Is there an objective divide between moral and immoral?

Pendulate · July 09, 2015, 12:04:10 AM

Before addressing the question:

- This isn't an argument for moral nihlism.

- This accepts the existence of an objective system of value (which I think any reasonable person has to accept)

So the problem here is not whether some actions are more moral than others, but whether there is any empirically quanitifiable distinction between actions that are moral/ethical and immoral/unethical. Take this moral dilemma from Peter Singer:

You are walking down the street when you notice a baby drowning in a puddle. You can easily step in and save the baby, but it would mean ruining your new pair of $100 shoes. Are you morally obligated to save the baby?

Now the point of this is to demonstrate that since all of us would (hopefully) save the baby at the expense of our shoes, we are equally obligated to donate a similar amount of money to charity for a child in need somewhere else -- their proximity to us is irrelevant.

But this brings up another, more unsettling problem: if choosing not to save the drowning baby is indisputably unethical, then would choosing not to donate to charity be equally so? I don't think many people would be comfortable with this, but I really can't see any logic to get around it.

And then, if you do choose to donate $100 to charity, the question would arise of "why only $100? Why not $150? $200?" Assuming you could be more ethical than you are being, are you not essentially being unethical? Where do we draw the line?

If the line is drawn merely for pragmatic purposes, then the only truth to be derived from it is that nothing is truly ethical; some things are simply more or less ethical than others. Yet at the same time, everything we do has unethical components.

Some quick arguments against this would be:

"There's a difference between action and inaction"; that's to say, there's a difference between choosing to actively harm someone than to sit back and let them suffer. That's obviously flawed reasoning, because you are choosing to let them suffer either way; choosing not to act is no less morally repugnant, consequentially speaking

"There's a sliding scale; just as some things are more unethical than others, some things are more ethical than others, but they are still more ethical than not"; that's to say, murder is worse than stealing a candy bar, just as donating $150 is more ethical than donating 100. Okay, but the problem is where an action crosses the line from unethical into ethical territory -- judging by the drowning baby example, this seems based on nothing more than intuition.

"This doesn't invalidate ethics, though. There's still a continuum of more or less ethical actions, and we should still strive to be more ethical people." Absolutely. This doesn't discredit objective morality at all, but it does call into question whether the colloquial definitions of ethical/unethical can in fact be logically defended.

At any rate it looks like the colloquial definitions need a serious overhaul.

Verbatim · July 09, 2015, 12:12:00 AM

Well, you can't really trust charities these days.

Unless you want us to pretend that we can, for the purposes of the scenario. <_<

Saving a baby from drowning is easy, because you are taking direct action to save an infant's life. Charity is very, very murky water. You don't know what's being done with your money. So unless there's some charity out there that is guaranteed to be the ultimate paragon of virtue (which there isn't), it's not really a fair comparison.

Pendulate · July 09, 2015, 12:57:54 AM

Quote from: Verbatim on July 09, 2015, 12:12:00 AM

Unless you want us to pretend that we can, for the purposes of the scenario. <_<

Assume that you can. I think Singer has advocated some trustworthy organizations as well.

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Saving a baby from drowning is easy, because you are taking direct action to save an infant's life. Charity is very, very murky water. You don't know what's being done with your money. So unless there's some charity out there that is guaranteed to be the ultimate paragon of virtue (which there isn't), it's not really a fair comparison.

Then you'd be similarly obligated to investigate the matter; choosing not to on the assumption that they can't be trusted would be morally dubious at best.

The scenario can be extrapolated to any situation -- am I being unethical right now by sitting at my computer instead of volunteering at a soup kitchen?

The point is, is there any reliable empirical method for determining what is ethical and what isn't?

Verbatim · July 09, 2015, 01:36:21 AM

Quote from: Pendulate on July 09, 2015, 12:57:54 AM

Then you'd be similarly obligated to investigate the matter

And how might one go about this?

Regardless, there are much more ways of being a charitable person than donating to potentially shady organizations. Or, hell, form your own organization, and be open about all your practices therein. I just don't really care much for this... half-baked ultimatum you're trying to construct here. I know what you're trying to say, but it just doesn't really work with this particular example.

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am I being unethical right now by sitting at my computer instead of volunteering at a soup kitchen?

Obviously. I'm being unethical right now, too, because though I have AB-negative type blood (the very rarest of them all), I haven't donated an ounce of it.

