CannibalSmith comments on The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality and What To Do About It - Less Wrong

38 [deleted] 11 June 2009 12:31PM

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Comment author: CannibalSmith 11 June 2009 01:54:31PM 3 points [-]

What is the difference between ethics and morality?

Comment deleted 11 June 2009 02:03:54PM [-]
Comment author: Annoyance 11 June 2009 03:32:26PM 0 points [-]

Morality: society's agreement on what is 'right' and 'wrong'

Ethics: rules or principles guiding behavior, doesn't refer to society as a whole, often a code adopted by professional groups, possessed by individuals and entities within societies.

Ethics are not necessarily compatible with morality and do not necessarily address societal concepts of virtue and vice.

Comment author: thomblake 12 June 2009 04:00:44PM *  7 points [-]

FWIW, here are some quick and dirty definitions, specifying how people use 'Ethics' and 'Morality':

  1. Ethics = Morality

  2. Morality: right/wrong; Ethics: the study of morality

  3. Morality: rules about social behavior; Ethics: rules about behavior in general

  4. Morality: what society thinks is right/wrong; Ethics: what's actually right/wrong (this definition is sometimes used by fans of Nietzsche, who called himself an 'amoralist')

  5. (contra 4) Morality: actual right/wrong; Ethics: mere opinion about how one should behave

  6. Morality: 'good' vs 'evil'; Ethics: 'good' vs 'bad'

Oh, and the one you specified is employed as well.

There are some in here that seem outright contradictory, if not merely inconsistent. As such, I will continue to recommend explicitly defining 'morality' and 'ethics' when you don't mean something like "What one has most reason to do or want" for both of them, or when it's clear from context (for example, talking about the Professional Code of Ethics for some profession)

ETA: And according to the OED, the words both have their origins in something like "society's expectations"

Comment author: loqi 11 June 2009 05:15:40PM 4 points [-]

Interesting. On which Holy Tablet of True Definitions are these written?

Comment author: thomblake 11 June 2009 05:52:31PM *  3 points [-]

The movie Election

Comment author: randallsquared 11 June 2009 08:50:57PM 3 points [-]

Another nice definition, which I prefer, has

Morality: rules a person wants to follow.

Ethics: rules a person wants others to follow.

Law: rules a person is willing to force others to follow.

...but no one but me uses those, either. Ah, well.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 11 June 2009 03:44:52PM *  1 point [-]

What's authoritative in this question? Wikipedia, for example, lists multiple notions of morality, one of them "a synonym for 'ethics'", and ethics is said to be a philosophical discipline addressing questions about morality...

Comment author: Annoyance 12 June 2009 03:44:35PM 1 point [-]

When there are multiple usage patterns which are mutually inconsistent and incompatible, usefulness becomes the most likely distinguishing factor.

It is useful to be able to distinguish between "societal standards of right and wrong" and "rules defining the proper way to do specific things".