thomblake 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: 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"