kingofmirrors
06-06-2007, 04:21 PM
short question: what is the relationship between ethics and morality? can you have one without the other?
stems from the following long story: last night i was talking with two philosophically minded friends when the topic of pedophelia came up. one proposed that the stigma against pedophelia comes from the widespread opinion that pedophelia is unnatural, but its prevalence throughout history suggests that it actually is natural (possibly biological, akin to a third sexuality) and the stigma is inappropriate. i suggested that i think people are indifferent to whether or not it is a natural urge but are against it because it is morally wrong. they both then claimed that they don't believe in morality but instead have ethics. this confused me because i was under the impression that determining the moral rightness of an action was one of the primary goals of ethics. i'm not an expert in the topic but my intro ethics class described most ethical theories as "an act token is morally right iff ____________" so i figured the two were intertwined. my friend here who took the same class a different semester said otherwise. they claimed that morality doesn't exist and no action is intrinsically right or wrong, it is merely consitent with or contrary to your own ethics. so i proposed a situation of a hedonist who enjoys carving up innocent people and who has a way to do it without suffering any negative consequences. they responded that while the action was consistent with the murderer's ethics, it was not consistent with their own so that's why the murderer is wrong. i pointed out that they were describing morality right there by judging whether or not the murderer was right or wrong through the context of their own ethics, but they maintained that morality is a separate issue entirely-- a description "good and evil" with origins in religion rather than a description of "right and wrong" with origins in ethics.
this is probably an unnecessarily long post for a really basic question-- im pretty positive either they don't understand what morality is or i don't-- but any clarification on the issue would be appreciated.
stems from the following long story: last night i was talking with two philosophically minded friends when the topic of pedophelia came up. one proposed that the stigma against pedophelia comes from the widespread opinion that pedophelia is unnatural, but its prevalence throughout history suggests that it actually is natural (possibly biological, akin to a third sexuality) and the stigma is inappropriate. i suggested that i think people are indifferent to whether or not it is a natural urge but are against it because it is morally wrong. they both then claimed that they don't believe in morality but instead have ethics. this confused me because i was under the impression that determining the moral rightness of an action was one of the primary goals of ethics. i'm not an expert in the topic but my intro ethics class described most ethical theories as "an act token is morally right iff ____________" so i figured the two were intertwined. my friend here who took the same class a different semester said otherwise. they claimed that morality doesn't exist and no action is intrinsically right or wrong, it is merely consitent with or contrary to your own ethics. so i proposed a situation of a hedonist who enjoys carving up innocent people and who has a way to do it without suffering any negative consequences. they responded that while the action was consistent with the murderer's ethics, it was not consistent with their own so that's why the murderer is wrong. i pointed out that they were describing morality right there by judging whether or not the murderer was right or wrong through the context of their own ethics, but they maintained that morality is a separate issue entirely-- a description "good and evil" with origins in religion rather than a description of "right and wrong" with origins in ethics.
this is probably an unnecessarily long post for a really basic question-- im pretty positive either they don't understand what morality is or i don't-- but any clarification on the issue would be appreciated.