kittens" and "Cat adopts squirrel." Such actions are outside the normal range of behaviors, but cannot be immoral. The list of ethical problems in society is endless. We face them every day. Many such challenges can be resolved strictly within the bounds of ethics. A clerk hands you back too much money... You find an extra item in your bag ... A cheaper paint is delivered for a job you bid on... You see a co-worker pilfering... Your shopping cart rolls into a car... Your customer asks for the second-best alternative... Attempting to resolve every ethical problem as if it were a moral problem limits our choices. Solving a problem within its ethical domain reduces effort and reduces risks. For humans, morality is the science of choice. If an ethical problem is not readily solvable within the ethical domain, you can always increase the level of abstraction and seek a moral principle. It is possible to act unethically, but morally and immorally, but ethically.

If you do a simple Google search, you will see that the original Hippocratic Oath has been modernized. For one thing, doctors no longer swear by Apollo.

Among the final classes that I took to complete a master of arts in social science this past April was "Ethics in Physics." (Nominally a 400-level undergrad class, it can be taken for graduate credit which I did not do because I had enough credits already. ) If you google, "Ethics in Physics" you will see that Eastern Michigan University and Marshall Thomsen are near the top of the returns. In his footsteps comes now Elizabeth Kubitskey whose master's thesis was on teaching ethics in high school physics. Dr. Kubitskey now teaches the course (as do others occasionally). For this class, I gathered the ethical codes and codes of conduct of several scientific societies. Some are short lists of principles. Others -- counselors and geographers -- are very involved. A basic problem, still unresolved is the distinction between morality and ethics. Even Ayn Rand used the words interchangeably, though they mean quite different things. Generally speaking, objective morality leads to professional ethics. While there can be no moral contradictions, ethical dilemmas are common. Moral principles are required to solve ethical dilemmas.

As you do not evidence knowledge of the difference between morality and ethics, if ever we do business, I will protect myself from the moral hazard of your potential for unethical behavior.

I enjoyed the talk and benefited from hearing it. I did not know Sam Harris's work but I am glad now that I do. For other people, Objectivism is a religion. How many moral peaks can you perceive?

Security is my fourth career. After being in and out of three colleges 1967-1971, I decided on a career in transportation and got a job on the receiving dock of a department store. I enrolled in a two-year certificate program at my community college and graduated from that in 1976. I also worked for trucking companies and a taxicab firm. One of my classmates from General Motors recommended that I take a computer class and I did. I liked it and took another. With two classes in programming, in 1978, I got a job at White Sands Missile Range. In 1984, on a database project at General Motors, no one wanted to write the user manual. Having written a couple of magazine articles and two small books, I took that on. In a few years, I did nothing but documentation and training, though programming remained a useful skill. After the Dot.Com Meltdown, I could no longer bring in $40 per hour. So, I looked about for a new career. I worked in a science museum and was a substitute teacher. I also got a job with a security firm. I rose quickly through the ranks. So, I enrolled in a two-year degree program in criminal justice. I am now completing a four-year degree in criminology and I have been accepted for graduate school. For me, the attraction is the cat-and-mouse game with the perpetrators, planning ahead of them to avoid problems for my clients. My focus is the protection of property and lives. I have less interest in "law enforcement" per se, laws being range-of-the-moment artifacts of democracy. Keeping people safe and securing their property is my job. I do it because I am good at it. When I graduate, I will move into middle managment, closer to that previous wage structure that I got used to. Also, my wife has a new bachelor's degree in technology managment to supplement her associate's degrees in computer forensics and network security. Our goal is to open our own detective agency. For me, the degree in criminology (police administration) is often a requirement of government licensing.

1) Anthem 2) The Girl Who Owned a City Sad to say, but if your kids are tractable enough to be made into Objectivists as teenagers, then they are too stupid to be Objectivists in the first place. I gave my daughter The Fountainhead. She said, "Fuck you. I'm not reading this." I said to myself, "Good job, Dad!"

Check out Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw in the Wikipedia. Visit their life extension and intelligence boosting website at http://www.lifeenhancement.net/ with or without the hyphen http://www.life-enhancement.com/ Intelligence is an interplay of many factors. In addition to the Durk and Sandy formulations, I recommend getting the Eysenck book, KNOW YOUR OWN IQ. It has IQ tests in it. No kidding, take a few of these and you score better on them. I think of it as mental pushups: the more you do, the more you can do. Learn a foreign language. That is the easiest and most effective way to generally boost your verbal reasoning. Learn a new city. They found that London taxicab drivers show IQ improvement with time on the job. Because of regulations thay have to PROVE that they can drive a new area before they can do business there, which means learning the map. Myself, I learned to fly an airplane. That exercised and expanded a lot of skills, including maps... You have to keep physics, trig and weather in your head along with radio procedures and the steering of a craft in 3 dimensions at a mile a minute. Learn anything new. Take any kind of class in a formalized setting. Working as computer programming technical writer, I signed up for a class in drafting. After a day of sitting and typing, it was nice to stand and draw.

