Arguing Ethics Orgins

          While I agree to the arguments for religion, relativism, and law, I believe that there is another fundamental origin in which morality could stem from that he did not discuss in this passage. I think that ethical reflection is comes from ones experiences. This is because experiences include every moment of our lives and every experience is made up of good and bad moments. So if ethics, as the passage of Metaethical Issues states, “is the formal study of what makes life good…", then we must use these good and bad experiences in our lives to determine the best way to make our lives good and avoid what makes them bad. I take the chess analogy into consideration. It is said in the passage that the person who is more likely to excel at chess would not be the one who is randomly moving their piece, but the one who studies the rule of the game carefully. If learning information means to studying, practice, or be taught and each of these actions are experiences then could it be argued that the one who experiences studying the rules of chess well or more would be more likely to excel. Not excelling because he studied but excelling because he experienced that type of studying which is a different experience than the one who is experiencing randomly placing pieces. Relating it back to morality, I think that the two situations are analogous in that one’s experiences (studying) influence your ethical reflection (chess movement). An example would be watching you friend steal from a store. You are faced with the decisions of whether to tell on her and betray your loyalty to your friend or keep it a secret and honor that loyalty. You then think back to when you were a sales clerk and your store was robbed and as a result you lost your job because the company went under. This experience would cause you to feel a higher moral responsibility to the sales clerks than to your friend because you want to keep them from suffering a similar fate as you. This experience while it is not independent of other factors it does influence your ethical reflection and can guide how you make your decisions.  One could argue that like law, and religion, there are experiences that might not cover every situation. To that I would argue that lack of experience is just as potent as an experience itself. For instance, while I may not have an experience to reflect on regarding work as a sales clerk, the fact that I cannot empathize with the clerks might encourage me to think that keeping my friend’s secret would be okay.  In the end, I think that ethical reflection comes from ones experience.