"... any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already." - Henry David Thoreau

   "The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." - Albert Einstein

   "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Krishnamurti

   "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." - Plato

   "Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods." - Socrates

   "He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how." - Friedrich Nietzsche

   "If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything." - Mark Twain

   "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr.

   "One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a    person entirely happy." - Aristotle

   "Your very silence shows you agree." - Euripides

10/19/2008

Y!A - Is Rationality Moral or Ethical?

Question asked originally on Yahoo! Answers - Original Link

My answer: (selected as best by Asker)

Neither.

Morality and Ethics has to do with emotions, opinions, culture and tradition.
Rationality has to do purely with reason.

For example, you're a surgeon who operates on people with lung cancer. The hospital you work at has a patient being treated for lung cancer who, if operated on, can allow the person to live a full life as if they had never had cancer. However, the patient refuses treatment and surgery.

Let's assume that in this case the patient never undertook any behavior that could have caused his cancer, that he never smoked or did anything like that.

Is it rational to allow a life to die when there's no rational reason for it to die? No...
Is it moral or ethical to disrespect the patient's wish for no treatment or surgery and force them to go through it so that they will live? No.

In this case it's irrational to respect the patient, but moral and ethical.
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