Using The Five Categories, we can define the fundamental ethical problems humans face. Ethics is an abstract subject which involves reasoning about human emotions and behaviors. As there has not previously existed a clear framework of core emotions and behaviors, neither has there previously existed a tangible framework of the core ethical dilemmas. An ethical model provides clear boundaries for the field. There are just a few core ethical problems which arise repeatedly in different contexts.
By defining the core ethical problems, we can also solve them. Each ethical dilemma has already been solved countless times -- I’m not, for instance, the first to recognize that people should respond to risk with neither recklessness nor timidity -- so the theory merely compiles logical and proven solutions within the framework of The Five Categories. These are supplemented by quotes from Shakespeare, Socrates, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, and every major world religion.
The core ethical problems and solutions can be explained concisely, completely, and in simple language. This means two important things:
Five Categories Theory makes ethics accessible to everyone.
Five Categories Theory proves that ethical truths are objective rather than subjective.
My ethical discussion focuses on meta-behaviors. Meta-behaviors are general rather than specific behaviors, e.g. caution, recklessness, courage, and timidity. Ethical problems are meta-problems -- they are the types of problems which encompass all specific problems.
Meta-behaviors in this model are divided into underreactions, overreactions, and ethical responses. For example, say one is faced with danger. The underreaction to danger is recklessness, which can be replaced by the ethical response of caution. The overreaction to danger is timidity, which can be replaced by courage. Caution prevents extreme boldness and courage prevents an extreme lack of boldness. Neither prescribes the perfect amount of boldness, and neither can. (While we can know objectively that caution and courage are ethical meta-behaviors, we lose this objectivity when applying ethics to specific actions.)
Ethical reactions are productive; underreactions are unproductive; and overreactions are counterproductive. This system of over- and under-reactions reflects Aristotle’s view of ethics, where the ethical action is a mean (Courage) between excess / underreaction (Rashness) and deficiency / overreaction (Cowardice).
Though ethics are often regarded as personally difficult and painful, the opposite is true. Ethics increase both one’s happiness and one’s ability to solve problems.
II both disabuse more common misunderstandings about ethics and further contextualize the ethics section of the theory shortly. I then define five sets of core ethical and unethical meta-behaviors, then divide each of these pairings again into five less-fundamental but still important categories. Each ethic is thoroughly discussed.