The practicality of Ethics.

The penultimate post on the construction of an ethical theory. Yesterday I reduced the requirements down to two easy breezy bite sized bits. Today I'll polish off the first of those.

An ethical system (rather than theory) must be practical. It must address the question "what should I do right now?" It needn't go into the future to answer anything theoretical. We must stay in the present and we must stay focused on our own business. If we were to start focusing on the future, hypothetical situations, and other people's business we'd be forced to construct the elements of the situation that we are not privy to. Unfortunately we are not privy to the majority of the crucial elements of any situation that falls under one (or more) of these categories.
I'll give just one example. If I were to ask "is it wrong if peter wants to masturbate in the library?" I would be forced to consider a whole bunch of things that are none of my business and possibly completely unknowable to me. I would have to know the definition of "wrong" both universally and how it relates to this situation. I would have to know how Peter feels about this "wrong". Does he comprehend the definition I give? Does he agree? Do the other patrons of the library agree? Say they don't agree, whose definition will take precedence? Does masturbation in general fall under this "wrong" heading? Does it fall under this heading within this particular context? We would also have to know little details about the general situation. Are there any other people in the library? Would they mind if Peter masturbated? If they do mind is it right or wrong for them to mind? What country is Peter in? Are the people there generally accepting of Peter's sexuality? If they aren't accepting of his sexuality is it right that they shouldn't be? How much does Peter want it? And most of all we'd be forced to ask questions like "do we have the right to define another persons actions in any way in any context?" Frankly I'm just not smart enough to be able to answer all of these questions, or even a fraction of them, with any sort of reasonable conviction. So I set it aside. I say "there must be a better way. Peter is the only one who knows about his situation and he's the only one that can tell us whether or not his actions are right or wrong (provided we can agree on a definition)."
These sorts of problems arise every single time we ask such questions. Whenever we get stuck in someone else's business or we get stuck in the past or future we are putting ourselves in a situation of great disadvantage. Our view of the past is necessarily skewed based on the generalizations, distortions, and ommisions that are essential components of memory. Our perception of the future is no better. We are forced to assume that we know what resources will be available and how those resources in that situation will combine to produce an outcome. The best we can hope for when considering the future is to conjecture about how we might react to certain contingencies. But this is only based on our present perception of our abilities, which can change in an instant, and which is based on our memories of the past (distorted, generalized, omitted).
We can not answer some of the necessary questions and the rest will be answered by guessing. So we stick to ourselves in the present and hopefully we can come to an awareness of what is optimal functioning for us. By staying in the present and staying focused on ourselves we can do away with most of traditional ethics and start living a lovely life. We really don't need a grand complex system or a set of rules that can be pinned down. All we need to know is how to optimize the present moment. That shouldn't be too hard seeing as how the human condition is wired to do this from birth.
Tomorrow I'll go over how we can find our own optimal functioning.