[Darryl_P]

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But is logical consistency of your ethical beliefs a necessary (it's clearly not sufficient) condition to be ethical?

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I think you are assuming that being ethical is a yes-no question, which is wrong IMO. But let's assume there is a point on the scale above which we could say a person is ethical. Then I'd say yes it's possible to attain that level with no more than an average amount of logic. But if your aim is to move higher along the scale, then logic can be an important tool, along with other tools like self-awareness, say.

The most important reason for using logic and avoiding hypocrisy, though, is not to attain a higher level of ethics but to simply avoid wasting valuable time and resources running around in circles when you could be using it to improve yourself or whatever part of the world you feel like improving.

As an example, I live in Hungary and we have a large and growing population of gypsies here. Most conservatives here do not like gypsies and don't want tax money going to finance their needs. They are also annoyed by their presence on the streets selling mostly stolen goods constantly shouting loudly to find buyers as fast as possible. Yet they shop from them in large quantities, so in essence they are contributing to the problem.

Then they spend valuable time lobbying their politicians, who in turn work hard to correct the problem by bolstering police patrols etc. If successful a lot of work will have been done just to get back to square one, with all those government resources being used just to protect the conservatives from themselves, their impulsive, irrational tendencies, and their hypocrisy.

If these conservatives would use logic to avoid internal inconsistencies they would either decide

a) Yes, I support the gypsies because while they are annoying, they provide me with good stuff at good prices and stealing really isn't all bad if I get some benefit from it.

or

b) No I don't support them because stealing is wrong and I want to live in country with peace and order, even if it means paying more for stuff that goes through proper channels.

A lot of unnecessary energy could be saved by just using a bit of logic and every citizen of Hungary would be better off for it. This is of course just one example, but it illustrates the main idea.