Morality and ethics
Someone on another thread mentioned the topic of morality versus ethics.
Okay, then:
--- Do we think of morality as involved in religion, and ethics as independent of religion?
--- Are there settings in which an action could be moral but not ethical (or the reverse)?
--- Does all this depend on individual versus collective action?
Feel free to add more questions.
Okay, then:
--- Do we think of morality as involved in religion, and ethics as independent of religion?
--- Are there settings in which an action could be moral but not ethical (or the reverse)?
--- Does all this depend on individual versus collective action?
Feel free to add more questions.
Comments
In that usage, both morality and ethics can be religious or not. Religion in our society is more likely to address ethics explicitly and to integrate it with morality.
The difference between morality and ethics is that morality focuses on actions and ethics on the wider picture. Therefore, I don't think one would say a particular action was moral but not ethical or vice versa.
I don't believe the distinction has much to do with individual vs collective action. Ethics would include weighing the respective merits of individual vs collective action.
The question of ethics vs morality can be seen in story of Good Samaritan. When levi and priest walk around the individual, they were practicing the ethics of their religion (again debatable) but Samaritan was the moral person because he was neighborliness.
I don't really understand Aristotle's virtue ethics, but it seems much of western religion is built upon it.
Aristotle essentially seemed to think that virtue was defined as the thing that a virtuous person would do. So if one wanted to understand the virtue of generosity, consider the actions of a generous person.
Others of course have considered virtue in other ways, for example considering the consequences of an action.
I'm not clear how this is different to a system of morality. How does one assess the virtue of a virtuous person without some kind of moral measure? How does one know whether consequences of an action without a concept of morality? So whilst there might be a technical difference to some, they seem closely linked.
Can something be ethical but not moral? I think that one can weigh different urges which might be contradictory. For example as a general principle one might do what policemen tell you for various reasons but also one might value protecting vulnerable people. So maybe you might interfere if you saw a policeman beating a vulnerable person. Again I don't see the distinction between the words as particularly important but there are situations where different values are in tension.
The contrast is with a view of morality as a set of rules that anyone who understands the language they're expressed in could apply accurately.
This resonates. Ethics is system-based; morality is intuition-based.
Morality says "Our society has a rule that you shouldn't steal, so you shouldn't do that."
Ethics says "If you steal, then you encourage behavior that is detrimental to the common good. It encourage stealing among other people, which is corrosive to society, so you shouldn't do that."
In a healthy society, morality and ethics are in cooperation, I think.
I think that social conventions are a slightly different thing to morals. I'm going to introduce the word zeitgeist back into this conversation because I think it is relevant.
We might define a social zeitgeist in certain ways, x y and z. But the accepted moral position might be a b and c, so they might not overlap.
For example if one lives in a society where the majority say that they are Roman Catholic. We probably would say that the accepted morality of that society was that "marriage is a sacrament". But the zeitgeist might be that many people do not actually get married.
So which thing is the morality? The teaching of the religious body most seem to accept or the social convention?
I think my position with respect to the words is that ethics are how one decides which actions are right and wrong and morals are the framework one is using to decide.
So I think one can moralise about a topic, meaning that one is trying to say that one is a particular exemplar of a shared moral. Arguing about the ethics of a topic seems to me to be more akin to people operating from different moral positions attempting to find a shared language to determine how to decide what is right and wrong, which probably requires starting from first principles.
If everyone shares the same background, you are likely discussing morals. If they don't, it is probably ethics.
Does that make any sense?
It's virtue ethics, not virtue morality, because virtue ethics prioritises the framework and background over the specifics of the decision making process.
We seem to be divided as to which is framework and which is application, but I'm with @Alan29 and others in the 'ethics is the framework' camp. The application of the ethical principles in a given situation may need to take account of situation-specific factors - which is not quite the same as 'situation ethics'. @Gramps49 cites the parable of the Good Samaritan which is an interesting example - the priest and Levite applying a reasonable ethical framework unthinkingly; the Samaritan recognising a situation where the actual response has to be more nuanced.
Apologies if I am seeming to teach grandmother to suck eggs. I'm just trying to haul back stuff I studied half a century ago.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/
I know some don't like quotes, but there it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality
Emotivists, quasi-realists, moral relativists, and so on would claim that morality is normative but would reject the idea that it would therefore be endorsed by all rational people.
I think they're wrong, but it's a position some respected philosophers hold.
For example imagine I'm talking to Aristotle and he is talking about the correct way to treat a slave. How should a person correctly behave?
I'm going to say that I can't communicate on that level because I don't believe in having slaves, whatever Aristotle might say about actions with slaves is a language I don't understand.
The disagreement is related to the fact that we are operating from different frameworks, does it matter if we call them different things? His actions might make sense in his framework but they don't compute in mine.
That's a lot to break down, and I'd a bloody hypocrite to complain about long posts that are hard to digest. Haha. I think it holds.
I'm familiar with the concept of zeitgeist, though it usually feels grander to me than "morality." Zeitgiests are very whimsical things, morality feels hard and fast like a legal code.
That said, yes, I've heard an understanding that there are three kinds of rules in life: And I think that's something I recognize in your conceptual framework. "Morality" the way we use it includes some class 2 and all class 3 rules. Most sane people don't think about class 1 rules as "morality" because breaking them is unthinkable.
And I think by your frame, it's the zeitgeist that gives the actor the sense to know how to discern the difference between classes 1, 2, and 3. A Christian might call it the Holy Spirit. Actually, that does work for me.
Ethics, then, are one way to discern the zeitgeist, which allows one to properly dissect a failing moral system.
Yes! I think, cautiously, with some enthusiasm, we might be on the same page here.
When I started this thread, I think I would have said that both morality and ethics are about conduct, and that they engage in reasoning from axioms. Morality derives its axioms from religion or spirituality, while ethics attempts to come up with axioms ex nihilo, as in assertions such as "Everyone would agree with X". The discussion on the thread has made it clear that the topic is much larger and more complex. (I still like my simplified version.)
Do you mean Aristotle is talking about how one should correctly behave towards slaves if one is enslaving them?
Does it matter if we call what different things? Does "them" refer to frameworks or actions or something else?
Anyone, I think one would need to know the circumstances in which you are talking to Aristotle and why - have you been transported back in time to Ancient Athens, has he been transported to the modern day; are you reading his Ethics as relevant to modern moral philosophy, are you reading them as part of an academic study aimed at discovering what life was like for enslaved people in Classical Greece? The purposes of the conversation affect which bits you want to understand and what you want to do with them.
For example when IVF was first carried out there were different views about the morality of that procedure. Now there is extensive law around it we talk of the ethics of the procedure.