Morality vs. Ethics

[Nimrod]

(or Why Our World Leaders Should Be Ashamed Of Themselves)


First, a few definitions taken directly from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:

mo·ral·i·ty (n)

1. A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct.


i·de·a (n)

1. Something, such as a thought or conception, that potentially or actually exists in the mind as a product of mental activity.
2. An opinion, conviction, or principle.



eth·ics (n)

1. The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the conduct of the members of a profession.


rule (n)

1. An authoritative, prescribed direction for conduct, especially one of the regulations governing procedure in a legislative body or a regulation observed by the players in a game, sport, or contest.

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Many people will tell you that definitions are open to interpretation - that is, unless your interpretation varies from their own. Often the official definition of a word amounts to little more than semantics, but in some cases examining the meaning behind a common word can bring insight into a great many things.

This is just such a case.

The word "morality" has been used to justify some of the most heinous actions in world history. It is a shield, an excuse, and the final authority. This is not at all surprising when you realize morals govern an individual's actions from the second he or she is able to determine right from wrong, and are a main factor in one's very definition of himself.

But look at the word itself and what it means: A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct. The key word here is ideas. Search the world over and you will never find two people with the exact same set of ideas. Ideas are like snowflakes; as unique and varied as we are ourselves - no one will ever think exactly the way you do no matter how you may wish otherwise. And since moral systems are made up of ideas, no one will ever have exactly the same morals as anyone else.

Morals are extremely personal. What you believe to be inherently right, wrong, good, or evil will always be of your own creation, based upon your own ideas. Others can teach moral systems that you may or may not choose to adopt into your own, but your morality comes from within.

Now, examine the word "ethics".

Immediately you can see how different these words are. Rather than being composed of ethereal ideas, ethics are composed of rules and standards. Rules and standards come from without, not within. They are regulations of behavior agreed upon and enforced by society. You may not personally agree with a rule or standard, but you are expected to live by it or face discipline and even punishment.

Now hold these two words up against each other and the differences will become even more apparent.

Morals: Personal ideas held by an individual. Internal, unquantifiable opinions of right and wrong.
Ethics: Rules held by a society. External, quantifiable, enforceable.

By design, a moral issue is one that cannot be enforced as there is no victim involved. Issues such as homosexuality crash land in the dead center of moral territory. A homosexual finds homosexuality to be perfectly moral, while a fundamentalist Christian believes it to be an abomination against God. These are their personal opinions and therefore are both perfectly valid moral systems. Remember that morality comes from within. But expand the concept and add a victim to the issue: For example, the murder of a homosexual. The murderer can easily justify his actions within his own morality (queers are evil and deserve to die), but as a society we deem murder to be a crime. The act of murder is unethical.

To further expand this: The murder of a homosexual who raped you several years ago. The rape: Someone victimized you. The rape falls outside your moral system, inside the rapist's moral system, but everyone will undoubtedly agree that the rape was unethical. Your murder of the rapist: You victimized someone else in retaliation for a past injustice. Moral in your eyes, definitely immoral in the victim's eyes, but once again an unethical act, as taking the law into your own hands and ending another person's life for revenge is against the agreed-upon, external rules of polite society.

As a people, we should find the differences between morality and ethics extremely important, especially when it comes to our elected leaders. Any leader who governs by his morality should by no means be allowed to take office as he has shown himself completely unfit for the role. If you doubt this, realize that the public torture and murder of homosexuals (or blacks, or atheists, or rap musicians, or cigarette smokers, or people who don't tip 20%) would be moral acts. Morality does not concern itself in the slightest with society's ethics.

The role of any leader is to expand, define, and enforce the ethics of the society he governs. And imposing your morals on someone else is extremely unethical.

[swag]

1. I thought this was going to be a riff on the great movie "Election"

Thanks, Nimrod.

Will keep this handy.

Anyway, WELCOME TO DU! We need more hunters.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. And imposing your morals on someone else is extremely unethical.

Good read... and hopefully fitting right in here....



http://www.counterpunch.org/velloso05042004.html
Look What You Have Done
Spare Us Your Disgusting Ethics
>>Now, Bush and Blair want the rest of the world to believe they are distressed and concerned because the soldiers they sent to an illegal and inhumane war have engaged in some public display of sadism and tyranny. Never mind the mass killings, devastation of the country, mass imprisonment, and the subjugation of the country.<<

[gottaB]

3. You might be glossing over the systematic aspect of morality

One can understand morality in senses that do in fact articulate with ethics.

From the online dictionary of etymology:

moral (adj.) - c.1340, "of or pertaining to character or temperament" (good or bad), from O.Fr. moral, from L. moralis "proper behavior of a person in society," lit. "pertaining to manners," coined by Cicero ("De Fato," II.i) to translate Gk. ethikos (see ethics) from L. mos (gen. moris) "one's disposition," in pl., "mores, customs, manners, morals," of uncertain origin. Meaning "morally good, conforming to moral rules," is first recorded c.1386 of stories, 1638 of persons. Original value-neutral sense preserved in moral support, moral victory, with sense of "pertaining to character as opposed to physical action." The noun meaning "moral exposition of a story" is attested from c.1500. Moralistic formed 1865.

