Day 1 - Unargued assumptions and more

So it was the first day of ethics class.  As I usually do I tried to arrive early so I could sit in the back corner of the room and claim that as 'my seat'.  Usually it takes about one or two classes for everyone to settle down and find 'their' seat and I want the back corner.  Why?  Well, in a nutshell one should always be ready and if you're in the back corner of the room no one can attack you from behind.  Or you could read here for a more complete manswer.

Anyway, class started and the first thing out of the teacher's mouth was that this is NOT a course in how you 'ought' to act (bummer), rather it was more about how people act in certain situations.  He also said that you are free to make decisions for yourself (hooray, a relativist!).  That's worth noting for a later class period.


The first part of the class was spent discussing little ethical situations that he came up with.  Now he didn't want us to see if the actions the characters made were correct, rather he wanted us to think if there was an ethical decision being made and what the ethical decisions were.  There were three situations where there was a choice A and a choice B.  With all the B choices, he said that there seemed to be some expectation that was being violated.  In one instance a person's rights were denied, human dignity was another, and a third dealt with fairness).





So the teacher admitted that there was some "expectation" as to what is and is not moral and those expectations were being violated.  Now, being able to spot an unargued assumption when I see one, I raised my hand and asked:

Aren't we expecting that our expectations are themselves moral?

What right to we have to think that we can expect our expectations to be correct?  And what makes us think that expecting that our expectations about our expectations are correct?  And what makes us think that our expectations about our expectations... do you get the point?  Furthermore, the more often you say expect the funnier it sounds.  Expect, expect, expect...

Anyway, there was also a distinction made between morals and ethics.  He said that morality was what we should and shouldn't do, and ethics is a discussion about morals and morality.  Also, a discussion about ethics must have three characteristics:

1) Must be rational - your reasons can't be contradictory
2) Must be impartial - be fair
3) Must be founded upon common principles - you need to operate with the same definitions

So this teacher is making a claim that if we are to talk about ethics, there are some rules to which we must (his words, not mine) adhere.  So let's see how distinct morals and ethics are.  I asked:

If morals is about how we should and shouldn't act, are we morally obligated to follow these characteristics of ethics?

When he answered, he backed off a little bit.  He said that every theory will try to be like the above three rules.  Every theory must be minimally rational, impartial, and have common principles; there is no hard and fast definition.

Which is funny because if there is no hard and fast rule, what is stopping me from breaking these rules?  Furthermore how does one define minimally rational?  Isn't that an opinion-laden term?  If your theory of ethics allows even a hint of wiggle room, that will be the exploit that someone like me can... well, exploit.