• silverwhisper said on Dec 08, 2007....

  i will return to this when i'm sober and better able to articulate my thoughts.
  
  ed

• TinSoldier said on Dec 08, 2007....

  Hey, no problem. I wrote it drunk!

• silverwhisper said on Dec 08, 2007....

  i've always felt that ethics and morality have their basis in shared priorities and the dynamic between them.
  
  the law, by contrast, attempts to establish a means whereby people can conduct their day-to-day business with some measure of confidence that it will not all go blooey for no reason.
  
  ed

• lfbno7 said on Dec 08, 2007....

  Laws in America have riders. They will pass a law about housing, and somewhere in the middle of it there will be a provision to build a dam in Colorado. Our laws are all about "one hand washes the other". It is all a bit crooked. It's all about giving various people advantages of one kind or another. It's not about ethics or morality for the most part.
  
  I don't see morality/ethics as having anything at all to do with a consensus of opinion. I see it as an abstract concept. I would define either word, morality or ethics, as a good balance between acting on one's own behalf and acting on behalf of others. I realize that it is a very vague definition, but then again, how much can we really expect when we try to define such difficult concepts in a sentence. The problem with defining morality in terms of a consensus of opinion is that the consensus of German opinion in the 1930s and 1940s was that the Jews should be treated harshly, and that was not a very moral stand to take. I have no respect for the consensus of opinions. I'm much more comfortable dealing in abstract philosophy.

• SeanRenaud said on Dec 08, 2007....

  I actually sat and thought about this.  Then took a shot and thought some more.
   
  That said I think the reality of this is that the majority of laws are put in place for public safety.  Speeding, drunk driving, theft, rape, jay walking.  There are groups of laws that are simply moralistic and these are often controversial.  Gay marriage, abortion, sodomy, polygamy, cruelty to animals.  Many of these laws are driven by one religion or another and are generally unjust.
   
  I conceed the point that laws with purly moralistic basis aren't in the best intrest of a society.

• TinSoldier said on Dec 08, 2007....

  ed: RE: "shared priorities and the dynamic between them"
  Yes, that's kinda what I'm getting at, but you dismissed it in the other thread because sometimes consensus gets those priorities wrong.
  
  I don't think that the law is just a way to "conduct [our] day-to-day business with some measure of confidence"  although that is a big part of civil and contract law. I still think they have their basis in morality and an attempt to create equity (a moral or ethical value) for both sides. I'll hit on this later.
  
  lfbno7: I'm not talking about the specific processes of passing laws or of quid pro quo (although quid pro quo is certainly a part of it).
  I would define either word, morality or ethics, as a good balance between acting on one's own behalf and acting on behalf of others.
  I like this definition. Hmm. In a way I think that it buttresses my own point though.
  
  Regarding the consensus of opinion and the Germans in the '30s and '40s, certainly they got it wrong. But how? Looking back is easy. Even many religious Germans rationalized their choice as a moral one. That's called "denial".
  
  This is kind of where I break from relative morality for the most part. I think that most morality is relative, but not all of it. There are some absolute rights and absolute wrongs. More later...
  
  SeanR: Ah, now we're getting to the crux of my point. To me, public safety is a moral value. Far more important than gay marriage or abortion or those other things. Many of which we make laws about anyway.
  
  Some will say that morality comes from God or religion or whatever. But even those, for me anyway, come from an even more basic source: empathizing with our fellow humans. We decide that we don't want 'X' to happen to us, so therefore it shouldn't happen to anyone else either. So we make a law against 'X'. Because 'X' is wrong. Murder, theft, rape, assault, fraud, insider-trading, food sanitation; some of the big ones and going on down the line.
  
  Some issues are more controversial than others because they have two competing visions of what is moral. Take abortion: you have the moral good of allowing a woman the right to control her body and you have the moral good of not killing a child. So we try and rationalize it by determining when a lump of tissue becomes a child. Or by saying that a woman has an absolute right that trumps any others.
  
  (I'm not trying to steer this blog into that territory -- just using an example.)
  
  The basic thing is, when people see something wrong, one of their first reactions is "there oughta be a law." And sometimes there is.
  
  The problem is, when people bring in rights and wrongs from their own version of revealed religion or from some twisted view of the world that have no basis in secular logic, then the system breaks down. But try convincing them of that.
  

• bloc said on Dec 08, 2007....

  When I saw this post, before clicking, I thought it was going to be about the President and checks and balances. I guess that's my bias ;)
  
  "I understand that religious people believe that ethics and morality stem from God and are therefore absolute. Heh, I believe that morality and ethics are absolute as well, even if they do not have such a divine origin"
  
  
  This is something I've thought a lot about. I believe in morals that exist separate from our minds and that are not merely cultural norms. Yet, I'm not a theist so I've struggled over the seeming contradiction but I've finally found a view that works for me. 
  
  
  It's hard to explain, but I'll make a feeble attempt. Think of numbers. Not our words or symbols that represent numbers, but the actual concept. Does two exist only in our brain? Or, is two something that is a reality separate from our minds? It isn't a physical thing, it's an abstract thing or truth. I think it's clear, at least to me, that numbers are real things that exist outside of our minds and this my view of moral truths as well.

