Meridith Berson - Logic and Ethics

October 21, 2010

I was reading a book for my ethics class and it dawned on me that it would be much harder to have a firm set of ethics if we were an oral peoples. Ethics depends on the past, on writings from Plato to Mill, Aristotle to Kierkegaard. Without these recorded arguments little progress would be made.
The same applies to logical reasoning. Without an actual recording of the way to go about logic, we would never progress. Without Aristotle's categories recorded, we would not have the genus/species set up we do today. I feel like in class we focus on stories and traditions, not so much logic, ethics, and science. Without writing it would be hard to progress as a civilization. Writing things down that are not emotionally charged allows the living to continue the work of someone who has passed on. It seems that this is something we have overlooked in class, as far as the importance of the written language. Oral is important and carries what is important in tradition, not science.