In general when someone attempts suicide and fails, we'll provide medical care with the intention of saving this person. However, assuming he made a choice to end his life, on the basis of what do we justify trying to save him?

If someone is unconscious and needs resuscitation, we'd provide that care in general. I think we are supposing that it is a reasonable assumption that this person would like to be saved. However, if we have reason to believe otherwise (say he signed a no-resuscitation notice) then it seems like it'd be a transgression to ignore the wish.

I think we should save a person after an attempted suicide but I'm having trouble finding a grounded justification for it.

I'm genuinely so tired of hearing about this stupid ass 8th amendment bullshit when it comes to that woman who survived 2 botched lethal injections and that man who murdered 13 people because the outrage is just so selective and performative. they love to bring up the 8A as if that shit doesn't already get broken on a daily basis with the barbaric US prison system. when you have non-violent inmates getting raped, beaten, extorted, and stabbed to death by violent inmates with life sentences. when you have inmates being fed shitty food that's literally labeled as "not for human consumption" when you have inmates being forced to do slave labor because it's still allowed as a punishment under the 13th. not to mention inmates having to live in degrading conditions not even fit for animals, these are US prisons and they've been this way for decades with no change. very obviously violating the 8A but yet I don't see a lot of people bitching and crying over this, instead they just accept it as a normal part of prison. they even make jokes out of male inmates being sexually assaulted, but for some reason when it comes to executing cold blooded murderers now all of a sudden people give a shit about the 8A. when the truth is if they really wanted to execute her they would of done it already, we all know had she been a black or latina woman they would of been got her ass up out of here. with all the shit that the US has done they clearly don't give a fuck about human rights and the constitution they just pretend to care, you can clearly see that with the whole ICE situation, I'm just so tired of americans selective morality.

Seems like a smartass question, it's a serious question. Why even bother with ethics when presented with violence so much that it biases ethics in favor of violence?

Why would you want to be burdened by the psychward when you could have the glory?

Premise 1: It is immoral to treat people differently based on factors they do not control, unless doing so makes things more equitable.

Premise 2: Birthplace is a factor people do not control, and treating people differently based on birthplace does not make things more equitable.

Conclusion: Therefore, everyone should have the same right to work and live in any country as anyone else.

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971 (rev. ed. 1999).

What Are Good and Bad?

We call things good and bad every day.

A good person. A bad decision. A good society. A bad relationship. Good intentions. Bad behaviour.

But ask a simple question:

What makes good good?

The answer becomes surprisingly difficult.

We often inherit our definitions from our families, religions, cultures, political tribes, laws, or personal feelings. We know what we think is good and bad, but that is not the same thing as knowing what good and bad are.

If morality is going to mean anything beyond preference, we need a reason for the distinction.

I think that reason can be found in the structure of Reality itself.

Everything Is Whole and Part

Look closely at almost anything that exists and you will find the same basic relationship.

It is a whole.

It is made of parts.

It is part of a greater whole.

A cell is a whole, made of parts, and part of an organism.

A person is a whole, made of parts, and part of a family, community, ecosystem, society, and ultimately Reality.

A tree is a whole, made of roots, branches, cells, and tissues, while also being part of a forest.

The pattern continues across scales.

This gives us three realities that must be acknowledged simultaneously:

wholeness, composition, and participation.

And from those three relationships, I think we can derive something remarkably concrete about morality.

Good Protects and Connects

A whole must maintain enough integrity to remain itself.

That requires protection.

But no whole exists completely independently. It depends upon relationships among its own parts and relationships with things beyond itself.

That requires connection.

So:

Good protects and connects.

Protection honours individuality.

Connection honours relationship.

Neither is sufficient by itself.

Protection without connection becomes isolation, domination, exclusion, or stagnation.

Connection without protection becomes exploitation, dissolution, dependency, or the destruction of individuality.

A healthy boundary does both. It protects the whole while allowing appropriate connection across the boundary.

That is why goodness cannot simply mean inclusion. Sometimes exclusion is good.

Goodness cannot simply mean freedom. Sometimes limiting an action is good.

Goodness cannot simply mean survival. Sometimes a part must die for the greater whole to survive.

Goodness cannot simply mean productivity. Something can be extraordinarily productive while destroying the system around it.

Goodness cannot simply mean maximizing possibilities. Preventing someone from enslaving another person removes a possibility. That reduction in possibility is good because it protects the integrity of other wholes and their ability to participate freely in the greater whole.

Good and bad cannot be determined from one dimension alone.

Then What Is Bad?

If good follows from the relationship between whole, parts, and greater whole, bad follows from the failure of that relationship.

