morals and ethics, how are they different?

@Fido,

Your problem with morals and ethics is your one example to explain morals and ethics. It must be global in order to understand these concepts.

Mental illness can result from chemical imbalance in the brain, and not from any immoral behavior. Parkinsons, cancer, and heart disease happens to good and bad people.

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@Fido,

I do hope that you may be a little wrong about what you understand!
Do not get me wrong as I think you are very wise, I just hope that in due time that most of mankind will evolve to understand these things better than what I do.

Maybe I have to much hope! Some may think that I have to much hope in the human race but I am ok with that.

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Your problem with morals and ethics is your one example to explain morals and ethics. It must be global in order to understand these concepts.

Mental illness can result from chemical imbalance in the brain, and not from any immoral behavior. Parkinsons, cancer, and heart disease happens to good and bad people.

I agree that mental illness can have genetic and environmental causes... I am also with Freud in the conclusion that most of humanity is neurotic to some degree... And I am not idealist about the past having less mental illness... I think it possible that madness may have been much more common, and even expected of leaders at times, and because of the constant low level conflict that was a feature of their societies people needed morality as essential to their survival...They needed the morale, the esprit de corp, and the also needed morality as a Disposition of Character common to the whole people that gave to each individual the sense that he could rely on the man standing next to him to hold his own, and not cut an run... Morality demands a sacrifice of self that we all still make to belong to any form... No one in their right mind expects to marry without compromise, a change of mind, behavior, or self... We all join every organization with the knowledge before hand that we will lose a bit of our identity in the process of gaining a new identity... It is no different for people born into a form, as the family, for example... We all take for granted that the relationship, if we prize it, takes compromise and sacrifice, and that sacrifice is often a bit of ourselves, what we want or desire for the needs of the group...

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Good delineation of morals and ethics. Thanks for sharing them.

You are very welcome, cicerone. Exclamation

Pass the readings on now to (at least) two others, and request that they each do the same. Wink

As you will note the system of Ethics has other good definitions also - such as for "authenticity," for "morality", for "conscience," for "hypocrisy," for "optimism," etc., etc. In addition, in the Epilogue (p. 42) to the essay entitled Ethical Adventures http://tinyurl.com/23eeqwd a clear delineation of the logical thread that binds the theory together is presented. Can other ethical systems do that?? I believe that Ethics can be taught, and that it is never too late to learn if one is open to it, and not overly dogmatic and rigid.

The problem is that up 'till now it has not been offered in a coherent, plausible package, ready for designers of children's story-books {and comic books} to go to work with it, and do their thing to make it as color-full and artful as possible. [My scribbles are not quite in that form yet, and require some translation into simple language first.]

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@deepthot,

deepthot wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:

Good delineation of morals and ethics. Thanks for sharing them.

You are very welcome, cicerone.
Pass the readings on now to (at least) two others, and request that they each do the same.

As you will note the system of Ethics has other good definitions also - such as for "authenticity," for "morality", for "conscience," for "hypocrisy," for "optimism," etc., etc. In addition, in the Epilogue (p. 42) to the essay entitled Ethical Adventures http://tinyurl.com/23eeqwd a clear delineation of the logical thread that binds the theory together is presented. Can other ethical systems do that?? I believe that Ethics can be taught, and that it is never too late to learn if one is open to it, and not overly dogmatic and rigid.

The problem is that up 'till now it has not been offered in a coherent, plausible package, ready for designers of children's story-books {and comic books} to go to work with it, and do their thing to make it as color-full and artful as possible. [My scribbles are not quite in that form yet, and require some translation into simple language first.]

What else do you believe??? Can you produce the first person who was taught ethics without knowing ethics??? If Aristotle defined Ethos as a dispositition of Chraracter, and compared them to Pathos as the emotions in a given situation, then how can either be taught, how to feel and by what standards to reference ones feelings- so good results from ones actions??? People's characters take a long period to develop, and yet are well on the way to completion before a child can speak... To know children, and have children is to realize how much of their character and personality they are born with, and which parenting can do little to modify... I think that you may always make th e moral argument to people, but only moral people will get it... I think you can lay out the obscure reasons for moral behavior for all to see and only the moral will see them... Reason stands firmly behind all unethical behavior, and it does not matter how horrable the act, there is always a justification... Few are the murderers who will stand up and say: Yes, I killed the victim and only because I am rotton to my core... No... It is always moves on a checker board mentality: He moved there so I had to move there, and it was all his fault that I had to kill him... And there might be a lot of ethical trick that can be taught, like don't let yourself get trapped in unconsidered behavior, and think outside the moral box, consider the unexpected and the never before accepted... Ultimately, you cannot teach people a positive frame of mind, a sense of their being, purpose, and potency in their communities... Given enough love, and spared enough trauma, and blessed with health, most people are naturally moral... And it is because they understand the economy of love unconsiously, or subconsciously... They know what they must do for love, and though no one can define that infinite of love to the point where it can be taught, still, most people have a sense of it, and that the only fair way to have love, is to give it, and that the only way to enjoy love, is to deserve it....