"Being unethical" may as well just be a bodily function of ours. An involuntary one, like breathing, but one nonetheless.

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The point is, is there any reliable empirical method for determining what is ethical and what isn't?

Reliable? Well, no.

Human judgment is the definition of unreliability, and that's all we can really base our system of ethics upon, unfortunately.

If everyone in the world decided that they were gonna be purely charitable for the rest of their lives, those charitable people would all die. Because to nourish yourself would mean not nourishing somebody else.

To me, that sounds like a mockery of ethics, and we shouldn't really play with it like that.

Pendulate · July 09, 2015, 02:05:25 AM

Quote from: Verbatim on July 09, 2015, 01:36:21 AM

And how might one go about this?

I don't know, but I don't think that's a valid reason to dismiss it. And Singer has something to say about it in the link:

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At this point the students raise various practical difficulties. Can we be sure that our donation will really get to the people who need it? Doesn’t most aid get swallowed up in administrative costs, or waste, or downright corruption? Isn’t the real problem the growing world population, and is there any point in saving lives until the problem has been solved? These questions can all be answered: but I also point out that even if a substantial proportion of our donations were wasted, the cost to us of making the donation is so small, compared to the benefits that it provides when it, or some of it, does get through to those who need our help, that we would still be saving lives at a small cost to ourselves – even if aid organizations were much less efficient than they actually are.

I'm sure he explains it in more detail elsewhere, but I haven't looked into it.

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"Being unethical" may as well just be a bodily function of ours. An involuntary one, like breathing, but one nonetheless.

Not sure what you mean by involuntary; I think this relates to the "action vs inaction" I mentioned in the OP. Are we being involuntarily unethical if we can volunteer not to be?

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If everyone in the world decided that they were gonna be purely charitable for the rest of their lives, those charitable people would all die. Because to nourish yourself would mean not nourishing somebody else.

Not really, because it wouldn't be a case of removing your own wellbeing from the equation, but rather calculating how to best act in ways that increase overall wellbeing.

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To me, that sounds like a mockery of ethics, and we shouldn't really play with it like that.

The big problem for me is that a lot of these arbitrary ethical lines only serve to make people comfortable with what they're doing (or not doing) when they could easily be doing more. And the current attitude is geared more toward inaction: "as long as you're not doing such and such bad things, you're not a bad person" instead of "as long as you are doing such and such good things, you're not a bad person".

That seems pretty dangerous to me.

Verbatim · July 09, 2015, 02:35:18 AM

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Not sure what you mean by involuntary; I think this relates to the "action vs inaction" I mentioned in the OP. Are we being involuntarily unethical if we can volunteer not to be?

I would say so. No one volunteered to be part of the system in the first place (that is to say, life itself).

Saying you can just "volunteer" to be an ethical person, like it's really that simple, is very glib. You simply can't expect people to have their homes demolished because they're taking the space of a couple of squirrels and chipmunks or whatever, even if they have an "ethical obligation" to do so.

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Not really, because it wouldn't be a case of removing your own wellbeing from the equation

Well, yes, it would. Part of ethics is removing your own personal welfare from the equation entirely.

Anything that you do for yourself is selfish, and selfishness should be absolutely nonexistent in ethics. In my opinion.

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And the current attitude is geared more toward "as long as you're not doing such and such, you're not a bad person" instead of "as long as you are doing such ans such you're not a bad person".

That seems pretty dangerous to me.

not to me

i mean, give me some more examples, i guess

Jocephalopod · July 09, 2015, 05:03:14 AM

what's your opinion on the matter?

Pendulate · July 09, 2015, 05:41:06 AM

Quote from: Verbatim on July 09, 2015, 02:35:18 AM

Well, yes, it would. Part of ethics is removing your own personal welfare from the equation entirely.

That's a rather deficient conception of ethics, then. Acting as though your wellbeing is exempt from the moral sphere makes very little sense, logically; the point is not to overvalue it alongside the wellbeing of others.

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Anything that you do for yourself is selfish, and selfishness should be absolutely nonexistent in ethics. In my opinion.

I'm going to have to ask you to defend that opinion, because selfishness is generally considered to be the act of placing yourself above others for no logically defensible reason. If it can be defended, then I don't see how there's anything wrong with it -- the word "selfishness" has bad connotations, that's all.

