Quotes About Ethics

It's reasonable to assume, for example, that bulls prefer to spend their days wandering over open prairies in the company of other bulls and cows rather than pulling carts and ploughshares under the yoke of a whip-wielding ape.

The Bible is far from being the exclusive font of human morality (and luckily so, given the many racist, misogynist, and homophobic attitudes it contains).

ethical perspective, monotheism was arguably one of the worst ideas in human history.

We are living in a global world, and whether we like it or not our lives are intertwined with the lives of people on the other side of the planet. They grow our food, they manufacture our clothes, they might die in a war fought for our oil prices, and they might be the victims of our lax environmental laws. We should not ignore our ethical responsibilities to people just because they live far away.

The real problem with robots is not their own artificial intelligence but rather the natural stupidity and cruelty

we should be careful not to make real people suffer for the sake of a fiction.

If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When evaluating global happiness, is it wrong to count the happiness only of the upper classes, of Europeans or of men? Perhaps it is also wrong to consider only the happiness of humans.

Humans and machines might merge so completely that humans will not be able to survive at all if they are disconnected from the network. They will be connected starting in the womb, and if later in life you choose to disconnect, insurance agencies might refuse to insure you, employers might refuse to employ you, and healthcare services might refuse to take care of you. In the big battle between health and privacy, health is likely to win hands down.

Which means that when designing their self-driving car, Toyota or Tesla will be transforming a theoretical problem in the philosophy of ethics into a practical problem of engineering

Doubting free will is not just a philosophical exercise. It has practical implications. If organisms indeed lack free will, it implies that we can manipulate and even control their desires using drugs, genetic engineering or direct brain stimulation.

All social mammals, such as wolves, dolphins, and monkeys, have ethical codes, adapted by evolution to promote group cooperation.

the ethical and political ideas of Locke, Rousseau and Jefferson. However, once the heretical scientific insights are translated into everyday technology, routine activities and economic structures, it will become increasingly difficult to sustain this double-game, and we – or our heirs – will probably require a brand-new package of religious beliefs and political institutions.

It therefore makes absolutely no sense to credit Judaism and its Christian and Muslim offspring with the creation of human morality.

All social mammals from chimpanzees to rats have ethical codes that limit behavior like theft and murder.

Were Christian conquistadores more ethical than pagan Native American tribes? What monotheism undoubtedly did was to make many people far more intolerant than before,

Secular ethics relies not on obeying the edicts of this or that god, but rather on a deep appreciation of suffering.

We can already see this process at work in geriatric hospital wards. Due to an uncompromising humanist belief in the sanctity of human life, we keep people alive till they reach such a pitiful state that we are forced to ask, 'What exactly is so sacred here?

in 1987, Thatcher said, "There is no such thing as society. There is [a] living tapestry of men and women…and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves."1

At present the meat industry not only inflicts untold misery on billions of sentient beings but is also one of the chief causes of global warming, one of the main consumers of antibiotics and poison, and one of the foremost polluters of air, land, and water.

The most important segments of many religious dogmas are not their ethical principles, but rather factual statements such as 'God exists', 'the soul is punished for its sins in the afterlife', 'the Bible was written by a deity rather than by humans', 'the Pope is never wrong'.

Domesticated chickens and cattle may well be an evolutionary success story, but they are also among the most miserable creatures that ever lived.

A rare wild rhinoceros on the brink of extinction is probably more satisfied than a calf who spends its short life inside a tiny box, fattened to produce juicy steaks.

If any scientist wants to argue that subjective experiences are irrelevant, their challenge is to explain why torture or rape are wrong without reference to any subjective experience.

The prevailing feeling is that too many opportunities are opening too quickly and that our ability to modify genes is outpacing our capacity for making wise and farsighted use of the skill.