Monday, 17 September 2007
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Comments (3)
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/jamesbdunn?p=57
Observation and initial responses - what would you have said that was not said?
Observation
We often see the words "ethics and morality" used almost as synonyms. A set of word cards for SAT-prep says "ethical" means conforming to accepted standards. It says the synonyms are: honorable, moral. This is ambiguous and can be exploited.
What do you think about the following novel distinction? Ethics regards a wide range of relationships; Morality regards one's own emotional/spiritual health; they are different, but very interdependent. Ethics is like the relationship of the planets to each other and the sun, whereas morality is equivalent to each planet revolving on its own axis. A popular character education expert in CT said, “Sometimes ‘ethical’ is used as a synonym for ‘moral,’ as in, ‘He is a very ethical (moral) person.’ For some people, ‘moral’ has religious connotations that 'ethical' does not. The relevant field of psychology, however, has been called 'moral development' ... no religious connotation there ... “
Response one
Ethics and morality are often very narrow definitions of right and wrong and also open to interpretation by anyone wanting to use the terms in such a way as to justify their actions in any situation.
Response two
your analogy of the planets' interaction among themselves (ethics) vis-a-vis their own rotation around their own axis (morals) seems appropriate. If individuals revolve around a moral axis (this is often called a "moral compass" because a compass points to the same north as the rotational pole) then their relations among each other will be ethical.
Response three
sorry, the analogy of the planets doesn't make it any clearer for me. I still prefer to think of ethics as action and morals as internal
Response four
Ethics and Morality are used as synonyms but they cannot be replaced with each other especially when the writer/speaker wants to convey a clear cut message. Ethics and morality are different.
Response five
The distinctions between moral, immoral, and amoral might be worth discussing as well. Do we make religious distinctions that differ from secular ones? Can we say a person may be considered immoral but the person can still adhere to a particular “ethical” framework as a basis for his/her immoral behavior or thought? My drop down Microsoft Outlook thesaurus under tools shows “unethical” as a synonym for “amoral” but not for “immoral”! However, “immoral” is a synonym for “amoral”! This seems to indicate that a person without morals has no ethics, but a person with bad morals still has ethics (of a sort). However, the breaking of the circle in the synonym links indicates that the issue is a bit foggy.