Thanks, Greedo! That was a nice piece of work. Aleph_0, you are correct, of course, and that is the framework from which I move back to Crusoe. If he were alone on an island, would he need money? The answer is yes. He would need language and morality as well, even though collectivists and mystics think that these are only social skills. It is true that you learn language socially, but alone on an island, you could put it to good use with no one else to talk to because language enables thought. The first word had to be thought of before it could be spoken. The reason for deriving money as a Crusoe Concept is to take it out of the domain of the collectivists who make it a "social good." If social utility were the primary basis, then "anything" could be "money" -- which is what the statists attempt to achieve by fiat (command). Furthermore the Crusoe Concept shows why it is up to you to decide what you want to use for money. There are other forms of money, to be sure. As a unit of account, money can be something different from a medium of exchange. But those considerations come later. The Crusoe Concept is the basis.

See also, 3M http://solutions.3m.com/en_US/ See Dow Corning http://www.dowcorning.com/ or More Dow Corning http://www.dowcorning.com/content/etronics/ I was going to go down a long litany, but there is no point. Anyone who thinks that industry does not lead in "pure" research is just ignorant. If this is something you care about, then get a list of Fortune 100, 500 or 1000 companies and compile your own 3-ring of facts. Then, the next time some looter mystic spouts off, you can come back with your own favorite facts. Another thing about Bell Labs... when they got too restrictive for genius, Shockley took the brains to California and started Fairchild. Being himself too dominating, all his guys ("the Fairchildren") left and started their own companies. We call it "Silicon Valley" today. Texas Instruments... who would have thought that some bench technicians in Dallas would change the world? First of all, there are no government research labs. There are many government-funded projects. Success is for the proponents to demonstrate. The idea that universitoes do useful basic research is just a goal. Some university thinkers wanted to bring into the schools what was being done in industry, but without actually having to show any results... which they do not... No starships... no time travel... not even a better metal polish....

Well, the first time through, it seemed clear enough, but since you raise the issue... Going back to first principles, I would have to agree that any failure is always a moral failure, by definition. I will have to think about this.

I like Parmenides and I dedicated an essay on politics to him. As an archaic philosopher, he went astray quickly. His premises were correct, but the conclusions were flawed. Still, he was he first to say that Earth is a sphere. He is also the first (some say Pythagoras) to identify the Morning and Evening stars as special objects. The thing with Aristotle is he came 200 years later. So, he had a lot of shoulders to stand on. I cut the archaics a lot of slack, they were pioneers, whatever their mistakes. Plato is a different matter. Thales, Democritus, that while milieu of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, they were intellectually very brave men. Though not all were men. Likely, the "Milesian Way" (philosophy) was brought to Athens by Aspasia, a woman, who taught philosophy to Socrates and his generation. The Ionians had come to Athens after the fall of the Ionian Revolt in 499 BCE. (By the way, 13 cities, loosely confederated could not stand against the Persians. That was a lesson for 13 colonies later.) Parmenides was the first to propose the paradox attributed to Zeno of Achilles and the Halves. So, as I said, he went astray... but he dared to go where there was no path...

I yea-say the recommendation for a second-source outline of philosophy. When I was first a freshman in 1967, I relied on Bertran Russell. A few years ago, writing a magazine article, I compared and contrasted some sources and found him lacking. Russell is committed to Western science and the logical-positivist methods. Realize that logical-positivist is not the same thing as rational-empiricist. Rational-empiricist is closer to Objectivism. But for all that, Russell is dependable. The other readable and reliable choice would be DURANT (The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant, 1926). The third option is the popular paperback series AGE OF (Houghton Mifflin. Morton Gabriel White, editor, 1955). AGE OF REASON -- 17th century AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT -- 18th century AGE OF IDEOLOGY -- 19th century AGE OF ANALYSIS -- 20th century It won't make the ideas any more correct, but Russell, Durant or this set will make the reading more palletable. I am back in college now, working on a new degree for a new career and this nonsense hasn't changed. If anything it has gotten worse. One bright spot is that I have an Objectivist professor of philosophy at my school, Greg Browne, author of Necessary Factual Truth. I don't need any philosophy classes, but it is nice to see him in the halls.

