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Morals vs. Ethics

#1
Secular Sanity Offline
Is there a clear agreed upon distinction between morals and ethics?

What’s the difference?
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#2
elte Offline
I see a distinction although when they are given equal meanings it's okay with me.  Morals concerns the acceptable practices of a culture.  Ethics is like that except it is more universal.
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#3
Syne Offline
This is a good start: "Morals are the principles on which one's judgments of right and wrong are based. Ethics are principles of right conduct."
An easy way to differentiate them is to remember "morale" for morals. "Morale (also known as esprit de corps (French pronunciation: ​[ɛspʀi də kɔʀ])) is the capacity of a group's members to maintain belief in an institution or goal..." - wiki
Morals, like morale, are an attribute of a group, where that group influences the attitude of the individual. These can be social norms, religious beliefs, laws, and general consensus of right and wrong.

Ethics are fundamental and practical principles that can be employed by individuals to evaluate right and wrong conduct. So ethics can be utilized to evaluate morals, but not vice versa. Morals, like herd mentality, are not amenable to rigorous reason. Morals are what you follow mostly by rote tradition (including unrecognized biases), where ethics is an active, reasoned evaluation.

Morals are conducive to emotional bias, as emotions are important to belonging to and being accepted by groups. They do not necessarily include any more reason than appeasing the group. Ethics are a logical weighing of interests and counter-interests. The more individually ethical people in a group, the more ethical that group's morals tend to be.
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#4
Secular Sanity Offline
Ethics are external and morals are internal.
Ethics are imposed by an outside group.
Morals are our own personal sense of right and wrong.
Therefore, morals are subjective and ethics are objective.

Does this sound correct, Syne?
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#5
Syne Offline
(Sep 1, 2016 03:56 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Ethics are external and morals are internal.
Ethics are imposed by an outside group.
Morals are our own personal sense of right and wrong.
Therefore, morals are subjective and ethics are objective.

Does this sound correct, Syne?

Close, but not quite. Morals are externally influenced, by things like religious upbringing, social norms, subjective experience (external stimuli), etc.. Once you get into enforcing things on others (by force or social pressure), you are talking about morals and laws. We can have norms and laws that attempt to keep people ethical, but these are never wholly objective.

Your personal sense of right and wrong (morals) are filtered through everything that influences you. Ethics seek to remove these bias-causing influences by relying solely on objective reasoning. In that way, ethics can find principles of conduct that do not rely on circumstance.
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#6
scheherazade Offline
The context of morals and ethics requires judgement.

The definition of 'right' and 'wrong', 'appropriate' or 'inappropriate' is entirely arbitrary.

In the absence of others, would such a framework even arise?


https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/KmK0bZl4ILM

Playing the devils' advocate. Working graveyard shift rather warps my perspective. Wink
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#7
Syne Offline
(Sep 2, 2016 03:29 AM)scheherazade Wrote: In the absence of others, would such a framework even arise?

Assuming no animal companionship either, morality would be nonexistent and ethics would be reduced to being honest with yourself.
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