Redefinition of ethics: on the internal ethics and ethical behavior

Kryuchkov Kirill Sergeevich Educator, the department of Psychotherapy and Counseling Psychology, Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis 107031, Russia, Moskva oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Petrovka, 17s4, of. 69 kkryuchkov@gmail.com Other publications by this author

As the authors who write about ethics rightly point out, the issues of psychological ethics, despite their absolute relevance, receive rather weak coverage in the domestic psychological literature (see, for example: Kryuchkov, 2018; Zakharova, Garanyan, Sorokova, 2020). At the same time, it should be noted that in both domestic and Western literature devoted to psychological ethics, the nature of ethics itself is not so often reflected. Some authors (see Proctor, C, 2018; Proctor G., 2017) conduct a philosophical or socio-political analysis of the phenomenon of psychological ethics, but ethics is often determined through a system of norms and rules, "codes" that should be followed (see Kryuchkov, 2020).

The situation is similar in Russian psychology, where ethics is most often also defined as a system of "ethical norms", as a "set of rules on acceptable and unacceptable forms of behavior in a professional context" (see Shaboltas, 2012), as a mechanism for regulating professional relations (see Garber, 2014). It is surprising that one of the few (almost the only) domestic work devoted to the empirical study of psychological ethics does not contain a definition of ethics as a psychological phenomenon (see Zakharova, Garanyan, Sorokova, 2020), despite the fact that the subject of study is the ethical beliefs of practitioners, the actual concept of ethics is not disclosed and is not analyzed.

It can be said that ethics remains for a significant number of researchers as a "thing in itself", as if implied or obviously "predicated". This concept is revealed through the external form of its manifestation or, to be precise, fixation – codes and rules. In this paper, we aim to analyze precisely the internal psychological structure of ethics.

Ethics "external" and "internal"

The first watershed occurs at the location of ethics as a system of "norms" or "rules". As many authors have noticed (see, e.g., Alphin, 2005), ethical behavior is often based on following some "external" authority. In the quality of this "external" authority, "codes, norms, codes of rules" can act. Why do we call these norms "external"? They are "external" in relation to the subject of activity – a person. Ethical norms are, as it were, "fixed" on "external" media/sources. At the same time, of course, some of the norms are "internalized", as it happens, for example, from the point of view of L. Kolberg's classical theory of morality, during the transition from the level of conventional morality to the level of post-conventional morality, from following social attitudes and social contract, personal conscience and morality are actually developed (see, for example. Antsyferova, 1999; Hedl et. al., 2005).

At the same time, as historical experience shows, the actual "external ethics" is an insufficient condition and in no way a guarantee of proper ethical behavior of people (see, for example: Pope, 2016; Kryuchkov, 2018, 2020). As it is known from jurisprudence, norms are rules of behavior of people, their groups in public life (see, for example: Klishas (ed.), 2019), a rule or measure of proper behavior (Marchenko, 2015). And the rules, as you know, are not always followed, the very existence of the rules is not enough to comply with them

So, an important factor is internal ethics. As some authors point out (see, for example: Allphin, 2005), the "ideal" ethical solution is based on following an external authority, but situations with a clear and only correct answer do not always happen. In this case, a professional needs some internal authority, an internal quality that allows him to question and doubt the rules, decisions, proceed from respect for others and non-harm. And sometimes, as in the case of the Hoffman report, the very concept of "harm" is not obvious. That is, a certain internal ethical component is needed to make a decision.

For example, discussing the problem of licensing and regulation of the psychotherapeutic profession, a number of authors note that protest and resistance are not caused by the norms themselves as such. For professionals, the relevance of these norms to the essence of the profession and to the community itself is important. The problem is not that codes are being introduced, but that the opinion of the community is not taken into account, as well as the fact that the norms do not correspond to the principles of the specialists themselves (see, for example: Younger, 2017; Tudor, 2011, 2017).  Using the example of the analysis of the Code of Ethics of the Canadian Psychological Association Clark (2012) shows how important it is that the code gives the opportunity to choose based on internal values, and not just following a list of rules. However, as this author notes, even the Canadian code is not perfect. This code suggests a ranking of values (out of five), which should be based on. Clark also points out that the proposed ranking (based on expert assessments) may not always be relevant to representatives of different cultures (even within the same country). As an example of a more successful code, he cites "The Universal Declaration of Ethical Principles of a Psychologist: A Culturally Sensitive Model for Creating and Evaluating an Ethical Code" (The Universal Declaration of Ethical Principles for Psychologists: A Culture-Sensitive Model for Creating and Reviewing a Code of Ethics). This model, in addition to a set of rules, also provides a list of "values" based on which a psychologist can make a decision. However, in this case, the model does not offer any ranking of values, giving greater freedom of choice to the specialist (ibid.).

