Reddit reviews Practical Ethics

• Why abortion isn't about "life"
  
• Why outlawing abortion is deeply immoral
  
  If you want to be well prepared, get a hold of prominent ethicist Peter Singer's book Practical Ethics!

Practical Ethics by Peter Singer

Although I disagree with many things in this book it made me reconsider every choice in my life, rethink my moral framework, and my goals in life. For me, no other book has been more thought provoking.

This is a good chance for you to get into ethics/morality. Try 'Practical Ethics' by Peter Singer. It will make you think more deeply and understandingly about morality, including this issue. http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Ethics-Peter-Singer/dp/0521707684

well. A book that changed my life back when I was 15 was Walden from Thoreau. I threw away everything I owned. yeah I mean everything even my bed. I own nothing that dates from before I was 15. Would this have the same effect today? who knows.

back then, the book Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche had something to to with me ''taking a break'' from school, contributing too did: genealogy of Morals, into the wild, Adorno - dialectic of Enlightenment ( had no idea what that guy was talking about back then but made me real queasy about the world nonetheless.)

books that changed my life recently: Lying from Sam Harris. Steven Pinker - Enlightenment now made me pick a lot of fights with people who like to hate this world.

Insanity of Normality made me forgive some people I had real bad feelings toward, though I'm sceptical now of what is said in the book

unless you understand german you won't be able to read this: Blödmachinen , made me a snob in regards to media. Bernard Stieglers books might have the same effect in english

oh and selfish gene by Dawkins made me less judgmental. Don't know why. I just like people more

EDIT

oh lest I forget: Kandinsky - Concerning The Spiritual in Art made me paint my appartement black blue; Bukowski and the Rubaiyat made me drink more, Born To Run made me run barefoot, Singers Practical Ethics made me donate money and buy far less stuff.

I'd recommend the following:

• For a good survey, see the history of utilitarianism by Julia Driver at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  
• Utilitarianism is a specific type of Consequentialism, so I'd check out an article at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.
  
• For the historical roots in Bentham and Mill (who laid the foundation), Troyer's The Classical Utilitarians is a good anthology.
  
• For something a bit more readable and contemporary, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics is a classic.

NukeThePope often suggests this book:

https://nukeexcathedra.jottit.com/2011-03-09%3A_book_review%3A_sense_%26_goodness_without_god

Not exactly 'how to be successful' but it is about morality

some other suggestions:

http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/1439171211?tag=dudugo-20

http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Ethics-Peter-Singer/dp/0521707684/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1315260344&sr=8-2


http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

(not about morality, but it will help you to avoid being gullible, which would help with the success thing)

Have you read any of Peter Singer's books? He's a utilitarian philosopher who doesn't just stick to atheism, but covers all sorts of very challenging ground including abortion, euthanasia, animal rights and so on. I don't agree with every position he takes, but he's the best introduction to those squirming issues that I've ever found.

If you're interested, start with Practical Ethics. It's the one university Ethics papers use as an introductory text.

If you have the time and inclination I highly recommend Peter Singer's book Practical Ethics for a very sensible and convincing contra-religious standpoint on abortion and other moral issues.

"Justice: What's the right thing to do?" by Michael Sandel is a good book for an overview of different approaches to ethics.

"Practical Ethics" by Peter Singer is the one that really first made me think there's good reason to pick a side.

There are a couple ways I envision this conversation could go and I don't know which you'd prefer (if any)

1. I respond to your direct comments
   
2. We investigate what you seem to believe
   
   I'm going with 1 since 2 is more personal and only partially on topic.
   
   > How is this done without defining the parameters for morals and ethics?
   
   This was defined up front as in the context of utilitarian ethical system. If you don't subscribe to a utilitarian ethical or moral framework, then this won't be convincing. That is independent of the fact that you used the word human for something that Singer wouldn't use the same word for. One is a human on a biological categorization level, the other is a different classification that has to do with moral status. Using the same word for both would be confusing and lead to miscommunications.
   
   > This is a value problem that's a trick question
   
   No its not. It is an extreme hypothetical meant to clarify what you believe. From there you investigate what lead to your decision. If your answer is they have the same value, I have a follow up question to tease out what you mean by that (or if you really mean that). And if it is really true, what the consequences of that belief would be that I (and maybe you) would find surprising.
   
   > Answer: They all deserve to live...
   
   This doesn't answer the question. It says a fair amount about what you believe anyways (no one on earth is qualified, etc) but doesn't answer the question. And how you feel about a situation, generally, doesn't hold a lot of weight by comparison to action. Letting them both burn to death but feeling twice as guilty would not, I imagine, be thought of as the moral thing to do by most people.
   