Bad fails to protect, fails to connect, or does one at the expense of the other.

Cancer is an unusually clear physical example.

A cancer cell is still a living whole. But its relationship with the greater whole has become destructive. It proliferates at the expense of the organism of which it is a part.

From the perspective of the cancer alone, unlimited growth might look like success.

From the perspective of the organism, it is catastrophic.

The mistake is treating the interests of one level as though they were the only interests that exist.

The opposite mistake is also possible. A society cannot justify destroying individuals merely by declaring that doing so benefits "the greater good." The individual is not only a part. The individual is also a whole.

Both truths matter.

I am a whole, and I am a part.

That single sentence rejects both absolute individualism and absolute collectivism.

Destruction Is Not Necessarily Bad

This also explains something that simpler moral systems struggle with.

Destruction is not inherently bad.

A cell can die to protect an organism.

A tree can fall and nourish a forest.

A predator can kill and remain part of a healthy ecosystem.

A person can end a relationship because maintaining the connection is destroying their integrity.

A society can restrict someone's freedom to enslave another person.

In each case, looking at only one part of the relationship produces an incomplete moral judgment.

The question is not simply:

Was something protected?

Nor is it simply:

Was something connected?

We have to ask how protection and connection operate across the whole structure.

What happened to the whole?

What happened to its parts?

What happened to the greater whole?

The More You Know, the Better You Can Do

This is why knowledge matters to morality.

I've said for a long time:

The more you know, the better you can do.

Imagine someone gives you a basket of fruit.

You see healthy food that can nourish people. It appears good.

Then you learn that the fruit was harvested through child slavery.

The fruit didn't suddenly change.

Your understanding of its relationships changed.

You now know something about the people involved, the process that produced it, the suffering hidden behind it, and the larger system supporting its production.

Your moral understanding changes because your understanding of Reality became more complete.

That does not mean morality itself became subjective.

It means your knowledge was incomplete.

Subjective Minds, Objective Reality

Every conscious being encounters Reality from an individual point of view.

My experience is mine.

Your experience is yours.

Those perspectives are private, but they are not separate universes.

We encounter each other through a shared Reality.

So morality cannot be reduced entirely to subjectivity or objectivity.

It concerns individual subjects interacting within objective shared Reality.

My pain matters because I am a whole.

Your pain matters because you are a whole.

Our relationship matters because neither of us exists only as an isolated whole.

And the larger systems affected by our actions matter because we are parts of them.

Morality emerges from acknowledging all of these relationships rather than pretending one level is the only one that matters.

Honor Individuality and Connection

So perhaps good and bad do not need to begin as arbitrary commandments handed down to us.

They can begin with something observable about existence itself:

Everything is a whole.

Everything is made of parts.

Everything is part of a greater whole.

From this comes an ethical principle:

Honor individuality and connection.

Protect without unnecessarily severing connection.

Connect without destroying individuality.

Recognize the integrity of the whole, the needs of its parts, and its responsibilities as part of something greater.

And keep learning, because our moral judgments can only account for the relationships we are capable of seeing.

The more you know, the better you can do.

Good protects and connects.

Bad fails to protect, fails to connect, or sacrifices one for the other.

And the reason isn't simply that someone decided these things were good or bad.

It follows from what we are: wholes made of parts, participating as parts of greater wholes.

This is kinda a random thought in the middle of the night post. I'd just like to hear people's views and opinions ig? I have like a very mixed view on the death penalty and honestly don't know where I stand. I'd say I'm mostly against it, but at the same time I guess I can see how people view it as reasonable when certain people do ruin if not end other people's lives. At the same time I'd argue it's worse for them to live with that fact that they did something horrible, in jail for the rest of their life instead of just, ending their life? Idk but at the same time I do agree maybe some cases make sense?...

Idk mostly I find it inhumane, bcs I believe everyone's life is a gift, well obv it can also affect innocent people that haven't been proven innocent but idk if that's like a thing that actually happens?- at least anymore? And also I believe in actually helping criminals work through their problems n shi and idk what the word is. rehabilitation? I guess that wouldn't exactly work with a bloody murderer or something ig, but I just thought I'd mention it.

Either way I'm curious where other people stand and what y'all think about my opinion bcs I rl can't come to a decision whether I'm pro- or anti-death penalty:^... Like if someone asked me I'd go on a 30 min rant why and why not I support it or don't 🤷... Not a clear answer...

Is a person sentenced to death decades earlier still the same person you are executing decades later? I think that people can change drastically over the years, and that you are not killing the same person who was sentenced. If you sentence someone to death, then you'd really have to do it immediately if you want punish them. Otherwise, it's simply unethical murder. What are your thoughts?

