Do you think ethical boundaries change according to context? Or are they in an unchanging nature no matter what? If it changes, does everything have the potential to one day be ethical, perhaps in different contexts?💜
All ethics were at one time applied ethics - there was no sense in which it was a purely academic theme. The Greeks certainly explored the themes of ethics and thinkers like Plato and Aristotle were absorbed much of the time in such considerations. Later, in Stoicism and Epicureanism, you'll see the roots of ethics.
Ethics was wrapped up in the question of how to live a good life. However with the proliferation of religious ideas, people allowed ethics to become a theological consideration and submitted to senior theologians to decide what could be considered 'moral' and ethical.
With the advent of the enlightenment and thinkers like Bacon and Hume, a new branch of ethics arose one concerned with 'humanism' and how the individual might decide on how to live ethically whilst maintaining social responsibility.
In modern-day contexts of ethics, the field is indeed trying to escape dry philosophy and become more applied once more. In almost all branches of science, you may find an ethical department, in psychology we have the influence of the Nuremberg code which facilitates the proper use of experimentation involving participation.
Indeed as psychological research continues we are becoming more refined and skillful in understanding not only the human impact of psychological research but how to involve non-human animals. For instance, some of Harlow's experiments on primates could never be carried out today for good reason. In the same way as informative and interesting as Milgram's research was, this also could not be carried out using the same methodology. So replication of this research now utilizes VR technology.
Nowadays researchers have a clearer understanding of ethical guidelines and over time science gains a clearer understanding of the cost/benefit ratio of research.
Sorry for the length of the reply, my mind went off on a tangent😂
All ethics were at one time applied ethics - there was no sense in which it was a purely academic theme. The Greeks certainly explored the themes of ethics and thinkers like Plato and Aristotle were absorbed much of the time in such considerations. Later, in Stoicism and Epicureanism, you'll see the roots of ethics.
Ethics was wrapped up in the question of how to live a good life. However with the proliferation of religious ideas, people allowed ethics to become a theological consideration and submitted to senior theologians to decide what could be considered 'moral' and ethical.
With the advent of the enlightenment and thinkers like Bacon and Hume, a new branch of ethics arose one concerned with 'humanism' and how the individual might decide on how to live ethically whilst maintaining social responsibility.
In modern-day contexts of ethics, the field is indeed trying to escape dry philosophy and become more applied once more. In almost all branches of science, you may find an ethical department, in psychology we have the influence of the Nuremberg code which facilitates the proper use of experimentation involving participation.
Indeed as psychological research continues we are becoming more refined and skillful in understanding not only the human impact of psychological research but how to involve non-human animals. For instance, some of Harlow's experiments on primates could never be carried out today for good reason. In the same way as informative and interesting as Milgram's research was, this also could not be carried out using the same methodology. So replication of this research now utilizes VR technology.
Nowadays researchers have a clearer understanding of ethical guidelines and over time science gains a clearer understanding of the cost/benefit ratio of research.
Sorry for the length of the reply, my mind went off on a tangent😂