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Articles

Why Should I Care About Morality?

Arnold Zuboff keeps asking a dangerous question – whether anyone has any real reason to act morally. He thinks it has led him to a new basis for ethics.

Let’s inquire into the nature of morality – and, more particularly, into the authority that it seems to have in the judgments of most of us. I think a certain story can help us in raising the question of where it gets that authority.

Imagine that someone we shall call Gyges, after the character similarly used by Plato in a basically similar story, is seated at a table. Just before him on the table is a small console with a single button on it. Let’s say he knows that if he pushed that button a distant stranger, who would otherwise be fine, would be killed.

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