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.
Correct me if I am wrong, MV, I think you are pointing to three layers of social interaction. The base would be the morality of the action. IVF developed out of the desire to help infertile people. But then certain divergent assumptions came into play, so the profession had to develop an ethical standard within which to function, but ethical conflicts have led to legal decisions in the field. It would seem all three layers are constantly evolving. Certainly keeps the legal profession busy.
There is also the old saying, just because something is legal (like the eviction process) is it necessarily moral? Take what is happening in Minneapolis. Many immigrants have been unable to work for the past few weeks. Their rents are coming due. Landlords are beginning the eviction process. Of course there are ethical and legal standards that have to be maintained. But is it moral to force people out into the cold? Now, I know certain organizations are trying to address that shortfall.
Whereas I would have it the other way round, with the underlying rightneess of the procedure being a matter of ethics, and decisions about the individual case being one of morals.
Both words can mean either the overarching framework or the specific individual issue.
And if we think slavery is eradicated in the modern world...*whistles*
Nope. It's still here. It's just outsourced, or more accurately, there are people who work under conditions that are so economically coercive that it's getting into conversational range, I think.
For example, the Gospel Coalition treats IVF essentially as a moral issue - it is evaluated (whether it is "right" or "wrong") with reference to the moral code of Christianity. In their view, Christian ethics involves reasoning about the biblical moral code of conduct - only one moral code of conduct is involved.
What you believe about morality and codes of conduct has a big effect on how you understand the purpose of ethics.
When it comes to secular situations I believe the law of the land is the paramount guide (though that might not apply in an autocracy or puppet democracy.) People of faith have had their opportunity when it comes to framing those laws. When it comes to contentious transfusions I think each occurence should be individually considered, with the ability of the one undergoing treatment to make an independent decision being the focus.
These are difficult areas, but as they say "Hard cases do not make good law." It would seem best to involve as many people as possible from as many disciplines as possible in making those decisions and attempt to reach some sort of consensus.
I bear in mind that many of the laws in various parts of the UK date back to a time when Parliament was dominated by privileged (and decidedly entitled), white, male land-owners, which is how we ended up with system that still institutionalises sexism, racism, misogyny, property ownership, etc.
For most of its history, the only faith involved was Christianity.
That was then. Times have changed.
News alert - They've even allowed women to vote.
That doesn't work as a distinction because there still needs to be a basis in knowledge which means you need something to tell you what is right and wrong.
Virtue ethics implies that everyone could agree on who the virtuous person was and what the characteristics were that made them virtuous, which is connected to the idea that all "proper men would agree" on virtue. Which is in itself a tacit acknowledgement of a shared understanding of an ethical (or morality, depending on which word you think applies) framework of action.
Pushing back the assessment by saying "ah yes but it isn't just the actions of a virtuous man, it is about the type of training that virtuous man has undertaken" doesn't square the circle unless the moral basis of the training itself is understood.
Of course I would also argue that Aristotle is really here riffing on Plato and the divided soul.
You can ditch the morality altogether: do what is virtuous.
Not inherently. Virtues can (conventionally) be subjective or universal.
You don't have to be in agreement with anyone about virtue. If everyone else agrees that inequality promotes human flourishing, what is the virtuous thing to do about inequality?
None of that makes any sense to me, you might as well be answering in Klingon.
How can you "do what is virtuous" without a common understanding of virtue? The rest of what you write is incomprehensible.
Most virtue ethicists believe virtue is related to the concept of a good life (as in desirable, fortunate, admirable). That is, one can justify whether a trait is a virtue by saying how acting according to that virtue makes our life as a human being a good life for a human being. (Most virtue ethicists would then say that humans are social animals and are dependent on a good society to have a good life.)
Virtue ethicists vary on how much importance they give to the need for a shared framework. On the one hand you have someone like Alisdair MacIntyre, who thinks shared frameworks are vital, that modernity doesn't have them, and has given a lot of thought to the questions of how one can say one has rational knowledge where there are competing frameworks. On the other hand, someone like Rosalind Hursthouse thinks we have enough grounding in biology to reach shared conclusions about the good life.
In point of view of actual decision making, virtue ethics doesn't differ much from deontology. A virtuous person doesn't think about what a virtuous person would do - they act according to some moral principle. Where virtue ethics disagrees with deontology is about the degree to which one can apply moral principles as exceptionless rules without understanding the considerations behind the rule. I think deontology has to become virtue ethics when it handles imperfect duties: should you give money to charity? Yes. How much? You have to use your judgement.
It's darkly hilarious that anyone thinks one can find human patterns of human flourishing and therefore virtue in nature.
The only moral lesson one learns from studying biology is that one can't take moral lessons from biology.
In a sense, I now hear "virtue" and think of men engaging in classical cock-measuring contests, trying to show who is the most useful.
Christians - if I recall Machiavelli correctly from undergrad - tried to tame that and turn it into following useful rules, which is an interesting process.
@Basketactortale , I recall us having a chat about this on another thread. The fact that much later antisemitic "thinkers" would tie this "effeminate" collective virtue to Judaism is kind of hilarious. Rules make for better collective action, while they minimize the manly "virtu" of individual laborers.
Personally, I find more practical virtue in the logical working out of ethics than in the thoughtless submission to archaic rulesets, but that might be another unfair caricature. Big projects like civilization do require rules, on way or another, and we do need to get along somehow.
Reading upthread, I think Aristotle might be on the same page.
This on its own would appear to destroy his ideas.
God knows people are very good at not seeing the logical holes in their practical thinking.
Sadly I don't know how much I can say about that guy's historical context because the historical gap is truly vast.
There was a quip from a character on The Expanse about how everyone has a "circle of civilization" in their head and as times get harder, that circle gets narrower. Some people have very oddly shaped circles. There's "my people" and there's "everyone else." Sometimes people can even have multiple circles.
Personally, I don't know how people rationalize that, because I was also raised to make the circle as big as possible to avoid turning into a you-know-what. But I can sometimes feel the itch in darker moments.
I also have very little faith in "ideas."
True. Or, for that matter, I'm still getting used to the idea of these being called *moral* principles, although I can see why.
Well, it makes sense to me.
NB I see Rosalind Hursthouse wrote the current Stanford entry on virtue ethics.
Because otherwise “do what is virtuous” becomes nothing more than “do what you like”.