morals and ethics, how are they different?

Basically, semantics.
(No real difference in the actual world that we live in [although volumes could be written on the subject, of course].)

Morals define "good" and "bad". Ethics are a set of codified rules agreed upon by a group to guide behavior. More details: http://changingminds.org/explanations/values/values_morals_ethics.htm

I believe Merry has it closest to reality; morals and ethics are established by man that can conflict from one culture to the next or one group to the next. Ethics really isn't codified; that's the reason why there are so much problems with business actions; greed most often supersedes ethics.

How are they different? What's good for A can be bad for B, but whether it involves morals or ethics is the perview of the perceiver.

yeah, pretty much.

That's pretty much the distinction that I've used: "morals" are the overarching rules regarding right and wrong, "ethics" are the application of those rules to specific situations.

cheers for the replies

I like to say that morals are inherited . . . something we take in with our language as babies but never question . . . whereas ethics are a code we create for ourselves out of the inherited system of morals, our ability to reason and our life's experience.

I feel . . . and please, I am sick to death of being challenged and picked on for this . . . therefore, to be ethical is superior to being moral.

I tried to tell this to several righties on A2K and Abuzz for several years and received some of the dumbest and more rude answers imaginable.

After all, each person has his/her own idiolect. I like inserting the individual creatively and knowingly into the system rather than making the individual the recipient of the system.

Consider how morals and the Bible, which is supposed to be the conveyor of morals, have been used for dubious and immoral causes . . . like slavery.

Consider how the Republican party called itself. . . it largely seems to have stopped doing so . . . the party of family values, which can be regarded as moral, but how it fought subsidizing health care for children or safe guarding the environment or protecting the rights of wage earners.

When I was in grad school in Detroit, I remember left wing students looking into their futures and seeing men and women both employed as professionals but on a part-time basis while sharing home keeping and childcare with their mates. Industrialists, who largely seem to be conservatives, said no to these plans and made them impossible to attain. I am certain that those industrialists stood on what they considered moral grounds.

Throughout history, people have relied on the Bible to back up their actions, whether they were what may conventionally be considered "moral" or "immoral."

I think there is little morality in the American right and that the use of the Bible by the religious right . . . the Tea Baggers . . . even by the last standing moderate Republicans . . . is a sham.

Morality and Ethics have come to mean different things, but morality is a word coined by Cicerro, I believe, to translate the sense of the word ethics in Greek into Latin.. I use them as the same, but moral is a more useful word since everyone gets morale as the spiritual concdition of a group, like an army, as opposed to physic, or the physical condition of the group... In society they are inevitable related... A population reduced by war or exploitation or injustice will never have the morals necessary for its survival, and only with good morals can it defend itself... We are demoralized in this country... When one person suffers beside us we watch in gratitude that it is not us... We blame the victims for their suffering, and consider the grace of God as beyond comprehension... Actually, every question is a moral question, and we only choose to see life in other terms...

Morals are not a set of rules... Morals are an infinte form of relationship... If you have the relationship, you have the form, and from the outside it only seems like a normative situation... Community is morality... If you have the relationship with people you know how to behave without being taught... It is a grave mistake to believe that people raised outside of the milieu of morals can ever be taught morals... To be taught, morals would have to be logical and they are illogical... Logic always is logical from a certain perspective... Morals are only incidentally logical... It is moral at times to try to save a life... It is never logical to risk life for any gain, for any reward one cannot live to enjoy... Usually morality is seen as an obligation because there is no benefit to the moral person, and yet it is rewarding because the moral person becomes a member in good standing of his community by the act of sacrifice, and this is true of all relationships...

Moral = how to behave, and what to do.
Ethics = how to treat eachother, and in which way. What you can do and can't.

Generally people use ethics when they are talking about morality in a philosophical way. It's like the study of morality, which is more instinctive.

We might argue that going over the speed limit is unethical, but it's less likely that we'd call it immoral. It might by rationally wrong, but probably won't feel emotionally wrong. Likewise, it's doubtful that we'd describe rape as unethical. We would say immoral.