Integrity is a primary virtue, whereas conscientiousness is a social convenience. This debate ran for a year through three issues of an academic journal. The journal itself is fairly significant, being indexed by JSTOR, for instance. That is the first thing that is interesting about this, that a mainstream quarterly for professors of business management would open their pages to the presentation of Objectivist ideas, and then to a full defense and reply. In each issue, it is clear that everyone saw everyone else's work before it all went to print. There are replies to the replies in the same issue. This same magazine, The Academy of Management Review, had published a review of Atlas Shrugged for no apparent special reason. The year 1989 was not a deciennial year of publication, for instance. The debate with Becker et al., took place ten years later. Becker wrote: Following from the above premises, Objectivists identify a number of virtues (the actions by which one gains and is the recognition and acceptance of reason as human beings' only source of knowledge, only legitimate judge of values, and only valid guide to action. such, rationality is the basic virtue-that is, the most fundamental requirement of living successfully. The corollary virtues (not an exhaustive list) include honesty, independence, justice, productivity, pride, and integrity.' These virtues are expressions of rationality and, hence, are inextricably linked; one cannot undermine one without undermining the others. Becker then said: Hence, one difference between honesty and integrity is that "honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence [i.e., facts regarding the external world]," whereas "integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness [i.e., facts regarding one's true principles and values]" (Rand, 1957: 1019). Said another way, honesty requires that one not use one's consciousness to distort reality, and integrity requires that one not betray the convictions of one's consciousness in action. About conscientiousness, he suggested: For example, the stereotypical absent-minded professor might be rather careless (misplacing things) and somewhat disorganized (not writing down ideas or plans) but still have high integrity by acting in accordance with moral values and virtues (e.g., reason, purpose, and independence). In summary, although the morally laden element of conscientiousness may be pertinent to integrity, the morally neutral elements are not. The point was to distinguish true integrity from the socially-derived adherence that we generally accept by default. In other words, if you do not agree with someone's values, but you recognize that they adhere to them consistently, you might grant that this person has "integrity." But integrity is more than this. It is not the adherence to just any values but to those that are moral virtues in an objective sense.

The Academy of Management Review published “Integrity in Organizations: Beyond Honesty and Conscientiousness” by Thomas E. Becker of the University of Delaware. (Becker, Thomas E., “Integrity in Organizations: Beyond Honesty and Conscientiousness,” The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23, No. 1. (Jan., 1998), pp. 154-161.) Becker’s thesis is that integrity is more than a loose synonym for other virtues. Honesty is a necessary but not sufficient condition for integrity. Conscientiousness is highly regarded in business – and some businesses administer tests to measure it – but it may not correlate to integrity. "For example, the stereotypical absent-minded professor might be rather careless (misplacing things) and somewhat disorganized (not writing down ideas or plans) but still have high integrity by acting in accordance with moral values and virtues (e.g., reason, purpose, and independence). In summary, although the morally laden element of conscientiousness may be pertinent to integrity, the morally neutral elements are not." Becker offers this definition: "Integrity is commitment in action to a morally justifiable set of principles and values, where the criterion for moral justification is reality – not merely the acceptance of the values by an individual, group, or society. Because survival and happiness are the ultimate standards of morality, life – not subjective opinion – is the foundation of integrity." Rand often used the phrase man qua man to express the idea that as the ability to reason is the essential distinguishing characteristic of being human, that which promotes rationality promotes humanity. While we have the political freedom to be the agents of our own destruction – through laziness, stupidity, abject carelessness, excess living, etc. – the reasoning person, pursuing his own best interests will not do these things. They are immoral because they are self-destructive. Within a business organization, integrity means acting in accordance with those values that promote man qua man – and declining those that do not. Becker opened his article with a validation of the Objectivist ethics via metaphysics and epistemology. He then showed the special nature of integrity. That this academic journal for business management consented to such a philosophical exploration may seem singular. In fact, in 1989, The Academy of Management Review published a book review of Atlas Shrugged by Edwin A. Locke. Ten years later, Locke joined Becker to reply to the replies to Becker’s essay.

Alone on an island, you would need morality. You would need language. You would need money. Money's first attribute is its being a store of value. That is what allows money to be (3) a medium of exchange. On his island -- in the Defore story, actually -- Crusoe's primary money was food. If he could store food, his labor could be invested. When he discovered that he had accidentally sowed wheat which "took" he was overjoyed. (Historically, in fact, wheat (not gold or silver or even cows) was the first form of money.) In other times and places, stone arrowheads -- which require significant effort -- would be a form of "money" not for trade -- there is little evidence of that -- but as a store of labor for the individual who makes it. It is also possible to "exchange" with yourself across time. You fish today and catch more than you need. Some you can dry. The chum you can bury to improve the soil into which you will plant your wheat later. Thus, in planning and carrying out plans, you effect economic trade with yourself across time. Planting today means that you harvest tomorrow. Should you plant? Build a fire -- and tend it? Catch fish? Look for coconuts? What you do on an island is determined by how you value your time and the return on it. You need bookkeeping of some sort and that means that you must have a unit of account. You must have "money" if only as a conceptual construct: youi might not have "coins" but you need some way to count and account. Even Ricardo's Law of Association applies because if you are going to undertake any complex task, then it is more efficient to break that down into repetitive actions, rather than carrying out the entire process in sequence. Sawing boards, drilling holes, braiding twine, etc., each should be done as a distinct task rather than sawing a board, drilling a hole, braiding a rope, and then drilling the next hole, and after four, going back and sawing the next board, and so on.