I am not taking charity to be a central example of ethics.
Charity, societal improvement,etc are not centrally ethical, because the dimension of obligation is missing. It is obligatory to refrain from murder, but supererogatory to give to charity. Charity is not completely divorced
from ethics, because gaining better outcomes is the obvious flipside
of avoiding worse outcomes, but it does not have every component that
which is centrally ethical.
Not all value is morally relevant. Some preferences can be satisfied without impacting anybody else, preferences for flavours of ice cream being the classic example, and these are morally irrelevant. On the other had, my preference for loud music is likely to impinge on my neighbour’s preference for a good nights sleep: those preferences have a potential for conflict.
Charity and altrusim are part of ethics, but not central to ethics. A peaceful and prosperous society is in a position to consider how best to allocate its spare resources (and utiliariansim is helpful here, without being a full theory of ethics), but peace and prosperity are themselves the outcome a functioning ethics, not things that can be taken for granted. Someone who treats charity as the outstanding issue in ethics is, as it were, looking at
the visible 10% of the iceberg while ignoring the 90% that supports it.
If you mean conflict between individuals’ own values,
I mean destructive conflict.
Consider two stone age tribes. When a hunter of tribe A returns with a
deer, everyone falls on it, trying to grab as much as possible, and end up fighting and killing each other. When the same thing happens in tribe b, they apportion the kill in an orderly fashion according to
a predefined rule. All other things being equal, tribe B will do better
than tribe A: they are in possession of a useful piece of social technology.
I am not taking charity to be a central example of ethics.
Charity, societal improvement,etc are not centrally ethical, because the dimension of obligation is missing. It is obligatory to refrain from murder, but supererogatory to give to charity. Charity is not completely divorced from ethics, because gaining better outcomes is the obvious flipside of avoiding worse outcomes, but it does not have every component that which is centrally ethical.
Not all value is morally relevant. Some preferences can be satisfied without impacting anybody else, preferences for flavours of ice cream being the classic example, and these are morally irrelevant. On the other had, my preference for loud music is likely to impinge on my neighbour’s preference for a good nights sleep: those preferences have a potential for conflict.
Charity and altrusim are part of ethics, but not central to ethics. A peaceful and prosperous society is in a position to consider how best to allocate its spare resources (and utiliariansim is helpful here, without being a full theory of ethics), but peace and prosperity are themselves the outcome a functioning ethics, not things that can be taken for granted. Someone who treats charity as the outstanding issue in ethics is, as it were, looking at the visible 10% of the iceberg while ignoring the 90% that supports it.
I mean destructive conflict.
Consider two stone age tribes. When a hunter of tribe A returns with a deer, everyone falls on it, trying to grab as much as possible, and end up fighting and killing each other. When the same thing happens in tribe b, they apportion the kill in an orderly fashion according to a predefined rule. All other things being equal, tribe B will do better than tribe A: they are in possession of a useful piece of social technology.
Thank you, your point is well taken.