The episode is about a developing New Ethics which involves a synthetic approach to understanding Good and Evil which presents Christopher W. diCarlo, the winner of the 2008 best lecturer competition, on the New Ethics. So he starts his lecture by bringing as an example his book where he asks five most essential questions that human beings can use when they become conscious.
The big five questions
What can I know, what are the limits of my knowledge ?
Why am I here ?
Who am I ?
How should I behave ?
What is to come of me ?
Christopher proves that by giving these questions to a person, it is possible to find out what kind of personality she/he has. The way people answer these questions tells a lot about them. These questions are an aid to reveal the type of a person and understand if you can go on with that person in the future or not. They affect the way that people answer a lot of other life questions. He concentrated on the question four because he was talking about New Ethics. How should we behave towards each other, towards other species and what is the most responsible way of managing human and natural resources? He differentiates between science and Ethics, by saying that science describes what occurs in the natural world while Ethics talks about how we ought to behave towards each other. Science deals with facts, Ethics deals with values. Ethics studies how and why we value human behaviour or actions. Values are good and bad, right and wrong, fair and unfair and so on. Comparing morality with ethics he says that morality deals with values within cultural settings, while Ethics is broader as it studies the nature of values throughout all cultures.
People need to understand the constrains through which each of us act. More we understand these constrains, better we can control over our behaviour. So this is the definition which somehow answers the question four. David Hume says '' We have limited freedom within these natural constrains''. He also discusses two types of people that are cheaters and cooperators and if you think that you're a cooperator, you are not right. People always cheat, they can cheat on smoking, diet and so on. What is a free will ? How much control do we have over our lives? Man's attitude and character form from a multiple influences, that's genetic actions, something that is in you and we can't control our actions. In my previous podcast I talked about unhealthy food and it is a good example of this statement. If we realize that hamburgers and sandwiches are dangerous for our health and we should avoid eating them , but we still eat. I myself eat knowing about that fact. Why? Is that because of genetic actions since we don't have the will to to refuse something that may kill us or cause a serious illness. May be the enjoyment is something that we can't stand and we are ready to sacrifice everything for it. But if we look at this question from another side, we can see that it is a questionable problem.
Good and evil will become a chance and a luck. This means that unfortunate incidents can become a reason for a person to do evil actions. We don't have the right to judge and blame people unless we know the motive. He brought an example of a man who killed his wife and wasn't sent to jail as he did that without a free will , not wanting to do that. Thus he concluded his lecture by saying that the New Ethics must develop an ambitious model which synthesizes the knowledge of sciences with the analytic rigor of philosophy, honest cook under which all of us act.
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