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i mean, give me some more examples, i guess

I don't know. There are a countless number of more productive ways I could be spending my time right now, some of which could have serious impacts on others, yet I'm still sitting here. I'll give it some more thought, but I think the general attitude toward "moral obligations" is highly spurious and doesn't really account for the consequences of our inaction, which I'd say are often the same or at least as morally significant as those of our affirmative actions.

(One that's a little close to home would be the idea that we are morally obligated to eat a vegan diet but not obligated to become animal activists.)

Pendulate · July 09, 2015, 05:42:44 AM

Quote from: Jocephalopod on July 09, 2015, 05:03:14 AM

what's your opinion on the matter?

I'm on to you.

I expressed my opinions in the OP.

Jocephalopod · July 09, 2015, 05:57:28 AM

Quote from: Pendulate on July 09, 2015, 05:42:44 AM

Quote from: Jocephalopod on July 09, 2015, 05:03:14 AM
what's your opinion on the matter?
On whether there's an objective line? I'd say there isn't; some actions are just more or less ethical than others.

Yea, I'd agree.

Pendulate · July 09, 2015, 06:01:20 AM

Well, shit.

Never figured out how people did that.

Jocephalopod · July 09, 2015, 06:02:46 AM

Xposed

More Than Mortal · July 09, 2015, 06:19:23 AM

Quote from: Pendulate on July 09, 2015, 12:04:10 AM

but I really can't see any logic to get around it.

First and foremost I think the point must always be made that proximity absolutely matters. Humans have evolved to have this bias of immediacy towards themselves and people in the general vicinity, and that's good. It allows for generally efficient moral reasoning; everybody would be brought to an effectual stand-still if they had to make global considerations constantly, and that of course would be a negative on net.

I also think there's something to be said about the moral certainty of saving the baby from the puddle, and all of the cloudy epistemological channels that involve donating to a charity. There's not much evidence that charity is effective in most circumstances, let alone all charities apply are equally efficient/trustworthy.

DAS B00T x2 · July 09, 2015, 06:36:31 AM

If I so cared about the world as I would care for the drowning infant, I would find myself with not even my own time and forever indebted to a sense of duty and responsibility.

If inaction in indirect situations is unethical on my part, then it it necessary to be a bit unethical.

Pendulate · July 09, 2015, 07:29:22 AM

Quote from: Meta Cognition on July 09, 2015, 06:19:23 AM

Humans have evolved to have this bias of immediacy towards themselves and people in the general vicinity, and that's good. It allows for generally efficient moral reasoning; everybody would be brought to an effectual stand-still if they had to make global considerations constantly, and that of course would be a negative on net.

I'm not sure about that. You're using the benefits of how things are as an argument for how they should continue to be; unless I'm missing something, that's essentially an appeal to nature.

Would we really be brought to a standstill? I'd argue that living truly ethically would be navigating the waters between altruism and self-interest. I guess a lot of people would say I'm being pedantic, but the point stands: we aren't living as ethically as we (easily) could be.

Singer's dilemma was only one example, it can be localized if you wish. (Although he does somewhat address the issue of untrustworthy charities; see link). The question I'm most interested in is how we make a distinction between ethical and unethical actions. Is there any reliable metric for this? There's all these branches of moral theory yet none of them seem particularly adept at defining one down to the finer details.

Pendulate · July 09, 2015, 07:33:37 AM

Quote from: DAS THROWBACK on July 09, 2015, 06:36:31 AM

If I so cared about the world as I would care for the drowning infant, I would find myself with not even my own time and forever indebted to a sense of duty and responsibility.

If inaction in indirect situations is unethical on my part, then it it necessary to be a bit unethical.

Hmmm, I don't think so. Being ethical =/= being altruistic. If I were to sacrifice myself to save a cockroach, I'd say that's pretty obviously unethical because I have greater moral status than a cockroach.

It's about finding a balance between helping others and helping yourself. Singer coined a term for it: effective altruism. Maybe it is necessary to be a bit unethical, but there's no doubt in my mind that we are all being unnecessarily unethical in many ways as well.

More Than Mortal · July 09, 2015, 07:37:59 AM

Quote from: Pendulate on July 09, 2015, 07:29:22 AM

You're using the benefits of how things are as an argument for how they should continue to be

Not quite, I'm saying that how we are facilitates good moral reasoning, which is good definitionally. I'm not using the nature of humans as a metric for what is good; simply realising the constraints we have which impede perfect moral efficiency.

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we aren't living as ethically as we (easily) could be.