I hav write an essay for ethics class and I want to make sure my argument is sound let me know what you think!

I believe ethical claims are subjective in nature. Morality to me is not a fixed set of universal truths but a reflection of human understanding, culture, and emotions at a given moment in time. What we call “wrong” or “right” evolves as our knowledge and empathy expand. Just as personal preferences like preferring one season over another depend on personal experience, moral judgements also depend on perspective. I believe I am correct in my moral views today, but those views have been shaped by my limited understanding of the world, and as I learn more, my beliefs will shift. This is why I believe morality is not objective and is instead a reflection of people living in a changing world.

One of the reasons I believe ethical truths are subjective is that they change as our understanding changes. A century ago we believed that animal experimentation was okay , that belief wasn't a deliberate rejection of the truth; it was just the best understanding at the time. Now, fast-forward 100 years: science has shown us the depth of animal cognition and emotion, and now society is in the majority that harm to animals is wrong. This doesn't mean that we have discovered a hidden moral truth; it just means that our moral framework evolved as we learned more.

If morality was objective, ethical progress wouldn't make sense. There would be one unchanging moral code, and every deviation from that would be an error. However, history shows that moral codes are tied heavily to context. Justice, equality, empathy, and compassion all depend on what people know and value. The recognition of women's rights, the abolition of slavery, and our growing concern about environmental ethics all show that moral truth is not a scientific law and it is instead constructed through human reflection and empathy.

Another reason morality is subjective is that moral judgments are inseparable from cultural and emotional experience. What one society would consider virtuous, another would condemn. An example would be how cultures that are more individualistic prioritize autonomy and self-expression, but a collectivist culture values community harmony over individual freedoms. Neither is objectively right; they just each reflect the social and emotional priorities of their culture. Even within a single culture, moral disagreement is constant. People differ on Issues like capital punishment, animal rights, or euthanasia. And it's not because one side has found the objective truth, but because moral reasoning is filtered through empathy, upbringing, and personal experience. Emotions like guilt, compassion, and anger shape our sense of right and wrong far more than logic alone. If morality were objective, we would expect universal agreement. But instead we find diversity, and that diversity is evidence of subjectivity, not confusion.

The strongest argument against subjectivism is that moral truths seem universal. Like when, most people agree that unnecessary suffering is wrong or that murder without justification is immoral. Objectivists argue that these shared intuitions are proof that moral facts exist outside of human opinion just like how mathematical truths are true regardless of who believes them. This argument easily sways people to the objectivist side because it appeals to the sense of moral confidence. When we express our feelings about child abuse or genocide, we don't feel like we are stating a personal preference, like how you favor one chocolate over another it feels as if we are stating something true. Objectivism explains why, when you are arguing over a moral disagreement, it holds more weight than a chocolate preference. However, the universality of some moral intuitions doesn't prove objectivity; it only shows that humans share similar social and emotional needs. We evolved as a species to value empathy and cooperation because those traits helped us survive. The fact that most people oppose cruelty doesn't prove that it's wrong, but it means that our shared psychology makes us oppose it. If morality were truly objective, it would exist entirely independent of human minds , but instead, moral reasoning only exists within them. Even more, these objective “facts” vary when circumstances are changed: killing is wrong except in the case of xyz, and lying is wrong except in the case of xyz. These expectations show me that moral principles are more flexible than they are absolute, and objectivity does not explain that flexibility well without it veering into subjectivism. 

Ethical subjectivism doesn’t make morality meaningless—it makes it human. Our sense of right and wrong grows from empathy, reason, and experience, changing as we do. What once seemed moral may later feel wrong, not because we uncovered a timeless truth, but because we became more aware and compassionate. Seeing morality as subjective reminds us to stay humble and open-minded, knowing our views aren’t final. Objectivism offers certainty, but subjectivism reflects how people actually think and feel. In the end, morality’s strength lies in its ability to evolve with us, shaping a more understanding and humane world.

I want to discuss my perspective and arguments about ethics in my writing. It is not a complete essay, just my thoughts written down and presented for discussion. Please note that this manuscript may contain language some find unsettling. Furthermore, I did not write this from a position of moral superiority or to condemn others; indeed, even as I wrote it, I was uncertain of my own standing and whether I might be acting hypocritically—for after finishing the piece and stepping away from my desk, I continued to cook and eat, effectively remaining subject to the very judgment I was critiquing. This manuscript aims solely to share a perspective, not to attack or disparage anyone. I hope readers will engage with it respectfully.

Sincerely, akaiha