Through different methods of justification, we can reach conclusions in ethics that are as well as supported as those provided in mathematics. To what extent do you agree?
This essay clearly takes into consideration two of the main areas of knowledge in everyday’s life: Ethics and Mathematics. Even if these two branches of knowledge may seem really different in reality they share many things in common.
For a better understanding of the topic, the term ethics should be well defined and its main subcategories described. Ethics is the “study and practice of what it is to live a valuable human life and the subsequent codes or systems of values”. One of the main differences is that our use of ethics is different from mathematics because each person has a different understanding and use of ethics. To state one, utilitarianism, developed by John Stuart Mill, is based on the idea to minimize the harm and maximize benefit to one self and others. But in a case where killing a person would save 2 utilitarianism would say that killing in this case is right; however most of the people would agree on the fact that murdering is always wrong. Consequently we have a dilemma. In mathematics there is no such thing because there are not different interpretations of it.
Ethics affect our way to interact with the surroundings and the people, basing our actions on our knowledge. But is our daily use of ethics based on our previous experience? Of course not; for example we know that murdering is wrong even if we never murdered anyone (hopefully). So this is the one connection between mathematics and ethics while achieving conclusion: in both the result is based on axioms (for math) and moral values (for ethics). Why do we accept these statements? We accept them because without them the two Areas of Knowledge would not make sense. In Math for example, everything is based on simple axioms; they are easy, simple, and yet impossible to