You can understand morals even though they are a moral form... You can recognize how essential they are to society and to the individual... This understanding and recognition are not qualities that can be given or taught, that are not part of our conscious make up.... They are a part of us before reason comes into our lives, almost before words; and are remembered in a sense because they are re-inforced even when infant amnesia wipes nearly all experience from our memories... I personally think that one of the values of a well considered life, or of psycholanalysis is that it can bring people back to that moment when they could love without restraint, or fear, and pick up the lost strands of their morality which is their human connection to humanity, and move on with life morally... But ethic/morals cannot be taught... If you want morality; you must make the moral man which you cannot do in a demoralized society...It will not happen while everyone is looking at every other trying to calculate their monitary worth, and what they can have squeezed out of them...

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@Fido,

When do you think "business ethics" came into being?

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

When do you think "business ethics" came into being?

Perhaps near the age when Caveat Emptor became a common phrase... What people soon learn is that there is no such thing as business ethics, that all commerce is crookedness which no act of law or individual can rectify.... Try to understand that business ethics followed the same course as other morals, that one had different rules for family and community than for other peoples and other families, but eventually unequal wealth, which when it came from raiding ended with the creation of the state, and when it came from commerce so demoralized and weakened the state that it could not stand attack...Morality is community, and wealth gives to individuals the sense that they are better than their equals, and entitled to special rules of behavior, and as a result the whole society loses it morals since the poor always follow the rich in their behavior until foes can be better trusted than friends...

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@Fido,

Fido, But any ethics developed provides some standards that people should live by. That people don't always follow these ethics is the failure of those individuals who ignore ethics. Some people's greed takes over their conscience. Enron is a good case in point. There's nothing wrong with business ethics.

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Fido, But any ethics developed provides some standards that people should live by. That people don't always follow these ethics is the failure of those individuals who ignore ethics. Some people's greed takes over their conscience. Enron is a good case in point. There's nothing wrong with business ethics.

You cannot be serious... No one talks about business ethics until aften an enron... And then they want ethics well enough, for others, and not for themselves.. But that is not the way ethics work... Ethics work in small communities to maintain justice, and equality of conditions so all enjoy what they must together stand and defend... It is not rocket science, but a social skill built upon necessity, and it is only when wealth makes want a memory will ethics and finally fail... Immorality is a choice people make that they think they can afford, and that I think no one can afford...

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@Fido,

Fido, You miss the whole point; laws are established for all the citizens of the country, and yet many break its laws to be prosecuted and sent to jail. All laws are not perfect, but they are established to ensure safety for everybody.

Just because some people ignore the laws doesn't mean all laws are unnecessary.

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Fido, You miss the whole point; laws are established for all the citizens of the country, and yet many break its laws to be prosecuted and sent to jail. All laws are not perfect, but they are established to ensure safety for everybody.

Just because some people ignore the laws doesn't mean all laws are unnecessary.

And obviously, the more law one country has, the more they need.. Law is a serious business to the Muslims, and some might say their penalties are cruel to a fault, but they do not have the overburden of police who are ineffective, prisons that produce a more vicious criminal and all manor of free loaders and feather bedders moving at half speed to produce no justice...Of course, Islamic law does not destroy the community, but empowers the community to police its own, and admittedly, that too has its extremes, for family honor is a hard master to serve...

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@Fido,

Fido wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:

Fido, You miss the whole point; laws are established for all the citizens of the country, and yet many break its laws to be prosecuted and sent to jail. All laws are not perfect, but they are established to ensure safety for everybody.

Just because some people ignore the laws doesn't mean all laws are unnecessary.

And obviously, the more law one country has, the more they need.. Law is a serious business to the Muslims, and some might say their penalties are cruel to a fault, but they do not have the overburden of police who are ineffective, prisons that produce a more vicious criminal and all manor of free loaders and feather bedders moving at half speed to produce no justice...Of course, Islamic law does not destroy the community, but empowers the community to police its own, and admittedly, that too has its extremes, for family honor is a hard master to serve...

You almost speak as if you would be happier with this type of law but I do not think so, am I wrong?

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@reasoning logic,

reasoning logic wrote:

Fido wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:

Fido, You miss the whole point; laws are established for all the citizens of the country, and yet many break its laws to be prosecuted and sent to jail. All laws are not perfect, but they are established to ensure safety for everybody.

Just because some people ignore the laws doesn't mean all laws are unnecessary.

