October 2, 2023
Ethics or Morality: A Crucial Difference
Let’s get this out of the way: There is no “god-given” definition of either ethics or morality (there’s a meta- element of irony here, as you can hopefully perceive). Most people might even use them interchangeably to refer to the same thing. However, there is a crucial difference between the two.
In most definitions, morality refers to a person’s moral convictions, what they consider right or wrong. Ethics, on the other hand, usually refers to systems of convictions; agreed convictions, in a way. For example, we might refer to “journalistic ethics”, that is, a commonly agreed set of practices and behavior that journalists should adhere to.
The proverbial plot thickens – there are never simple answers – because one’s personal convictions, their morality, is always a result of external factors; our environment, our culture, our upbringing. Perhaps some would like to suggest that our DNA pushes us in certain directions, but that, too, would be a result of external factors: We might be born good/evil (a huge oversimplification), but the externality remains, as our DNA is a result of our ancestors.
Ultimately, the debate “ethics or morality” is important – after all, that’s the whole point of this post, right? – because it refers to another crucial difference that, although contained in the one between personal/collective convictions, is easier to miss.
That difference is between knowledge and behavior.
The Question of Ethics or Morality Is about Focus
As I said above, the main definitional difference between ethics and morality is that whereas one is about a collective agreement, the other is about personal convictions. However, this definitional difference implies another difference, which is about focus: Whereas ethics (as a common agreement) focuses on behavior, morality focuses on knowledge.
The journalistic code of ethics basically says “I don’t care if you agree whether X is right or wrong; since you’re a journalist,s you must behave this way”. On the other hand, when a person says “I can’t eat meat, it’s against my morals”, there isn’t any law or rule that prevents that – unless of course there is, such as in many religious contexts, and then we go to ethics! – but only a person’s own convictions.
Again, however, we must be careful not to enter a cyclical argument: “The matter of ethics or morality is important because it is important”. Instead, we must answer: Why is it important that ethics (collective agreement, in our definition) is about behavior whereas morality (personal conviction) is about knowledge?
Ethics or Morality? Behavior or Knowledge?
Let’s assume you’re walking in a park late at night, and you come across a frail, weak old woman wearing solid gold earrings and necklace. Let’s say you are overwhelmingly stronger, and there isn’t a shadow of a doubt that you could easily overpower the poor granny and take the gold. There are no witnesses, and let’s assume in this thought experiment of ours that it’s 100% certain that there will be no legal consequences.
Do you mug the granny or not?
I removed ethics from the picture by removing the legal consequences partIf you’re thinking something like “I wouldn’t mug the grandma because God/my religion/the FSM says it’s wrong,” you are still operating in an ethical framework, not a moral one. That is, you cannot properly assess your morality unless you are constrained by no ethical systems. Only morality remains. In other words, the question you are called to answer is, Would you attack someone if there were no consequences?
I would like to believe that you – yes, you – are the kind of person who wouldn’t do it anyway, because your moral convictions tell you that causing suffering to others is not something you want to do.
Knowledge is superior to behavior – though we’ll explore some interesting predicaments in a while – because it follows you everywhere. It’s independent of rules and laws, systems of thought or religions.
If You Know Good and Do Evil, Are You Good or Evil?
I mentioned earlier how systems of ethics don’t care how you feel; they only care what you do. But what if we reversed the argument and were in a situation where we knew something was evil, rather than good, but we still did it? What… good did it do to us (not to mention others) if our behavior didn’t reflect our convictions?
As I see it, there are two options here: Either the person attempts to resolve the cognitive dissonance by modifying their moral conviction (“I used to think stealing is always bad, but I realized it’s OK because I needed to feed my starving family”), or then they suffer feeling guilty. One doesn’t exclude the other, either.
In any case, however, I think what follows the decision to act – the behavior – is in a sense irrelevant. That is not what we’re examining here. After all, there are also journalists who violate journalistic ethics, doctors who violate medical ethics, and so on, because of fear, greed, and whatnot.
Instead, what we’re examining here is whether it’s more important to have behavioral foundations based on rules or on personal convictions. In a nutshell, the question of ethics or morality is a question of whether one can be relied upon to be moral when others aren’t looking.
The Problem of Dominance
Systems of ethics – again, here defined as commonly agreed rules that do not necessarily require moral agreement – can be violated more easily than personal convictions. Heck, that’s why corruption “works” in many societies: because when enforcement is scant, the absence of personal morality favors dominance.
