The difference between morality and ethics

Originally posted: 9/25/2022
It’s pretty simple 🤷‍♀️

Transcription:

I was putting down some papers in front of a shed yesterday thinking about the difference between morality and ethics. Not because I'm so high minded, but because I think about these things in the same way some people think about the NFL or the royal family. It's just amusing to me, and it's a way to pass time until I'm done passing time. Anyway, morality, ethics, what's the difference? The answer's very simple, and you don't have to be an ethicist or a moral philosopher to describe it. You just have to know English. There's no difference. The way a word is generally used is what a word generally means. Generally sounds funny. Morals and ethics are typically used to mean the exact same thing, so they do. Now, can they mean different things? Yes, but that's jargon, technical language, and that's fine. It's like a mathematician saying, "Let X be a non-negative real number."

Okay, but then after that conversation, in real life, when you're back around people who've not pre-agreed on this arcane terminology, X goes back to meaning what it typically does, the 24th letter of the alphabet, a shape with two intersecting lines at an angle, the act of crossing something out and a person you used to have sex with. So yes, bifurcate the concepts of morality and ethics with people who have fun doing that because yes, it's amusing, just like reading tabloids or fishing or hyperventilating until you faint, but then come on back to real life where technical terms are just words. Hey, thanks for watching. Come along if you feel like it.

#morality #ethics #philosophy

[selewin]

I was so hyped at the start because not a week ago I had the same thought. And I was hyped to get your take on it. But this felt like a cop-out. Because people generally don't use them interchangeably. More like a van diagram with a lot of overlap

[loraoflahrity]

Would love to hear your explanation of cursing verses cussing...thanks ahead of time

[XMeK]

I'd say they're a bit different. What we call "morality" are actually the behaviors and instincts that distinguish a social species from a solitary species. Ethics comes into play only in advanced society when there inevitable conundrums that aren't easily answered through moral instinct. All mammals display morality to one degree or another, but only humans consider ethics.