Stephen Yearwood
1 min readSep 8, 2020

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The problem, as I see it, is that morals are always based on beliefs (i.e., truth-claims that are not amenable to being evaluated, much less validated or invalidated, within material existence). Every belief is absolutely valid for whoever holds it, but no belief has any significance whatsoever for anyone not holding it. That is the cause of all the conflict regarding morality.

I thought you might find interesting an approach to an ethic that I have developed. It is an 'ought' from 'is'. The ethic follows from the observation that all human beings have no choice but to effect choices.

As it is a universal ethic (for everyone who acts in accordance with that observation--which is at least every human being who has ever lived long enough to be weaned), involving no beliefs, but located entirely within material existence, I call the ethic and its implications 'real justice'. Justice thus becomes an ethical category separate from morality.

The minimum condition of justice in real justice is that anyone's participation in the process in any form whenever any choice is being effected must be voluntary and sufficiently informed. That yields a handful of absolute prohibitions on conduct in effecting any choice (getting what one wants): no killing, harming, coercing, manipulating (lying, cheating, etc.), or stealing.

Effecting choices is thus the large but finite domain in which the ethic of real justice is the standard for judging people's interactions with other people. Outside that domain personal morality is the only option for self-governance.

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Stephen Yearwood
Stephen Yearwood

Written by Stephen Yearwood

M.A. in political economy (money/distributive justice) "Please don't confront me with my failures/ I'm aware of them" from "These Days," as sung by Gregg Allman

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