Sure, I agree with that. Easily one can see that to be true; I just don't buy the whole "proximity isn't important" argument.

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The question I'm most interested in is how we make a distinction between ethical and unethical actions.

There's no perfectly reliable navigational tool we can use to judge actions. Partly because we're incapable of judging the myriad consequences of an action collectively, and partly because what may be moral for one individual wouldn't be moral (or as moral) for another.

That said, I think we have a fairly solid understanding of what concepts like evil must mean if they are to make any moral sense and it can be quite clearly extrapolated that anything which unambiguously and actively contributes to net suffering is absolutely immoral. You raise an interesting point as to whether passive, or inactive, contributions to suffering are equal; but it boils down to the age-old question over whether sins of omission are as bad as sins of commission. And I don't have an answer for that.

Pendulate · July 09, 2015, 08:04:28 AM

Quote from: Meta Cognition on July 09, 2015, 07:37:59 AM

Not quite, I'm saying that how we are facilitates good moral reasoning, which is good definitionally. I'm not using the nature of humans as a metric for what is good; simply realising the constraints we have which impede perfect moral efficiency.

Fair enough. I agree that there would be a point where boundless altruism would have diminishing returns; but not only are we nowhere close to that, I don't think moral philosophy is close to it either, when it should really be a high priority.

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I just don't buy the whole "proximity isn't important" argument.

Well I just realised that my argument could be used against me; if I have moral value myself, and the immediacy of a drowning baby affects me more than a child on another continent, then it might be more ethical overall to save the baby. But that raises a lot more questions and it's 11pm so

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That said, I think we have a fairly solid understanding of what concepts like evil must mean if they are to make any moral sense and it can be quite clearly extrapolated that anything which unambiguously and actively contributes to net suffering is absolutely immoral. You raise an interesting point as to whether passive, or inactive, contributions to suffering are equal; but it boils down to the age-old question over whether sins of omission are as bad as sins of commission. And I don't have an answer for that.

Yep, the concept of evil troubles me as well. If we deem certain mindsets and behaviors as evil based on their consequences, then we're leaving a wide range of mindsets and behaviors out (like not donating to charity, assuming it can be done reliably). Or maybe it's the consequences coupled with a visceral disgust we have toward them, but that's pretty wobbly criterion for evil in its moral sense (if there's any other). So either certain mindsets of neglect and inaction are equally evil, or evil has no purpose in moral philosophy and can be consigned to everyday language and fantasy movies.

Verbatim · July 09, 2015, 11:05:24 AM

Quote from: Pendulate on July 09, 2015, 05:41:06 AM

That's a rather deficient conception of ethics, then. Acting as though your wellbeing is exempt from the moral sphere makes very little sense, logically; the point is not to overvalue it alongside the wellbeing of others.

It's not "exempt" from the moral sphere--it's literally just not there. "Exemption" implies freedom from obligation, which doesn't make aaaany sense regarding this scenario.

How can you be ethical to yourself? That makes... no sense.

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I'm going to have to ask you to defend that opinion

Name a single thing we do for ourselves that isn't selfish.

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I don't know.

that's two "i don't know"s you've given to two rather important questions
i can tell you didn't give this topic very much thought

Quote from: Pendulate on July 09, 2015, 05:41:06 AM

the general attitude toward "moral obligations" is highly spurious and doesn't really account for the consequences of our inaction

i don't think it's that complicated

especially when you consider that every action is also an inaction
when you do something, you are also refusing not to do it

if you save the baby from drowning, you are also not letting the baby drown--it's an inaction
and the consequences of that inaction are... demonstrably ethical

really, this all just boils down to the third argument in your OP, where you talk about how none of this nullifies the idea that you ought to be the best person you can be, within reason

which kind of nullifies the entire thread, if you ask me--i meant to bring it up earlier

More Than Mortal · July 09, 2015, 11:18:47 AM

Quote from: Verbatim on July 09, 2015, 11:05:24 AM

How can you be ethical to yourself? That makes... no sense.

This reminds me of the trolley problem.

A lot of people wouldn't push the fat guy themselves, which is fine ,even if it results in a net positive lives saved. If pushing the fat man is going to traumatise you, give you PTSD and ensure you never sleep soundly again. . . You'd be justified in not pushing the guy.

Verbatim · July 09, 2015, 11:27:58 AM

Quote from: Meta Cognition on July 09, 2015, 11:18:47 AM

Quote from: Verbatim on July 09, 2015, 11:05:24 AM
How can you be ethical to yourself? That makes... no sense.
This reminds me of the trolley problem.