• TinSoldier said on Dec 08, 2007....

  Heh. Nice post, bloc. It feels better when we agree sometimes.
  
  So yeah, I understood your point, which was a very good point indeed.
  
  Integral numbers are less abstract and very easy to understand. Fractional numbers are a little more abstract, but can still be related to in a concrete fashion. Irrational numbers less so, but can still be described. Physical demonstrations become more difficult. Then you get into variables and imaginary numbers and a lot of other abstract stuff.
  
  Heh. Just like ethics and morality, it all follows if you follow the path.
  

• silverwhisper said on Dec 09, 2007....

  TS: that's part of it, to be sure. but come on, it isn't quite as simple as majority-derived morality, either: the example you cite, godwinny thought it is, certainly illustrates that point.
  
  i'm not sure that you've really come back to the basis of law idea. ?
  
  ed

• TinSoldier said on Dec 09, 2007....

  Heh. The "Godwinny" part was in response to lfbno7.
  
  I think you're right in a way -- that it isn't just "majority-derived". However, it has been in the past. It seems like we are becoming more and more enlightened to the true ideals of right and wrong as we mature as a thinking species.
  

• silverwhisper said on Dec 09, 2007....

  true, but similarly, it's complicated by the fact that our frames of reference are constantly being expanded, too, so we are constantly being exposed to more broadly-defined and fewer commonly-shared priorities, don't you think?
  
  ed

• TinSoldier said on Dec 09, 2007....

  I agree in a way, but something doesn't seem quite 100% correct there. I just can't put my finger on it and respond any better.
  
  Hmm.
  
  I mean, our horizons are expanding to extend our ideals of morality onto others who don't necessarily look or think or act like us (that is, we can't do wrong to them and remain moral). "Broadly defined" seems to be too much of watering down to me.
  
  More to the fact that we are reducing and refining the core ideals of what is actually "moral" from stuff with which we are just uncomfortable or dislike.
  

• silverwhisper said on Dec 09, 2007....

  well, as we encounter these new ideas, we don't necessarily accept them as our own so much as use them to distill our existing understanding or get some perspective on them, if you ask me.
  
  ed

• TinSoldier said on Dec 09, 2007....

  "Perspective". Yeah, I think that's what I mean.
  
  They aren't new ideas so much as new perspectives on what the existing ideas really mean.
  

• silverwhisper said on Dec 09, 2007....

  to me, it's almost always about perspective, to be honest. :>
  
  ed

• sheltercrow said on Dec 23, 2007....

  Now that everyone is gone

  I quote from a bubble gum wrapper

  Ethics (via Latin ethica from the Ancient Greek ἠθική [φιλοσοφία] "moral philosophy", from the adjective of ἤθος ēthos "custom, habit"), a major branch of philosophy, encompasses right conduct and good life. It is significantly broader than the common conception of analyzing right and wrong. A central aspect of ethics is "the good life", the life worth living or life that is satisfying, which is held by many philosophers to be more important than moral conduct. The major problem is the discovery of the summum bonum, the greatest good. The right act can be identified as the one causing the greatest good and the immoral act as the one impeding it.

  Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") has three principal meanings.

  In its first descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong, whether by society, philosophy, religion, or individual conscience.

  In its second, normative and universal, sense, morality refers to an ideal code of conduct, one which would be espoused in preference to alternatives by all rational people, under specified conditions. To deny 'morality' in this sense is a position known as moral skepticism.

  In its third usage 'morality' is synonymous with ethics, the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain.

  Moral Ethics seeks to address questions such as how a moral outcome can be achieved in a specific situation (applied ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), what morals people actually abide by (descriptive ethics), what is the fundamental nature of ethics or morality itself, including whether it has any objective justification (meta-ethics), and how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is (moral psychology).

• crybabylu said on Dec 25, 2007....

  The difference  between ethics and morality to me is that morality is personally a colde that I live by.  What is moral to you, isn't neccessarily moral to me. and visa-versa.  I don't think I have a right to push my "morals" on to you, and I don't like anyone else pushing theirs on me.  Ethcis are a different matter entirely.

  There is a code of ethics that I believe everyone should follow. It is one's personal conduct towards others.

  Morality-personal

  Ethics-how I treat others.

• sheltercrow said on Dec 25, 2007....

  ...morality is personally a cold that I live by... Hum... Yes...

• crybabylu said on Dec 25, 2007....

  (({laughing}))  I need an editor I think.  Even with glasses, I didn't see that "l" in code.  So, why didn't you go ahead and comment further? You were just passing thru, huh?

• lfbno7 said on Dec 25, 2007....

  Resident English teacher strikes again. I kind of like the phrase morality is a cold that I live by. Why don't you elaborate. Re-writing the rules of grammar to suit myself, I didn't put a question mark after "Why don't you elaborate" because I didn't mean it as a question, but as a suggestion. I know it was just an extra L but I kind of like it the way you have it.

• sheltercrow said on Dec 25, 2007....

   
  Ifbno7...
   
  I think Tin, bloc and crybabylu do a swell job... You on the other hand are a reactionary...

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