{"ops":[{"insert":"The development of ethical reasoning abilities is vitally important—both for living an ethical life and creating an ethical world. We all need the intellectual tools and understandings essential for reasoning through ethical issues and problems in an insightful manner.\n \nUnfortunately, most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with social conventions, religious beliefs, and the law. Most people do not see ethics as a domain unto itself, a set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what behavior helps or harms sentient creatures. Most people do not recognize that ethical concepts and principles are universally defined, through such documents as the "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"UN Declaration of Human Rights"},{"insert":", and that these concepts and principles are transcultural and trans religious.\n \nOne need not appeal to a religious belief or cultural convention to recognize that slavery, genocide, torture, sexism, racism, murder, assault, fraud, deceit, and intimidation are all ethically wrong. Whenever we base ethical conclusions on religious or cultural standards, we separate ourselves from those who hold contrary religious or cultural beliefs and we confuse ethics for other modes of thinking. It is essential, therefore, that we use shared ethical concepts and principles as guides in reasoning through common ethical issues.\n \nWe can find a wide array of important ethical concepts by reviewing the terms available for ethical discourse in virtually every natural language. All spoken languages contain synonyms for desirable ethical traits such as being kind, openminded, impartial, truthful, honest, compassionate, considerate, and honorable. All natural languages also contain hundreds of negative ethical traits such as being selfish, greedy, egotistical, callous, deceitful, hypocritical, disingenuous, prejudiced, bigoted, spiteful, vindictive, cruel, brutal, and oppressive. The essential meanings of these terms are not dependent on either theology or social convention. Living an ethical life emerges from the fact that people are capable of either helping or harming others, of contributing to or damaging the quality of other’s lives.\n \nIn addition to the ability to distinguish purely ethical terms from those that are theological or conventional, skilled ethical reasoning presupposes the same range of intellectual skills and traits required in other domains. One must be skilled in breaking reasoning down into its component parts. One must be proficient in assessing reasoning for its clarity, accuracy, relevance, depth, breadth, logicalness and fairness. One must be intellectually humble, intellectually perseverant, and intellectually empathic. All of us need essential foundations in ethics, without which ethical discussion will often end in hopeless disputation or discouraging contradiction and misunderstanding. Developing as an insightful ethical reasoner and person takes time and much practice. No one can do this work for us. Each of us must internalize ethical concepts and principles for ourselves. And we must be committed to developing and living as fairminded critical thinkers.\n \nIn our upcoming webinar on ethical reasoning, I will discuss some of the foundations of ethical reasoning all of us need if we are to reason well through ethical issues and problems. Please join us for this webinar to be held October 24 at 10:00 am Pacific Daylight Time. Read more:"},{"attributes":{"color":"blue","link":"https://community.criticalthinking.org/webinarsAndAnnouncements#w_68"},"insert":"https://community.criticalthinking.org/webinarsAndAnnouncements#w_68"},{"insert":" and register: "},{"attributes":{"color":"blue","link":"https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ek02zr270899b16f&oseq=&c=&ch="},"insert":"https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ek02zr270899b16f&oseq=&c=&ch="},{"insert":"\n \n----\nThis blog was modified from the letter introduction in "},{"attributes":{"italic":true},"insert":"The Thinker’s Guide to Ethical Reasoning"},{"insert":" by Richard Paul and Linda Elder, 2019. NY: Rowman & Littlefield.\n\n"}]}