As for the object (as opposed to its creator), it could be considered immoral or unethical if, in context, it exhorts wrongdoing. It is analogous to words and free speech. We all know the cliché about the limitations on free speech. Hollering “Fire!” in a crowded theater is not acceptable (or protected) free speech when there is no fire. Hollering “Fire!” in a burning theater – or an empty theater – no problem.

A recording of someone hollering “Fire!” is also unacceptable, and could be considered immoral or unethical when played in that crowded theater. On the other hand, a recording of someone hollering “Fire!” kept in a closet is just an amoral object, a plastic disc, a bit or a byte, a thing. The presence of an observer (or here, listener) is critical.

Why does that prove that there are no ethical artists?

The rifle: When someone digs it up as an artifact and has no knowledge of it’s intended purpose and finds through accident that it can kill, is the object that makes a sound and accelerates lead particles immoral? The person who acted unethically was the artist, who in bringing it into creation knew full well that it could be used for any purpose or alternatively, was completely unaware of the purpose and was happy to proceed.

The suggestion an object without an observer has no ethics proves there are no ethical artists. From an artistic point of view, a lack of ethics is completely without meaning on any level. Accept it, embrace it, go create some more unethical objects.

But can art be judged beyond good and evil in the same way a rifle can? Isn’t an art object constantly “firing bullets” into the people that view it? A stagnant rifle is going to be “amoral” regardless of when or if it is viewed. But an artwork is constantly part of a discourse with the viewer… some might say, in your analogy, a piece of obscene art never ceases to be a violent weapon..

(For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that the words “moral” and “ethical” are interchangeable, although the distinction you make, that “ethics” has to do with social politics, general acceptance, and social consensus, is insightful.)

As you point out, “objects are absent of ethics only when people are not present.” Precisely. It’s people who bring ethics to objects. Similarly, it’s people who give purposes to objects. I have a steam iron. Its maker no doubt intended it for pressing clothes. Ostensibly, that is its purpose, and it does a very good job. Now, if I pick up that iron and bludgeon someone to death, that doesn’t make it a deviant, immoral iron. I’ve used it for an immoral purpose.

Returning to the rifle, let’s agree that its intended purpose is killing. (And let’s not digress into a discussion about the morality of killing anything ever. I’m a carnivore, and proud of it.) Suppose the owner of the rifle uses it to kill a deer to feed his hungry family. Now suppose the owner of the rifle uses it to kill a grocer to take food to feed his hungry family. Is it a good, moral rifle in the one instance and a bad, immoral rifle in the other? Of course not. It’s just a rifle. It doesn’t have morals.

To borrow a slogan from another context: “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Guns just make it easier.”

Now let’s forget the purpose (which is artist intention, IMHO always impregnated by morality). I am not interested in using the rifle. I only made it so I can sell it and sustain a living. That’s the ethic. I’m gone from the shop, the rifle is in the window. My ethic’s gone with me. But let’s presume the current political system is communism: I am not supposed to put a rifle in a shop window as if it was for sale. When does the object clashes ethically? When other people come about and start rioting in front of my shop.

Objects are absent of ethics only when people
are not present. They are always ethics and
morals at play in any social context, just like
art only exists when an object or event triggers
the kind of sensual, emotional and/or intellectual
responses that makes someone accepts the object or
event as art.

The morality of art itself is an interesting debate.
Plato was condemning arts as being the adoration
of the superficial, but that was close to saying art is
immoral, like the stoic view that hedonists take pleasure
while they’re oblivious to suffering peers.

I know I love art because I’m an escapîst. What’s the moral
value of escapism? Now, this seems to be about my attitude,
my psychology, but what about art clearly inviting to escapism? Isn’t it what half of the artists intentions do? Use art as a mean to grab attention? Art doesn’t talk or pull you by the hand, but when you’re not there, it’s not even art. So because art only exists when I agree to it, it is always bathed by a moral dilemna: Should I really be paying attention? Should I find this more beautiful than nature? Is art leisure when I should be out there helping people who crumbled in an earthquake? I hardly think you can make art entirely escaping any moral dilemna, and you can’t perceive art without the slightliest concept of morality either. Morality (this is still in debate in name-me-the-science-symposiums) is a condition of nature, not a human invention. It is triggered by emotions and its
aim is to protect life. In most religions, the essence of existence is that we are dipped in a moral dilemna throughout all of human life. This doesn’t sound like a
coincidence. I am not sure about a God, but moral dilemna is the constant pressure of survival, even (this is again, controversial) at the most basic state of instincts. Animals have emotions, and generally don’t eat their youngs.

In some esoterical circles, there is a morality to matters, which is close to relating matters to their chemical purity. This dates from the years of alchemy, and it’s really pulling a leg. But some elements of chemistry were believed to have “better energy” than others. Today a similar hierarchy of elements and their “powers” is verifiable by science. In aesthetics, morality brings us
to the grotesque discourse. How do we receive things as grotesque? How are immoral villains portrayed as ugly in cinema?

Ethic is kind of the gestion of morality by social politics and general acceptance. It’s pooring cold water on the upsets of morality which often rely on personal emotions and faith. Ethics are redundant without social consensus.
I am not so sure about morality.

Let’s come back to my rifle and its purpose.
It is thousands of years later, and humans
have now vanished from the earth. My
rifle stands abandoned on a rock somewhere,
but fully loaded. A strange new animal, remotely
intelligent, come flies by it and tries to understand
what this object is doing there. By manipulating
the rifle, it goes BOOM and instantly kills the
animal. Is the object amoral, for being purposedly
dangerous to life, is what I’m asking. If part
of the purpose of life is to sustain or seek
morality, are objects that were created to be
detrimental to this aim, inherently amoral?

Crazy Cedric C