So, not only the rules themselves are important, but also the "internal component" of ethics. Next, we will consider the components of internal ethics.

Ethical act and ethical attitude

Analyzing the actual psychological structure of ethics, it is worth noting that it is also not a single structure. Many authors (see, for example: Allphin, 2005; Starc, 2017) note that an important component of ethics is the "ethical attitude".

The ethical attitude is based not only and not so much on laws and rules (regulations), but includes its own internal process of awareness, experience, solving dilemmas, includes conscious and unconscious levels (Starc, 2017). In essence, an ethical attitude can be defined as the internal positioning of a person, his attitude to himself and the world in the categories of ethics. This is the "I stand on that and I cannot do otherwise" of each subject.

At the same time, it is fundamental that an ethical attitude is often not "given" to a person, and even more so is not given to an observer. It is not possible to directly "see" the installation per se. What is possible to see is an ethical action or an ethical act.

Ethical act as a supra-situational activity

According to A.G. Asmolov (2007), an act includes an attitude towards oneself and the world. An act is always a movement in the social coordinate system. An act is not a simple action. As S.L. Rubinstein points out: An act is an action that is perceived and realized by the acting subject as a social act, as a manifestation of the subject that expresses a person's attitude to other people (Rubinstein, 2000). The difference between an act and an ordinary action according to Rubinstein is that an action becomes an act when it is realized by the actor himself in his impact on other people, on his relationship with them. It is in the act that the ethical attitude, the essence, the ethical attitude "as it is" (and not as it is "said" about it) is expressed in the observed form. It is worth noting that an act does not always include reflection, but expresses a genuine ethical attitude, whether a person is aware of it or not. And since ethics is dialogical, since it exists only in the system of I–Other relationships (and even in hypothetical examples of ethical relations to oneself, say, in the question of suicide, the person himself appears in both hypostases as himself-another), then not just an action or operation is an ethical action, but only an act or deed. In this paper, we do not aim to strictly separate the act from the act. For our specific purposes, we will only indicate that an act, in our opinion, is an act, but perceived "from the outside". A person's act becomes an "act" (and is evaluated) in the eyes of other people or "the Other" in principle (self-evaluation). However, speaking about an ethical action, an ethical act within the framework of this article, we approach without evaluation (not to mention "good and bad" actions). We are rather interested in ethical action per se.

         At the same time, is it possible to say that any action related to ethical norms or rules is an act? No. In the case when the situation is conditionally "simple" and does not require a solution, when the actual ethical attitudes of a person are not affected, there is no Rubinstein "correlation with relationships", and the action is rather non-reflexive "automatism" about actions we are not talking about. However, as the above authors (and many others) pointed out, not all situations are ethically "simple". It is precisely in such situations when inner ethics is activated, whether a person wants it or not, when there is a need to make a decision, there is a situation of ethical action and genuine contact with the inner ethics of a person.

         It is not necessary to invent any catastrophic examples illustrating the above thesis. A fairly common situation in practice – the lack of money from the client – requires making a decision, rarely prescribed in any codes, how to continue working or not to continue. And even if (let's imagine) the code explicitly prohibits us from working for free, on loan, or to reduce the price, then making a personal decision requires making a certain effort – an ethical act (many colleagues, for example, provide free sessions or sessions at a reduced price for the successful completion of therapy, as far as we know, the codes of most domestic professional communities they do not regulate this issue, therefore we can talk about the "development" of internal ethics).

         In our opinion, an ethical act is a supra-situational action (see Petrovsky, 2010). Such an act certainly puts a person in a subjective position, the position of "the reason for his actions". It does not fit into the framework of here-and-now goal-setting or satisfaction of a given motive directly. Moreover, such an act clearly goes beyond the basic "requirements of the situation" (if, for example, we talk about a psychotherapeutic situation) and does not always correlate with the original purpose of the activity.

         It is important to note that we do not evaluate an ethical act. Such an act can then be assessed by observers as negative (as in the case of Hoffman's case), and positively. In the case of the Hoffman case (see Kryuchkov, 2020; Hoffman, 2015, p. 9) the original purpose of the activity was to improve the image of the psychological profession and strengthen professional ties with the military. However, in the course of their activities, the defendants in this case made a number of decisions that can be attributed to ethical actions (in this case, assessed as unethical). That is, having risen above the original goal, they decided to act in a certain way – for example, to narrow the ethical framework and the definition of "torture". This is an ethical decision. The decision to accept a client without money or not at all is also an ethical decision. Such solutions are not adaptive in the sense of satisfying the "here-and-now" needs, although they are co-directed to the purpose of the activity, but they are not identical.