   > Their high utility is from an unspecified unmeasurable potential, thus judging morality from a potential, not a concrete.
   A concrete answer, is that all of them have the same limitless potential, and to decide someone's potential is murder
   Just like abortion
   
   This is just nonsensical. You have decided that all people have the same unlimited potential, and that the potential matters more than or as much as the actual. And simply deciding someone's potential is murder. There are just so many problems with this statement. I'll list a few:
   
   
3. Not all people have unlimited potential, even if I'm very generous in interpreting what you mean by "unlimited". The brain dead person does not have unlimited potential. The 106 year old does not have unlimited potential. Certainly their potential is different than that of a newborn child.
   
4. Using "potential" as the measure of the importance of a thing has ridiculous consequences. The old arguments of condoms destroying potential futures is a classic. But even things like people not living up to their potential would be morally wrong. Is it unethical to be lazy? Or would it be unethical to give up on your own dreams in favor of your family member's dream? How do you compare two "unlimited" potentials? How do we maximize for the most moral good in the "potential" regime? It would seem that maximizing the number of humans would maximize the pool of potentials. Should we create breeding factories to accomplish this? Is rape justifiable as it has the potential to create a child?
   
5. Deciding potential is murder? If two people come into the ER after a car accident, both are dying, and the Dr makes a judgement call as to which he has the best chance to save, did he murder the other person? When college admission boards choose who to accept or give scholarships to, did they murder those they decided had less potential? Job interviews? Guidance counselors? If a parent requires one student to work so the other can go to school, murderers?
   
6. How does one know what is right and avoid murder if both decisions are bad? This is why I asked the fire question. Situations exist where two people's lives are at stake, and you can save 1, but not both. And no decision results in death of both. This is actually not entirely rare in pregnancy.
   
7. How does someone know when potential exists? For example, if you believe that human level intelligence AI is possible, how do you know what machine AI will result in this new AI? (this assumes you think a human level intelligence AI would have moral standing, if you don't think this that is yet another interesting tangent).
   
8. Can someone be forced to give up autonomy in all cases to maximize potential for others? Forced kidney donations? Forced bone marrow donation? Forced organ donation on death? Forced egg and sperm donation?
   
   This response has gotten quite long. Please feel free to respond or not, or we can delve into your beliefs. I'm not personally a staunch utilitarian, so I'm mostly providing the argument as I understand it. If you find the argument interesting but don't want to argue on the internet, I would suggest you either read
   
   

• Singer's book or
  
• take a perusal through the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
  
• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-ethics/#IdeAppEth
  
• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/
  
• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/grounds-moral-status/

Sounds like a decent start. If you haven't already read Peter Singer's Practical Ethics, I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy. Based on the road you've set for yourself, I think you would really, really like to hear the philosophy of a guy who's spent his entire life thinking about this.

> Where can i learn about ethics?

Reading about different ethical philosophies online. Reading books on ethics. Even getting involved in discussions here, /r/askphilosophy, /r/philosophy, /r/smartgiving, etc.

Practical Ethics is the book that has had the biggest impact on the way I reason about ethics. Before that, whereas I saw that reason could help us identify contradictions in our ethical views, I didn't see how any particular ethical philosophy had a solid ground to build its conclusions from beyond coming "from the heart" as you said. This book was the one that gave me hope that we can do better than mostly guessing when picking our starting point.

However, I'm still an ethics noob and there's a lot more for me to read before I can have a very substantiated opinion on what is best.

> How do you KNOW what is right or wrong?

I doubt we can know with 100% certainty. We can't empirically test our meta-ethical beliefs, but we can still apply reason to it, like we do with many other aspects of our life to try to work out the truth.

> Does it really just come "from your heart"?

I assume by this you mean from our intuitions or subconscious? I think that's where most ethical decisions are made from, but it probably shouldn't be entirely from there. The more we learn in general, the more we realize that our intuitions provide rules-of-thumb at best, but can often be wrong. For instance, it seems unintuitive to me that planes can fly, or massive ships can float. So if I really want to know the truth about the world, I don't think I should rely only on my intuitions. Plus, thought experiments like the trolley dilemma show that our ethical intuitions can be contradictory.

> Do you carry the same beliefs that your parents have implanted?

No, but I would expect this to be a major factor, just as it is for people's beliefs about anything.

> Have you learned from an institution of higher education?

No.

This is good theological justification of the type of ideas that Peter Singer has written about. I'm about half-way through right now, and I gotta say... I'm almost a vegitarian...almost.

Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe.

The Myth of Sisyphus.

Practical Ethics.

On What Matters.

Justice for Hedgehogs.