Online Etymology Dictionary, Moo to Mucus

[markses]

5. I agree

In fact, it is a switch to say that ethics is external and quantifiable, while morality is "just opinion" (whatver that means). Ideas aren't individual: they are communal. besides, if we look at the etymology, the positions are completely reversed, where ethos referred to personal character and reputation, while mos referred to a group primarily (as in social mores). Ethics was thought of by the Greeks and Romans as what Foucault has called a "technology of the self," or a way of working on the self, and the different relations of the self to actions.

I certainly don't think it is as simple as saying that Morals = individuated and non-quntifiable, while Ethics = external/communal and quantifiable. No, in fact. I reject that distinction (primarily because I reject the notion that ideas or opinions are "individual" rather than communal in the first and last instance, as would the Greeks and, basically, any pre-Cartesian thought, and plenty of post-Cartesian thought).

[Nimrod]

6. Understand your point, but...

Ethics are taught in college. Morality is taught in church.

I do wish to restate that ideas are individual. They CAN be communal, but they are individual first. Ideas become communal when people with similar ideas gravitate toward each other. In fact, to say that ideas are inherently communal sounds like a rejection of individuality to me. My ideas are my own, just as yours are your own.

To use current events as a basis: Would one say that gay marriage is unethical? If so, how is it unethical? It involves two people, affects only two people, and by design those two people must both be willing participants in the process. There has been absolutely no quantifiable proof shown that gay marriage affects anyone except the gay partners, all we have is vague threats that it will somehow undermine straight marriages with nothing to back that claim up. One must either accept or reject each argument on their own.

So is gay marriage a moral or ethical issue? If it is an ethical issue, then again it needs to be defined how is it an ethical issue? What ethics are being cast aside in these unions? On the other hand if it is a moral issue, who can rightly claim the authority to enforce their moral ideas upon the greater popoulace?

I hate calling up the standard example, but I will. Ye Olde Nazi Germany. The idea behind it was to create a stronger nation of stronger individuals. This was a perfectly moral concept. Who wouldn't want to strengthen their nation and their people? The concentration camps were moral as well - it fit the ideas of the administration and was a means to their perfectly moral end. But was it ethical?

When someone is on trial for murder they don't seek to convict him for being immoral, they seek to convict him for committing a crime. When Jerry Falwell tells his followers to hate homosexuals, he does not call them criminals in the definitive sense, but he DOES grab that moral high-ground with both hands and shake it like a pit bull. I personally don't share his morals, and in a society like we claim we have I would not be forced to share them.

I restate that morals are private and personal, and the crime is using them as a basis of government. A government SHOULD distance itself from morality and instead focus on the ethical aspects of every issue.

[markses]

7. We will have to disagree on the basic premise

Your ideas are never fully your own; they are always inflections of communal ideas. That is, indeed, a rejection of individulity (a fairly recent invention, in any case). You can restate all you want. I think it's bunk.

The main problem here, as far as I can tell, is the desperate attempt to quantify relations which are not quantifiable. Perhaps the key ethicists of our times (say, Buber, Levinas, etc.) all reject empiricism as a ground for ethics - in fact, the empirical is precisely the abandonment of ethics for a thinker like Levinas. You want foundation, when the ethical relation is precisely that which lacks quantifiable foundation, and is ethical because it lacks such foundation.

Ethics is certainly in the act, but I reject the notion that the idea is not an act, and that the idea doesn't travel and perform like any other action, and that it has to wait for some action separate from it in order to function. Ideas infect across individuals. You also have a difficult time showing that "rules or standards" are not themselves "ideas" - they are clearly idealities. One could just as easily say that the distinction between ethics and morality is not to be found in a false distinction between ideas (as the precious possession of "individuals" - God knows whence!) and rules or standards (as ideas that are mysteriously transmuted into group ideas or ideas functioning as measures), but rather in the relation between the actor/act complex and the ideas.

[Nimrod]

8. I'm cool with disagreeing

:)

I'll conceed the point that ideas are communal in the same sense that the language you speak, the jokes you think are funny, and the music you like are communal. In my personal opinion, an individual's ideology and value system are pieced together from numerous sources, but that piecing together makes it their own. Nobody can tell you what jokes are funny - all that can happen is you are told a joke and you either think it's funny or not. That's extremely stripped down and simplified but the basic premise remains the same whether you are talking about religion, politics, Traditional Family Values, or what you like in your coffee.

Example: I was raised in a backwater town by backwater people and was taught that homosexuality was pure evil. I chose to reject that however. I didn't have to, and my rejection of that principle was deeply frowned upon and discouraged by those close to me, but that was my choice and I made it on my own. My personal morality has been pieced together by me and has become something unique and completely my own. If anybody completely agreed with me on every single idea I have, I'd find them extremely weak-willed and tiresome as a matter of fact.