         One could argue that in the case of Hoffman's case, the action correlates with the original motivation. However, in our opinion, changing ethical rules and codes, especially in such a drastic way, requires a certain internal attitude, which, whether reflected or not, manifests itself in such actions. It cannot be said that this is an operation or an ordinary action.

         So, an ethical act is a social action in which the subject's attitude to himself and the world is manifested (that is, an ethical attitude), which is the only observable act on the basis of which it is possible to judge the inner ethics of the individual and the ethical attitude of the individual. An ethical act is always supra-situational, since it is never subordinate to the situation, but goes beyond it and forces a person to become a carrier of free causality (see Petrovsky, 2010) or, in other words, to become the subject of his activity.

         A few words about experience as a link between activity and attitude (or consciousness and being)^[1]

         L.S. Vygotsky wrote: "The experience, therefore, is given, on the one hand, the environment in relation to me, in the way I experience this environment; on the other hand, the peculiarities of my personality development are affected. My experience is affected by the extent to which all my properties, as they have developed in the course of development, participate here at a certain moment" (Vygotsky, 1982).

V.A. Petrovsky (2010, pp. 71-72) writes: "There is, we agree, a difference between attributing causality to oneself (attribution of subjectivity) and manifesting oneself as a cause, which is directly experienced by the subject at the moment of action."

         Even earlier, F.E. Vasilyuk (1984, p. 30) wrote: "Experience is understood by us as a special activity, a special work on the reconstruction of the psychological world, aimed at establishing a semantic correspondence between consciousness and being, the common goal of which is to increase the meaningfulness of life."

         Suppose we interviewed several people – "Are you paying back your debts". A significant proportion of people will probably answer in the affirmative. Suppose we have lent a certain amount of money to several people. Someone returned the debt by the designated date, someone did not. If we interview those who returned the debt, ask "why, in fact, did you decide to return the debt," then, for sure, in addition to "external" reasons like the rules "debts must always be returned," we will hear something like "if I don't return, then my conscience will get stuck." This "conscience will eat" is essentially an ethical experience.

Like any experience, it is irreducible neither to cognitive functions (after all, conscience is literally "stuck", at the level of sensations), nor to pure sensations, nor to a pure emotional component, it is something phenomenologically graspable (literally, through the technique of, for example, focusing, Yu. Jendlin). It is the experience that connects knowledge about ethical rules, the representation of ethical rules in a person (external ethics), ethical "attitudes" as a component of internal ethics, the same "attitude to oneself and the world" and, in fact, ethical action. An act, and in our case an ethical act, it is always experienced.

Another illustration of the above thesis may be the phenomenon of bitter candy. In this case, children are experiencing their own act, the mismatch of motives (inherent, by the way, in any ethical situation).

At the same time, in all the above situations (and in all the authors cited above), the experience is both personal and social. It includes both the situation and the environment.

An act does not express an attitude, an attitude is like reading from a piece of paper. Attitude, attitude, are mediated by experience.

Thus, experience, as a component mediating the contents of consciousness during their transition to external activity on the one hand, and specifically ethical experience, are the subject of further study both at the theoretical and empirical levels.

Conclusion

         In this paper, the author has developed the concept of external and internal ethics, concretizing and deepening the concept of internal ethics.

         External ethics is defined by the author as ethics fixed in sources external to a person – codes, codes of rules.

The author attributed the ethical attitude or the inner ethical attitude of a person and an ethical act to internal ethics.

         An ethical act, defined by the author in accordance with the concept of an act introduced by A.G. Asmolov, as always a social action, which includes an attitude to the world, to other people, according to the author, is the only "externally observable" manifestation of internal ethics. Regardless of whether an ethical attitude is reflected by a person or not, its visible manifestations consist in ethical actions.

         At the same time, an ethical act is always supra-situational, it always puts a person in a subjective position as a "carrier of his own causality" and is irreducible to a specific goal of activity and satisfaction of here-and-now needs.

          The author also made an initial attempt to analyze the experience as an intermediary link between the actually unobservable components of internal ethics, ethical attitude, external ethics perceived by a person (rules) and the actual ethical action, act. According to the author, experience as a whole is a link connecting consciousness and activity, mediating the components of consciousness when they manifest in activity, and in ethical actions this manifestation is most obvious.

         Further directions of research on this topic, the author sees the theoretical and empirical development of both the concepts of internal ethics and ethical behavior (including their connection with other ethical and intrapersonal constructs – morality, motivation, etc.), and the development of the concept of experience as the mediation of the inner into the outer.

^[1] This paragraph owes its appearance to the dialogue recorded only in social networks between V.A. Petrovsky and I.M. Shmelev, therefore it is impossible to put a formal link, but the author owes the idea to these colleagues.

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