That is to say, without personal morality – what tells you to do the right thing when nobody’s watching – one tries to bend the rules and impose their will against others who may be unable (or even unwilling). In the grandma example earlier, a strong young man with no moral convictions, and assured of the ethical system’s (either religion’s or society’s laws and enforcement) failure, will have no qualms about mugging her.
But dominance has a problem, too: There will always be someone bigger, stronger, smarter, meaner than you. Dominance cannot be relied on for any kind of stability in life.
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I came across the concept of Eudaimonia at university where philosophy was one of my majors. This was a few years after I decided that I didn’t believe any kind of ‘god’. But I didn’t want to live in a vacuum, so Eudaimon was precisely what I needed. I’ve tried to live by it ever since. It’s impossible not to, even when no one’s looking, because when you’re lying on your death bed thinking back over your life, it your personal definition of what’s good that will define whether you believe you’ve lived a good life or not.
For me, living a good life is choosing to live a moral life because I believe it to be right, not because I’m scared of being punished if caught. How I got to deciding what I believe is right or wrong was by questioning everything, in particular, external rules. Once I had answers that satisfied me, not living by them would have created an unbearable dissonance in my life. Not even close to Eudaimon.
One thing though, I always thought that morality depended on the society in which you live – i.e. the rules imposed by that society – while ethics defined a kind of universal morality that went beyond societal differences. It’s been almost 5 decades since I last thought about these definitions so apologies if I’ve got them arse-over-tea-kettle. 🙂
I really like your connecting the decision between right and wrong with questioning established rules. In a way, it suggests morality vs ethics (established systems).
As for the definition of each, don’t worry about it; as I said, there are different (and conflicting) definitions, especially because these terms carry different meanings (e.g. “ethics” isn’t quite the same in “he is an ethical person” vs “journalistic ethics” vs “I have an ethics class at four”).
For me the questions have always been figuring out was is expected – society, family, village, nation, religion – and deciding what I was going to do as an individual.
It has mostly worked out – I’m a very liberal Democrat practicing Catholic – and politically closest to a Democratic Socialist – because I think we owe children as good a start as a society can afford, huge income gaps are obscene, and no one should be able to game the system to get lots of goodies if many others don’t have the basics.
I don’t need much – being chronically ill strips you of lots of vanities – and I hope my personal choices don’t hurt others, and try to be kind. I hold MYSELF to account, and don’t expect other people to be subject to MY rules unless they choose them (as long as they don’t get to choose to be obscenely rich when others are starving, something SOCIETY as a whole should not allow them).
If I’m being inconsistent, I come down on the side of giving the benefit of the doubt if possible, without being a patsy.
We all have a long way to go. Start with having the best schools and the best teachers in the poorest neighborhoods, with no child going hungry, and maybe we’ll get there.
Best I can do today. I’m very tired.
I find your wording “what was expected” a bit intriguing, but it’s of course a pragmatic view of life.
I mean, we are brought into an existence that by default places expectations on us. We are told by our parents what to do and what not before we’re even able to understand the requests. Then later the patterns multiply as to the commands offered by our parents are added those of school, and little-by-little by the authority structures you mentioned (society, nation, religion).
The irony in all that, of course, is that many of us, often, need to undo all this. Most people fail because it’s extremely difficult to wake up one day, decades later, and realize you have been lied to – or at the very least, accidentally misled.
Morality is often lonely because it is against systems of ethics.
As far as I understand the question, ethics pertains to ethos, the way one inhabits life, i.e. one’s own life, as a unique lifeform, and also life in general, the mere fact one is a living being. Morality, on the other hand, pertains to beliefs and convictions. Now, the plot would really thicken, if knowing was a form of doing (or vice versa, if doing meant one knows something). But I have not yet given much thought to it.
I think that knowledge is indeed a prerequisite for action, in the sense that – short of doing things randomly or for no explicable reason (an experience not entirely unknown to many of us) – we usually act being motivated by a certain “knowledge” (quotation marks because in a philosophical context we should only talk of beliefs; we might personally consider them justified and true, but they wouldn’t necessarily hold water).
Am I entirely wrong thinking that in a Buddhist context knowledge is tantamount to action, in the sense that e.g. thinking about doing evil is (almost?) the same as doing evil? For some reason, I think I might have read something like that somewhere.
Edit:
I’m coming back with an afterthought: I think it’s important (especially in our times, for reasons anyone with half a brain cell can understand) to not demonize knowledge, equating it to action. Or, as Lenny Bruce famously said, knowledge of syphilis is not instruction to get it.