Is there a clear agreed upon distinction between morals and ethics?
What’s the difference?
What’s the difference?
Morals vs. Ethics |
Is there a clear agreed upon distinction between morals and ethics?
What’s the difference?
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.
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.
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? (Sep 1, 2016 03:56 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Ethics are external and morals are internal. 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.
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? Playing the devils' advocate. Working graveyard shift rather warps my perspective. |
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