Can you see how both ethics and heart, love and empathy are all in play? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Very vaguely but I'm happy emotion is still part of the moral equation. Thank you.

To tell you frankly I don't understand why philosophers have ignored a ''fact'' that's common knowledge to the general adult population - being good is stupid.

Yes, there are a lot of good people around and I admire them but we only need to take notice of the lessons we teach our children: ''it's a big bad world out there'' and other morsels of ''wisdom'' that, in a general sense, suggest that all is not right with the world and we need to be, at a very minimum, discreet.

I think the reason for this is that, as you already know, most people see that being ethical is incompatible with how the world actually works. I'm afraid to say this but I have a feeling that ethics is now limited to academia, some religous folks and some caring atheists.

Perhaps I paint a sad picture of our world but where there's smoke there's fire.

It appears, therefore, that to be ethical in our modern world would be naive at best and stupidity at worst.

That's why I think we need to search for a different peg to hang the ethical issue. The heart, as vague as it is, is my first choice becuase the mind clearly sees ethics as stupid or logically inconsistent at some level.

The ''heart'' isn't impeded by logic. It's capable of being irrational, the precise requirement, if all I said is true, for us to be good people.

dirempting — Maw

Ah, I thought it was a typo.

"noun. 1. a sharp division into two parts; disjunction; separation. Origin of diremption. Latin."

Morality was developed among ancient humans, probably before there were words for it. An individual's, family's, and tribe's survival required compliance with the group's demands. The demands weren't very complicated: be quiet; walk slowly, stay close; run! don't eat that; eat this; don't wander away alone. Simple stuff, but taught with urgency. Individuals that were capable of both instilling and practicing the rules had a better chance of survival.

In time morality was formalized in rules, once we had the language required to write them. However, the basic method of instilling morality remains, and it begins with teaching children to obey parents. As far as the young child can tell, love and nurture is dependent on obedience. The modern child internalizes obedience to parental rules, just as the ancient child did.

What is it that keeps children behaving well as they grow up, become parents themselves, and finally grow old and die? It's the desire for love and nurture, and the fear of punishment -- but refined and elaborated into a complex morality.

In other words, it's emotion that enables us to be moral; behave ourselves and play well with others.

It isn't a fool-proof system, but it has worked pretty well for a long time, and it can't require a whole lot of rationality. By the time people are learnéd enough to benefit from rational instruction, it is too late to teach them the basic kernel of morality: we fear losing love and nurture by misbehaving.