Wikipedia commentary/Simple View of Ethics and Morals

Difference (from prior major revision) (no other diffs)

Changed: 1,11c1

Ethics is the science of morality. It's very important because it can answer the big question, "How should we live?" There are a few widely-accepted moral principles that seem to cross all cultural boundaries. One is some form of the golden rule: "Act towards other people only in ways that you would want people to act towards you." Another is that a person can only be blamed or praised if they could choose to act or refuse to act. Another is that there seems to be something good about helping living things. There are some acts that are usually bad, such as lying, stealing, murder of people, adultery, and impiety (assuming God exists, of course, which has never been proved to everyone's satisfaction). More complex ethical theories can be easily doubted, and are usually wrong. Even the above version of the golden rule can be doubted, i.e. what if the "person" is not human? Is it right to treat such a person like a human if they would be harmed by such treatment? Philosophers have been criticizing ethical theories for thousands of years, and many of their criticisms are complex, subtle and technical. Discussing such criticisms is beyond the scope of this article. /talk

contents moved to [1]

---