μαιευτική μέθοδος: Morality and Rationality, Philosophy and Science, Good and Evil.

Bust of Ptolemy I Soter, king of Egypt (305 BC–282 BC) and founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty. The identification is based upon coin effigies. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The term “morality” can be used either

descriptively to refer to some codes of conduct put forward by a society or,
1. some other group, such as a religion, or
2. accepted by an individual for her own behaviour or
normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.

Ethics is the greek word for morality.

Ethics derive from ethos which is habit of the many.

Ethos comes from the habit of one or a few members of a social circle as a ceremonial expression.

Rational is the logical person.

Logical is the person who uses observed activities of the environment and the population known to, seen or heard of this individual. Logos is the greek word for reason.

So there must be an experience, observation and sequential derivation of reasonable thinking.

Reasons are developed through causes and results exposed or experienced within the past social content borders,

Also the person must belong to an environment with activities and people where these events can or have been observed.

So, the environment (physical or / and social) is playing part of what is observed, when , how, why, how often, where and so on. The role of the environment can be seen as source, result or a combination of both roles for the observations.

So, the logic or rationality is affected by the physical and social aspects of the so called logical person.

So, both morality and rationality are part of the social context, designed, influenced and influencing in the forms of acceptability and traditional or ceremonial social environment.

But , we did not clarify if the observations are “correctly” done, examined or explained in an objective manner, way from any subjective feeling, expectation or otherwise social influence.

How can we be objective? We are as objects part of the physical context, interdepenting to the surroundings, we are subjects with subjective understanding of the objects and events around us.

No observation can happen without affecting the observation.

A philosopher must do the ground work for science. Preparing the mental borders of ideas, breaking borders of ideas and focusing on a new perspective of any old idea.

A philosopher must distant him/herself away from the events / activities as much as to be able to understand almost every aspect in question but also as much as not to have any measurable impact of the outcome of the measurement, or to be able to explain by how much or how the observation measurement is affected.

According to the above we understand that anyone who is using the words morality or ethics, without touching the enclosing limits of these definitions, is morally wrong in a larger or different time or space context.

Good and evil are strongly correlated to the social, ceremonial, local, time and size related social borders. And that is why a person differs from the family, a family differs from ward neighbours and their ancestors, a ward differs from a town and so on ...

For the above differences Aristoteles wanted to introduce to all city states of Hellas a common educational ground, and thus minimise the misunderstandings of local expressions, ceremonies and traditions. Common education creates a feeling of common social expressions, cohesion and conflict resolution methodology.

English: Front and back of a coin with the head of Ptolemy Soter on one side and an eagle on the other. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For good, it is defined as personal (egoism), group (sectarian) , ethnic (national), common for all humans (philanthropic) and global (environmental). Not all levels of definition are compatible with each other and above all a tiny membrane separates the ego from the external (whatever it is).

Egoism is not always against the rest, as some see the protection of a larger group to be better fought through the protection of the self first (freedom of expression for example). And again not all egoism based fights benefit anyone else except the own self.

In a similar way we can express what evil is defining its levels of negative experience in a person's self (e.g. suicide). group (e.g. deflection), ethic (e.g. treason), common (humanitarian disaster) or global (natural disaster).

Neither of the above two (good and evil) can be understood outside a context definition, and according to point of the borders of the perspective the same event can be explained as good or
as bad in the same time.

Absolutism and dogmatism are always short lived, as much as this sentence, when it can be seen outside the above mentioned borders of social understanding and experienced knowledge base.

Ptolemy Soter