Rational Basis of Ethics

An underlying premise to this study is that ethics is based on reason, and that any action that is not the result of a reasoned decision is not subject to ethical evaluation.

That said, I think it's acceptable to hold as unethical the failure to apply reason: if a person who is a capable of rational though undertakes an action without considering the consequences, this is a dereliction of ethics. While they have not chosen to act in an ethical manner, their choice to act without due consideration is, in itself, considered to be a failure of their ethics.

Said another way, if an actor is capable of rational though, we expect them to apply reason to determine the ethics of their decisions and the precipitating actions. The converse of this statement is that if an actor is not capable of rational thought, we cannot expect them to apply reason, nor can we assess the consequences of their actions as ethical.

This would seem to be a reasonable premise: we do not hold animals accountable for the ethics of their actions. We may assess them to be dangerous, but this is in much the same way as we assess an inanimate object to be dangerous: a wild animal that attacks a person is no more "evil" than a sharp stone that cuts the foot of a person who treads upon it.

The matter becomes less clear when we are considering a person who is incapable of reason: a person who is mentally retarded, a child who is too young to exercise logic, a person whose mind is disabled by age or psychological disorder, or a person who is overcome by emotion. We cannot consider the action of such individuals to be influenced by ethics, or subject to ethical evaluation.

This is not to say that we cannot choose to react to their actions, or act in advance to prevent them from harming others, if we consider them to be dangerous - but whether or not we are required or entitled to prevent dangerous individuals from doing harm a separate ethical decision, pertaining to the actions taken by others, not to the actions of such individuals.

The assessment of whether a given individual is capable of exercising logic is a matter of psychology rather than philosophy, and a clear distinction should be made between the two fields of study. We must take care to refrain from classifying a person as "incapable of rational thought" simply because we disagree with their reasoning. As to what other criteria might be implied to correctly determine a person's capacity for logic, I leave that to psychology.

Other than the lack of capacity for logic, there may be instances in which a person who is capable of reason chooses not to apply it. In certain circumstances, the necessity for action is such that it is not possible or practical to undergo the mental effort of applying reason - action must be taken quickly. My sense is that it would be difficult to make a general assessment of situations where one can reasonably state that there is "no time to think," and that the determination of whether this is true must be considered in the context of a specific situation.