What are reason and impartiality in ethics?
What are reason and impartiality in ethics?
Reason, if people could do it well, is ipso facto impartial, because reason is in the pursuit of truth.
Decision-making, when people do it, is ipso facto partial because it is always in the service of the self (the ego).
Ethics are created when reason is used to develop understanding in order to establish rules to constrain or direct the self’s subsequent decision-making. Sometimes people do not reason so religious values and laws are used to constrain them instead.
Consider:
First, to reason, one cannot claim truth. That would be decision-making. In addition, in reason, a person acts to disprove all possible hypotheses. If a person could prove truth, their biases would prevent them from considering other ideas, and their selfish self would decide. Understanding would be circumvented.
The product of reason is therefore understanding—not a truth. Yet understanding is truth based. Understanding is not self based. Thus, it is impartial.
