Is there a right and left when the question is about right and wrong? – The irreducible difference between ethics and politics, religion, and morality

Abstract

Summary Ethics is not culture bound or culturally relative, or Western. It is not true for some people, but not for others. We may not always know what is best or right, but we can always work to improve our knowledge and raise our standards. In this, ethics is no different from science. Applying this to bioethics leads to important consequences. All ethics, including bioethics, is built on a presumption of universal values. Millennials may worry that what we have now is white men's bioethics. Mill was white; but his ethics do not privilege white men. In fact, the growth in universal and secular ethics has forced us to recognize and address the problems with sexism, racism, and colonialism over the past 150 years. Immoral social practices that were considered acceptable for thousands of years, invisible to those with undeserved power, have become visible. Mill and Kant gave us the tools to discover injustices in the social structures of where we live, or where we worship. That is not to imply bioethics ignores or opposes religion. Bioethics allows everyone to make decisions based on their own personal religious beliefs. That's called “autonomy”, and it respects religious freedom and defends pluralism. Ethics is evidence-based morality. To arrive at an ethical conclusion one must be willing to submit all of one's moral reactions and beliefs to scrutiny and critical thinking, and objective assessment. Ethics requires putting dispassionate reflection above ideology, and its success depends on listening to all sides of a dispute, “right” and “left”, and giving reasons for preferring one solution over others. Fortunately, every religious belief can be mitigated by ethics, so long as we realize that ethics is not merely one additional set of subjective beliefs, but must be rationally and scientifically justified and universal. That is why the arc of history bends towards justice…and away from many fundamentalist religious beliefs. Conservative, racist, and divisive belief systems, and the reactionary political parties and authoritarian leaders who promote them, are unlikely to support ethical responses to social problems or political and economic crises . Nevertheless, it is important to not equate left and right with right and wrong. Philosophers must judge issues based only on the ethical arguments, and let the political ramifications fall where they may.