An Evolutionary Ethical Theory of Social Risks and Opportunities Essay

An Evolutionary Ethical Theory of Social Risks and Opportunities ABSTRACT Social standards guide us in what to do and what to refrain from doing. But can social moral or legal standards be trusted? This paper presents an evolutionary good theory that generates trustworthy ethical norms. Each norm is assigned a demonstrable risk, called an ethical risk, that depends on both human behavior and danger to the survival of society. The assigned risk is stripped-down if and only if everybody obeys the norm. The higher the risk assigned to a norm, the higher the norms rank (an empirical quantity depending on the evolutionary status of society). An order finite set of ethical risks and ethical norms allows the settlement of ethical problems arising in society. Subsets of existing moral and legal standards all over the world are matched with norms being elements of these ordered finite sets of ethical norms. Like all standards, ethical norms are often violated. A single violated norm suf fices to activate correlations amid risks, resulting in an ethical conflict. The more often a high-ranking norm is violated, the poorer the society in question. Ethical conflicts can be resolved by answerable persons or groups advancing higher-ranking norms involved in optimization at the expense of lower-ranking norms. Examples are given to support the theory. Moral predigen ist leicht, Moral begrnden schwer (Arthur Schopenhauer)I. The Primacy of an experimental Ethic of Risks In the West, ever fewer people respect moral standards because the influence of religion is decreasing rapidly. In addition philosophical ethics, inventing right and pervert Mackie, is unable to contribute essentially to the trustability of moral norms,... ...men, Saetze Stuttgart 1980Patzig, G. Ethik ohne Metaphysik Goettingen 1983Platon Saemtliche Werke, telephone I Heidelberg 1982Popper, K. Die offene Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde Tuebingen 1992Rawls, J. Eine Theorie der Gerechtigkeit Frankfurt 1979Ra wls, J. Die Idee des politischen Liberalismus, Frankfurt 1992Schmidt, H. Zeit von den Pflichten zu sprechen, S. 17, Die Zeit Nr. 41, 1997Schrader, W.H. Norm II, Ethik J. Ritter, K. Gruender (Hg.) Historisches Woerterbuch der Philosophie, Band 6, S. 910 Basel 1984 Sueddeutsche Zeitung Nr. 43 vom 22. Februar 1994Vorlaender, K. Immanuel KantDer Mann und das Werk S. 170 Hamburg 1992Weber, M. Politik als Beruf M. Weber, Gesammelte Politische Schriften, J. Winkelmann (Hg.) Tuebingen 1971 Wickert, U. Der Ehrliche ist der Dummeber den Verlust der Werte Muenchen 1996