A lot of people wouldn't push the fat guy themselves, which is fine ,even if it results in a net positive lives saved. If pushing the fat man is going to traumatise you, give you PTSD and ensure you never sleep soundly again. . . You'd be justified in not pushing the guy.

Justified in the sense that no one would blame you for it, sure. The issue that jumps right out at me, though, is the fact that in a life-or-death scenario, your main concern isn't the people in danger, but yourself. It's... just factually unethical.

Understandable, but unethical.

You ought to be willing to sacrifice your own sanity for others, I think. If you're not, I can understand that, I don't blame you, but from an ethical standpoint, it's simply the "wrong" choice. To qualify this standpoint further--I, personally, probably couldn't bring myself into pushing the fat guy off, either.

More Than Mortal · July 09, 2015, 11:31:58 AM

Quote from: Verbatim on July 09, 2015, 11:27:58 AM

You ought to be willing to sacrifice your own sanity for others

That only works in some atomistic conception of what is moral in certain situations. Society doesn't work like that. Me? I reckon I could push the fat guy, but I wouldn't expect anybody else to. Society simply couldn't function if expectations of self-sacrifice we regarded as factual ethical tenets.

Not to mention there's a whole host of issues surrounding the idea inherent in your claim that you should sacrifice a future ability to perform ethical actions just so you can perform one substantial ethical action today.

Verbatim · July 09, 2015, 11:52:20 AM

Quote from: Meta Cognition on July 09, 2015, 11:31:58 AM

Not to mention there's a whole host of issues surrounding the idea inherent in your claim that you should sacrifice a future ability to perform ethical actions just so you can perform one substantial ethical action today.

Precisely--hence this thread. It could easily be argued that you might say to yourself, "I won't push him off, because that would affect me greatly, and inhibit me from doing any further good deeds in the future."

That's fair and all, but it ignores, of course, the fact that allowing the five (or however many) people to be killed instead of the one fat guy would also psychologically screw you over. Perhaps even more so.

I'm not saying this is how society functions--it quite obviously doesn't--but I'm not even saying this is how society should function, because if it did, society wouldn't last very long, as you pointed out. At least, if ethics is all about pure selflessness and sacrifice, anyway (which, I don't think I'm too far off-base when I claim that it is).

The thing is, very few people find themselves in such crazy life-or-death scenarios like the trolley problem. It's a once-in-a-lifetime "opportunity", for lack of a better term. Contemplating the possibility of having a greater or more urgent need for your mental well-being would be... hyperopic?... I mean, it just seems unlikely to me that you'll ever need to make such a big decision again in your life.

Unless you're the PotUS, or something. I don't know.

Verbatim · July 09, 2015, 11:55:31 AM

TL;DR because that was kind of rambly (I'm turning into Sandtrap, I swear):

I do agree with you when you say that it would be unreasonable to expect anyone to push the guy off, but that doesn't exempt anyone from any responsibility. Because if you don't push the fat guy off, you have to live with the fact that you did nothing to save those people.

Verbatim · July 09, 2015, 12:29:36 PM

Quote from: Jocephalopod on July 09, 2015, 05:57:28 AM

On whether there's an objective line? I'd say there isn't; some actions are just more or less ethical than others.

see, this sounds like a contradiction to me

how you can say that some actions are more ethical than others, but then say that there's no objective line there
if we can define what's ethical and unethical, that to me sounds like some kind of line you're drawing

Pendulate · July 09, 2015, 04:42:00 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on July 09, 2015, 11:05:24 AM

How can you be ethical to yourself? That makes... no sense.

I think it makes perfect sense. If there are better and worse ways to increase the wellbeing of others, there are better and worse ways to increase your own wellbeing.

As I said to Das, it would be patently unethical to sacrifice myself to save a cockroach. This isn't a fringe concept in philosophy; in fact it's rather commonplace in utilitarianism.

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Name a single thing we do for ourselves that isn't selfish.

I'm not saying that, I'm saying that selfishness isn't necessarily unethical.

If your conception of ethics is based on some divide between altruism and self-interest then I'm not sure how tenable it is, because there's the argument that all seemingly selfless acts are done for selfish reasons, and it's not one you could easily shrug off. So unless you're defining ethical as "helping others" and selfishness as "helping yourself" -- which seems much too simplistic -- then I'm doubtful of how watertight your conception is.

