While we do have an innate model of right and wrong --- a murder taboo is universal amoung human civilizations, for example --- these instincts flow from a long epoch of the influence of evolution and game theory on our psyches, not some grand philosophical system.
Philosophical systems of ethics have always seemed to me like elaborate rationalizations for what we all know to be right and wrong innately. Since most of us possess this faculty with or without philosophy, the formalization is just self-flattery.
Do you think healers sought to do harm before Hippocrates came around and that the mere phrase "do no harm" ushered in a new era of helpful medicine?
Philosophical systems of ethics have always seemed to me like elaborate rationalizations for what we all know to be right and wrong innately. Since most of us possess this faculty with or without philosophy, the formalization is just self-flattery.
Do you think healers sought to do harm before Hippocrates came around and that the mere phrase "do no harm" ushered in a new era of helpful medicine?