Morality and Ethics

This discussion of ethics and morals would include cognates such as ethical,
unethical, immoral, amoral, morality, and so on. As we proceed, we should be
careful particularly on the use of the word “not” when applied to the words
“moral” or “ethical” as this can be ambiguous. One might say that cooking is not
ethical, that is, the act of cooking does not belong to a discussion of ethics; on the
other hand, one might say that lying is not ethical, but the meaning here is that the
act of lying would be an unethical act.
Let us consider those two words further. The term “morals” may be used to
refer to specific beliefs or attitudes that people have or to describe acts that people
perform. Thus, it is sometimes said that an individual’s personal conduct is
referred to as his morals, and if he falls short of behaving properly, this can be
described as immoral. However, we also have terms such as “moral judgment” or
“moral reasoning”, w/c suggest a more rational aspect. The term “ethics” can be
spoken of as the discipline of studying and understanding ideal human behavior
and ideal ways of thinking. Thus, ethics is acknowledge as an intellectual
discipline belonging to philosophy. However, acceptable and unacceptable
behaviors are also generally described as ethical and unethical, respectively. In
addition, with regard to the acceptable and unacceptable ways of behaving in a
given field, we have the term “professional ethics”
Therefore, various thinkers and writers posit a distinction between the terms
“moral” and “ethics” and they may have good reasons for doing so, but there is no
consensus as to how to make that distinction. Ordinary conversation present as
much less rigid distinction between these terms, and in this book, we will lean in
that direction as we do not need to occupy ourselves here with the question how
different thinkers and writers construe that distinction. So, in this course, we will
be using the terms “ethical” and “moral” (likewise, “ethics” and “morality”)
interchangeably