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that's two "i don't know"s you've given to two rather important questions
i can tell you didn't give this topic very much thought

I thought I was clear from the outset that I haven't formed a concrete opinion on this topic and was merely opening it up for discussion in the hope that I will.

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if you save the baby from drowning, you are also not letting the baby drown--it's an inaction
and the consequences of that inaction are... demonstrably ethical

I don't see how that would qualify as inaction in any valuable sense. The whole point of action vs inaction is that one is chosen over the other.

And it doesn't address my problem of how we define moral obligations, much less distinguish them from things that are moral yet not obligatory. That seems really wobbly to me.

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which kind of nullifies the entire thread, if you ask me--i meant to bring it up earlier

I don't see how. It's an interesting question; and it's all well and good to say that we should strive to be more ethical, but it's rather meaningless if we don't discuss how we can go about it.

Pendulate · July 09, 2015, 04:54:56 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on July 09, 2015, 12:29:36 PM

how you can say that some actions are more ethical than others, but then say that there's no objective line there
if we can define what's ethical and unethical, that to me sounds like some kind of line you're drawing

Because the former is merely acknowledging an objective value system; the latter is a man-made attempt to draw lines in it.

I can't objectively claim that donating $100 to charity is ethical because there's no objective threshold where an action crosses from one into the other. Why did I not donate more?

Admittedly a lot of actions are ethically indefensible, but that doesn't mean a divide exists objectively, because there are still unethical elements to nearly every action. Or, if one does exist, I'm interested in the metric for defining it.

Verbatim · July 09, 2015, 06:57:39 PM

Quote from: Pendulate on July 09, 2015, 04:42:00 PM

If there are better and worse ways to increase the wellbeing of others, there are better and worse ways to increase your own wellbeing.

This has nothing to do with ethics. It's not about "increasing wellbeing", whatever that even means. It's about doing the right thing.

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I'm not saying that, I'm saying that selfishness isn't necessarily unethical.

I'm saying it absolutely is.

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If your conception of ethics is based on some divide between altruism and self-interest then I'm not sure how tenable it is, because there's the argument that all seemingly selfless acts are done for selfish reasons

This is my argument, though. There ARE no selfless deeds. That's what I've been saying from the beginning. That's why I think it nullifies the thread, because even though it's physically impossible to be selfless, you can still try your best. That's our cause.

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And it doesn't address my problem of how we define moral obligations, much less distinguish them from things that are moral yet not obligatory. That seems really wobbly to me.

My point was that trying to define it is futile. I wouldn't even worry about it.

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I don't see how. It's an interesting question; and it's all well and good to say that we should strive to be more ethical, but it's rather meaningless if we don't discuss how we can go about it.

I discuss how we can go about it all the time--that's why I argue veganism and anti-natalism so often here, because I believe they represent the most ethically salient truths in the universe. I'm sure you have some ideas of your own--you're a vegan, and you've discussed veganism on two or three occasions here already.

More Than Mortal · July 09, 2015, 07:00:54 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on July 09, 2015, 06:57:39 PM

It's about doing the right thing.

Which is defined by human well-being.

Or, more correctly, the well-being of creatures with the capacity to suffer. Aristotle got a lot of things wrong, but basing ethics on eudaemonia was the thing he got absolutely correct. There is no other sane metric for ethics other than something which contributes to the well-being/flourishing/whatever term you want to use beings which the capacity to experience.

Be that either through positive contributions, or through mitigating suffering.

Verbatim · July 09, 2015, 07:03:49 PM

Quote from: Pendulate on July 09, 2015, 04:54:56 PM

I can't objectively claim that donating $100 to charity is ethical because there's no objective threshold where an action crosses from one into the other. Why did I not donate more?

Really? The threshold is right in your face... How much more ethical is donating $101 to charity over donating $100?

$1.

And besides, if you honestly don't think selfishness is unethical, then you're contradicting yourself here. Why didn't you donate more? Well, because you have to sustain yourself, so that you may be able to donate more in the future, or something. Duh.

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Admittedly a lot of actions are ethically indefensible, but that doesn't mean a divide exists objectively, because there are still unethical elements to nearly every action. Or, if one does exist, I'm interested in the metric for defining it.

It's there, but it's too complex for us to define. That's my argument. Fortunately, I feel like a lot of the ethical judgments we make on a day-to-day basis are intuitively obvious.