What most people think of as a philosophical system is a collection of doctrines
deliberately invented by an individual philosopher in the attempt to reduce
the whole of his experience to private formulae. I do not believe that such
things exist. What I find in the writings of any one philosopher is nothing like that;
it is more like a series of attempts to think, more clearly and consistently
than his contemporaries, in ways more or less common to them all.
– R G Collingwood
The Principles of Art
Homer Simpson
In my last post I discussed my skeptical outlook regarding epistemology (what we can know and how), and that by abduction, I believe that the world does exist largely as we experience it. This month I want to move on from such basic considerations and talk about two other large fields of philosophy: ethics and aesthetics.
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy defines ethics as ‘the philosophical study of morality’, and aesthetics as ‘the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of art and the character of our experience of art and of the natural environment’. To put it another way, ethics considers matters such as good and evil or right and wrong while aesthetics concerns itself with ideas such as beauty and ugliness. Whereas most philosophers feel that there is a sharp distinction between the two, I believe that the boundary can be fuzzy. To my mind there are clear parallels between the concept of goodness and beauty for instance. This is certainly not an original thought and can be found in the work of the romantic poets. Some might even argue that the idea of ‘goodness’ is central to any true definition of beauty.
I believe that ethics and aesthetics are the most important branches of philosophy as they obtain to our real lives. Just as mathematics, physics and other ‘basic sciences’ are a necessary foundation for fields such as engineering and medicine, the basic philosophical disciplines such as ontology and epistemology really only impact the lives of the average person because they can guide our thinking when we deal with the ethical or aesthetic questions that we encounter daily.
Most of philosophy can be considered as dealing with deep questions about the world that exist independently of conscious beings but ethics and aesthetics are about issues that one can argue are deeply tied to sentient beings. They seem to be fundamentally different but there is some disagreement on this question. This brings up the concepts of ethical (or moral) and aesthetic realism vs non-realism. Moral and aesthetic realists believe that there are actual objective truths in these areas that are independent of any personal or societal opinions. Non-realism can be termed as skepticism or subjectivism. These have subtly different meanings, but both imply that moral or aesthetic propositions can not be considered as true or false but are either unknowable or dependent on the opinions of observers.
On the one hand there are countless examples where an action has been considered acceptable at one time or in one social context but not another. This can be as seemingly trivial as wearing short skirts to momentous concepts such as slavery or the death penalty. A moral realist would argues that some ethical opinions, such as opposing slavery may be objectively correct at any time and anywhere and that instances where it has been condoned are clearly examples of faulty reasoning. This would be analogous to improper understanding of scientific facts such as the sun orbiting the earth.
A subjectivist would say for example that in the context of modern western society slavery is wrong, but that it was not wrong in ancient Greece. A skeptic would argue that we have no way to know which of these is true. Similar questions can be asked about beauty. Is the art of Monet better than of Rembrandt? Or of Warhol? Attempts have been made through the years to find some underlying principles to make these determinations but success, if any, has been limited.
Actions such as the murder of innocents for no reason or torture of children suggest some idea of clear moral ‘wrongness’ but are even these a product of how the human mind works rather than something ‘real’ in nature. Although this is probably a cop out, my current stand is once more that of a skeptic. I can’t know for certain that moral and aesthetic principles are part of the fabric of the universe. But just as I still eat and drink and don’t walk into traffic, even though there is no absolute proof that the outside world is what it seems, I choose to act in what seems to be a morally correct way and enjoy art and beauty based on my imperfect conclusions. Whether these moral precepts are a human invention or are basic to the universe, I still choose to follow them.
Next month I will talk about different ethical theories for determining what is right and wrong.
Wayne
April 2025
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