Socrates (469 BC "" 399 BC) was one of the first Greek philosophers to encourage both scholars and the common citizen to turn their attention from the outside world to the condition of humankind. In this view, Knowledge having a bearing on human life was placed highest, all other knowledge being secondary. Self-knowledge was considered necessary for success and inherently an essential good. A self-aware person will act completely within their capabilities to their pinnacle, while an ignorant person will flounder and encounter difficulty. To Socrates, a person must become aware of every fact (and its context) relevant to his existence, if he wishes to attain self-knowledge. He posited that people will naturally do what is good, if they know what is right. Evil or bad actions, are the result of ignorance. If a criminal were truly aware of the mental and spiritual consequences of his actions, he would neither commit nor even consider committing those actions. Any person who knows what is truly right will automatically do it, according to Socrates. While he correlated knowledge with virtue, he similarly equated virtue with happiness. The truly wise man or woman will know what is right, do what is good, and therefore be happy

It is not possible to teach ethics and such an effort has always met with failure... I you want to teach, teach to be unethical as michiavelli... The effort to make a science of ethics was doomed, but as important as the fact that it was doomed was why it was ever necessary to try... Primitives are universally ethical, and ethics comes from an older time than the Greeks of Attica... The reason Plato and Socrates tried to find the logic of virtue which was necessary in order to teach Ethics was because their society was becoming demoralized, and at the same time, anti democratic... The easy money the people had was making them corrupt, but no richer, for the money soon ended up in the hands of the rich who thought they were more worthy... The envy this engendered with the defense of wealth by the rich destroyed the context, the milieu in which morals made sense... It was the poor who pushed the country into the Pelopennesian war because they wanted plunder, which they thought would make them wealthy and respected... The last cause the rich wanted to fight for was international democracy, or any sort of democracy.. Democracy and equality are essential to morality, and political equality falls with economic equality... Poverty and wealth both corrupt people, so the desire to teach what is daily untaught in the market place is natural, and doomed...

From an ol' post of mine; hopefully it is of some help :-)

Fido

I can see how when looking at the ways of men there seems to be hopelessness in the sustaining of ethics or morals. But I believe that in a agreement there is the precepts or statutes of ethic or morals. In other words there is no ethic or moral to be held to, without agreement.

It seems that men seek to interpret what ever agreement for there own purposes (no love or trust or hope in the agreement), and justify their actions accordingly. But to discern in the love of the agreement more then one’s self, is the motivation of ethics or morals to be within a man, and he acts accordingly. Knowing that it is the loving trust in the agreement that justifies him.

Ethics/morals are also, by agreement made into social forms like law, and always will be as far as I can see.... And people, not understanding the value of the agreement will continue to suck the meaning out of such forms until they are so much dead weight to humanity... Every social form should give back to people more than they put in, and at least as much... That is the good for which people work, but if the obligations of social form is publicized while the benefits are publicized, in short order the thing will fail... Some forms just grow decrepit, and some fail to deliver truth, and some times based upon a new understanding a new form is built... Well, they do not last forever and the history of mankind is the exchange of one form for another, so we should think more freely of changing our form and of what way we could chnage our forms to produce the goods we all desire... For example; the goals of our form of government are moral and clearly stated... If in the same moment every American could judge his goverment against its stated moral goals, then the constitution would be marked a failure, and we could start over...

Fido
thanks for the reply

In the case of “will fail” may seem true in a society that looks to justice or Justification in the holdings of money and property. A public observation “He who dies with the most toys wins”. But I would point you to the success of percepts of morals and ethics that have effectively changed the English speaking world. The concept of “Moral” and the root of the meaning thereof is pointed to (even in the Oxford) is Pope Gregory the Great and his Commentary on the Book of Job. Who also sent St Augustine to the island of England (who it is attributed to as bring the concepts of civilization to England). Of which Gregory was going to do himself but was detained by the emperor of the day to be assigned to be pope, whether he liked it or not. (But it is my understanding there are many versions of that particular history).

Or Exeter Hall which was noted as the center of the anti-slavery campaign in it’s day amongst other percepts of ethics and moral pursuits. And was respected by the general public to be the voice of such, and the standings of the Hall was feared by the politicians of the day. Or Sr Edward Coke who was the Kings chief prosecutor then became chief justice and many of the precepts he instituted were adopted into the U.S. Constitution.

But yes you are correct, it is all about what is valued. But it is never hopeless it just requires the right man in the right place at the right time, to re-institute the value of ethics, to be valued.

I think part of the trouble is that what should be looked to for such, has seemed to decompose in itself “The Churches” therefore no one looks to the “Churches” for answers. It seems that the “Churches” have taken a Fire and brimstone attitude, or have fallen to the self satisfaction ways of the world. And that persuades no one, that the Voice of the Lord is with the “Church”, and it shows to the world they do not honor, nor value the Truth. For they seek to judge the world in their own choices of what is good and evil, which has nothing to do with agreement. That's how Adam and Eve got in trouble. And any person that breaths can make their own choices of what is good and evil.


Fire and brimstone is not the answer, it is the Mercy and Truth of God in His Grace and Peace, that acts in the interest of the Kingdom of God, and mankind. How can one be with and for people if one is not with and for people?

Is the Truth with and for people? Is the Truth against the nature of the beast? Or is the Truth, the ruler of the beast, that gives Mercy and Righteousness, and Judgement to the dweller in the beast?