And obviously, the more law one country has, the more they need.. Law is a serious business to the Muslims, and some might say their penalties are cruel to a fault, but they do not have the overburden of police who are ineffective, prisons that produce a more vicious criminal and all manor of free loaders and feather bedders moving at half speed to produce no justice...Of course, Islamic law does not destroy the community, but empowers the community to police its own, and admittedly, that too has its extremes, for family honor is a hard master to serve...

You almost speak as if you would be happier with this type of law but I do not think so, am I wrong?

No one can get a grasp of law without knowing the history of law, and how it evolved out of prehisortic social forms, and to know that subject is also to encounter our oldest literature in its true light, and to understand it; and to understand the growth of law out of Ethics and Morals is to understand the disasterous effect of law on communites and morality... Law hopes to achieve by force and threat what was once achieved by the tender influence of ones own people...The threat to people came not from their own but from outside their native group.... But what they had, all their social forms delivered many peoples, many more peoples into the modern age than the modern age has let survive, and all without the outrageous expense and coercion, the violence and futility of Modern Western Law...

Those people did not have prisons, nor cops on every corner, nor surveilence, or law books by the mile....Nor did they have their children hanging from every tree... If there was vengeance, there was also reconciliation, intermarriage, and peace....Crime and punishment was decided by communities, so instead of what we have, as a class of legal professionals empowered at the expense of all; every community was empowered, and could have just as little or as much of law as it desired... All forms have their faults and I am not living in the past with the dead...It is simply in my nature to prefer what worked over what does not, and to prize authority in the people over their own issues, to despair at the total waste of life and ability in the penal system, and to rebel at the cost, which in my county is the single largest expense by far... Why pay so much for what fails so badly???

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@Fido,

Wow, that's a mouthful of b.s. if I ever heard one. Our laws come from English common law. Whatever happened before then doesn't have much material import to us as Americans.

What matters to us is the US Constitution in the creation of our country.

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Wow, that's a mouthful of b.s. if I ever heard one. Our laws come from English common law. Whatever happened before then doesn't have much material import to us as Americans.

What matters to us is the US Constitution in the creation of our country.

I don't know if it could be possible for you to be any more of an idiot; but I suppose you could always try...

If you could turn that block head you call a mind to the facts of the matter, perhaps you could ask yourself why it is that the same social form evolved almost everywhere to end vengeance and restore peace, and find Justice; and which is still common to much of the world???It certainly played a part at one point in the formation of the English constitution, which had an effect on ours; but you might ask yourself why the prehistoric system of laws was so common...The reason the same methods were nearly universal is that they resulted in peace and justice, or restored peace and justice.... So what is that??? As you say, we deal with our constitution, and it matters; but what matters most is the moral forms stated as goal, with peace and justice being included... Here is a hint... Or forms have changed, but humanity has not, because it cannot... The needs expressed in the preamble of the constitution written so long ago are yet needs, and primitve peoples had their social form to supply their needs, which are the same as our own; but the had the social form to deliver their needs as we do not...Our constitution is a failure...It will have to be replaced... We cannot say we are smarter than primitives... Our difference from them, is that with little technology or property, their forms had to work...Wealth is a poor substitute for justice or tranquility, but in this land where even the poor can be rich by the standards of the past, people feel they can live without the social forms of another day... I don't think they can live without justice or without essential powert in their lives

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@Fido,

Fido, Your observations of human history is myopic and of no consequence to the realities humans have lived in all the cultures of this world.

Your one-track mind fails to see what has happened by ignoring the global history of all cultures. Fairness and justice is your ideal, not reality.

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Fido, Your observations of human history is myopic and of no consequence to the realities humans have lived in all the cultures of this world.

Your one-track mind fails to see what has happened by ignoring the global history of all cultures. Fairness and justice is your ideal, not reality.

What you fail to realize is that the childhood of mankind is reproduced in the childhoods of each human being... It is one place where ontogeny recapitulates philogeny... Look at your myths in the Bible... Can you see no similarity between Jacob's Ladder and Jack's Beanstalk... And what of the similarity of those two with the Cross??? It is not just that fairy tales and myths preserve the past, but that they are retold because they touch something of the psychology of human kind... What I tell you is fact, but what those facts cannot tell you is the sense people once had of their communities that made sacrifice for them all so natural that no one thought twice, where banishment was the equal of death, and death preferable to some... You don't have it, and you don't get it and that makes you a towel, a receptical of sorts for any sort of nonsense... Throw yourself in the wash...Or soak your head... I don't care which... I think you are an idiot..

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@Fido,

All your explanations are nonsense. Your towel analogy is childish at best.

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@existential potential,

existential potential wrote:

could someone please enlighten me with some answers to this question?

morals are which you hold to yourself , ethics is the outward expression of your morals

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@north,

While I think your definition is interesting, I disagree with it. However, that's why we discuss these things, right?

1 Reply

morals and ethics, how are they different?

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