We have a community here, but I didn't come in a raving freeper and have my mind changed. I shared many of the ideas presented here and so I gravitated toward those people with like minds. Obviously I don't share EVERY idea that is presented here; if that was the case we wouldn't be having this discussion, not to mention this forum would be terribly dull. Again, who wants to be agreed with all the time? Likewise, nobody WANTS to have their mind changed - in fact, I believe it's impossible to change someone else's mind unless you use psychoactive drugs. An idea or morality can be presented, and it's up to each individual to accept and/or reject those portions of it he or she chooses. That process makes it personal rather than communal.

But to move on, I believe we are diverting from my original point. Whether it's referred to as morality, personal values, opinions, or brain squirts, my point was our elected leaders should steer far away from "That-Which-Is-Commonly-Referred-To-As-Morality" in the course of their duties.

If you maintain that morality is communal rather than subjective and personal, check out any website created by members of the "That-Which-Is-Commonly-Referred-To-As-Moral" Majority. Or check out the Christian Coalition website at cc.org and see the so-called values they trumpet as TWICRTAM. These are both extreme examples, yes, but they are representative of TWICRTAM and representative of what I do NOT want guiding our elected leaders in any way, shape, or form.

I would fall WELL within my personal morality to start bombing anti-abortionist headquarters in retaliation for their murderous tactics. But at the same time I would not want ANY elected leader to make a law endorsing that action, nor do I think many others would either. Regardless of how much personal satisfaction I would take from it, I am ethically opposed to the act of placing explosive devices.

Therein lies the difference.

[merh]

4. Welcome to DU...

Thank you for this post!

:hi:

[indigobusiness]

9. Interesting post, but I would argue with your analysis.

If Markses hadn't already done it, and far better than I could have.

I would just add that ethics and morals do not arise with the individual. It it the duty of the individual to wise up to them.
The nature of morality is rooted in the stuff of being. Moral codes are not arbitrary, they arise from the universal and manifest in aspects of character and dignity.

Codes of behavior are not merely the province of humanity, but have been observed in animals, which sometimes put humans to shame with their diginity.

Natural law is real.

[indigobusiness]

10. A detailed definition that supports my claim of ethics as "duty"

and a look at whether morality/ethics exist independently of humans.

=================

...............Ethics...............

The field of ethics, also called moral philosophy, involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. Philosophers today usually divide ethical theories into three general subject areas: metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Metaethics investigates where our ethical principles come from, and what they mean. Are they merely social inventions? Do they involve more than expressions of our individual emotions? Metaethical answers to these questions focus on the issues of universal truths, the will of God, the role of reason in ethical judgments, and the meaning of ethical terms themselves. Normative ethics takes on a more practical task, which is to arrive at moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct. This may involve articulating the good habits that we should acquire, the duties that we should follow, or the consequences of our behavior on others. Finally, applied ethics involves examining specific controversial issues, such as abortion, infanticide, animal rights, environmental concerns, homosexuality, capital punishment, or nuclear war. By using the conceptual tools of metaethics and normative ethics, discussions in applied ethics try to resolve these controversial issues. The lines of distinction between metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics are often blurry. For example, the issue of abortion is an applied ethical topic since it involves a specific type of controversial behavior. But it also depends on more general normative principles, such as the right of self-rule and the right to life, which are litmus tests for determining the morality of that procedure. The issue also rests on metaethical issues such as, "where do rights come from?" and "what kind of beings have rights?"

Metaethics........

The term "meta" means after or beyond, and, consequently, the notion of metaethics involves a removed, or bird's eye view of the entire project of ethics. We may define metaethics as the study of the origin and meaning of ethical concepts. When compared to normative ethics and applied ethics, the field of metaethics is the least precisely defined area of moral philosophy. Two issues, though, are prominent: (1) metaphysical issues concerning whether morality exists independently of humans, and (2) psychological issues concerning the underlying mental basis of our moral judgments and conduct.

snip...................

The second and more this-worldly approach to the metaphysical status of morality follows in the skeptical philosophical tradition, such as that articulated by Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus, and denies the objective status of moral values. Technically skeptics did not reject moral values themselves, but only denied that values exist as spirit-like objects, or as divine commands in the mind of God. Moral values, they argued, are strictly human inventions, a position that has since been called moral relativism. There are two distinct forms of moral relativism. The first is individual relativism, which holds that individual people create their own moral standards. Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, argued that the superhuman creates his or her morality distinct from and in reaction to the slave-like value system of the masses. The second is cultural relativism which maintains that morality is grounded in the approval of one’s society – and not simply in the preferences of individual people. This view was advocated by Sextus, and in more recent centuries by Michel Montaigne and William Graham Sumner. In addition to espousing skepticism and relativism, “this-worldly” approaches to the metaphysical status of morality deny the absolute and universal nature of morality and hold instead that moral values in fact change from society to society throughout time and throughout the world. They frequently attempt to defend their position by citing examples of values that differ dramatically from one culture to another, such as attitudes about polygamy, homosexuality and human sacrifice.

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/e/ethics.htm

links for further study

http://ethics.acusd.edu/