Morality vs. Ethics

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BonosSaint

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What do you think of when you hear the words morality and ethics? Is the one religious, the second secular? Do you use them interchangeably? Or is morality an overcompassing view of your convictions and ethics the day to day practice of it? Or some entirely different perpective. I'm sure a helpful person will give me the dictionary definitions of them, but I have a dictionary. I'm more interested in how people use the words rather than how they are supposed to be used.

I got into a brief discussion in another thread which interested me. How the use of language is reflective of our thoughts and viewpoints and conversely how the use of language controls what we think, and why this culture war so often uses language as a tool.
 
Morality is religious and not grounded on logic or reason, while ethics imply a set of universal rules to be employed in a secular and pluralistic society.

Melon
 
To me, morality implies the concept of right vs. wrong, and ethics the practice of it in day to day life (professions, etc). When it all comes down to it though, they're really the same thing, both used and abused to the point of not having any real meaning anymore.
 
deep said:
i disagree


i have known too many moral atheists

one does not need any religion to have moral standards

You're correct, but atheist "morality" tends to be grounded more on secular humanist ethics. It's not bad. I think secular humanism is a great philosophy to be employed on a pluralist society.

Melon
 
VertigoGal said:
To me, morality implies the concept of right vs. wrong, and ethics the practice of it in day to day life (professions, etc). When it all comes down to it though, they're really the same thing, both used and abused to the point of not having any real meaning anymore.

:up:
 
For me, moral values and ethical values are the same thing. Doesn´t make a difference what i use, when I say ethical I will mean moral and vice versa.
 
melon said:
Morality is religious and not grounded on logic or reason, while ethics imply a set of universal rules to be employed in a secular and pluralistic society.

Melon



perfectly said.
 
^ agree

I cringe when I hear the word morality because to me it implies avoiding "bad" and embracing "good" even though my most spiritual and enlightening experiences in life have come through what moralists would consider "bad' things. I respond well when I hear the word ethics.
 
joyfulgirl said:
^ agree

I cringe when I hear the word morality because to me it implies avoiding "bad" and embracing "good" even though my most spiritual and enlightening experiences in life have come through what moralists would consider "bad' things. I respond well when I hear the word ethics.



agreed.

govern yourself with your morality. govern me, as a citizen, with ethics.
 
Perhaps there is good and bad beyond what we can decide day-to-day.

Perhaps there is good or bad that is always good and bad, not just subject to current rules.
 
nbcrusader said:
Perhaps there is good and bad beyond what we can decide day-to-day.

Perhaps there is good or bad that is always good and bad, not just subject to current rules.



like what?
 
nbcrusader said:
Perhaps there is good and bad beyond what we can decide day-to-day.

Perhaps there is good or bad that is always good and bad, not just subject to current rules.

Then we'd have to decide that to be so, hence completely contradicting the above.

Be glad we don't sacrifice children to Moloch anymore.

Melon
 
How effective do you think language is at controlling thought? Being a talk show addict (which means 90% conservative), I'm more familiar with conservative language (codewords) usage (and would appreciate a list of liberal same). I don't mean the blatant insults thrown by both sides. But I mean words and phrases like patriot, family values, activist judges--words and phrases deliberately vaguely defined, which are designed to pit one side against the other.

While I can't think of specifics right now, the left is fairly good at creating politically correct language, a barrier many people are afraid to cross.

Both sides know that that pushing the language usage of choice into the mainstream subconsciously sways thought and opinion without need of good argument.

The political (and other social) arenas are famous for this, but employers do it, charities do it, religions do it, kids do it. It's the fascism of language.

(PS, I think this adminstration figures since it has morals, it doesn't need ethics.)
 
Yeah what melon first said is my understanding as well. ie. basically ethics exist for logical reasons, while morals exist because somebody says so. An example of an ethic is treat others as you would have them treat yourself - that makes sense from a purely logical standpoint, so it can be sort of universal. Morals can be imposed within a framework of spiritual beliefs, because they are consistent with other beliefs within that particular framework.

But as others have said, these days they're almost used interchangeably anyway so it doesn't matter.

What about virtues, then?
 
nbcrusader said:


We would have to decide to recognize the things that are there, not make them up ourselves.



are there rules/ethics/morals that aren't made up by humans?

am unaware of any.
 
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