ethics vs. morality: short question, long story, and pedophelia
 

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.

Re: ethics vs. morality: short question, long story, and pedophelia
 

I think your premise that the stigmatism against pedophilia stems from thinking it is unnatural is incorrect. Thinking that children are something different than just little adults is a relatively new idea and the reason pedophilia is stigmatized is because it is a breach of the adult/child contract, where adults protect and nurture children.

As far as ethics vs morality goes, it's all a mater of how you define them. Until you and who you are talking to agrees on the definition of both there isn't much to talk about.

Re: ethics vs. morality: short question, long story, and pedophelia
 

Your friends are pretty stupid as far as ethics go. There clearly ARE absolutes, like the case you described, or random genocide or whatever---but I think that there are far fewer absolutes than people like to admit. Pedophilia for one is certainly a case-by-case type of deal. It would be wrong for some children and probably some would not be harmed by it (and/or would enjoy it). I personally think that most children are far too young to think through everything (and they also just don't look good until they hit/pass puberty!)

Re: ethics vs. morality: short question, long story, and pedophelia
 

You don't "have" ethics. Ethics is a field of study. As far as the difference between being ethical and being moral, there is none.

Re: ethics vs. morality: short question, long story, and pedophelia
 

I would think people place a priority on people being hurt as opposed to what is natural or not. You'd also have to ask "Is something good, just because it's natural, or is something bad just because it's unnatural?"

Re: ethics vs. morality: short question, long story, and pedophelia
 

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I would think people place a priority on people being hurt as opposed to what is natural or not. You'd also have to ask "Is something good, just because it's natural, or is something bad just because it's unnatural?"

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word...all creatures have tendencies that arise due to evolution...many times that tendency is to harm another creature to benefit themselves...that doesn't mean that we should condone or encourage it...

my distain for pedophilia is (and should be for all people IMO) distain for the harm caused to a party against their will...

the real question is, at what point during a child's life can we be sure that they are expressing their will...

it's certainly not the same for everyone, but for the purposes of efficienty pretecting children, we must make decisions as to when children should be considered to be able to make their own decisions in these matter...

Re: ethics vs. morality: short question, long story, and pedophelia
 

[ QUOTE ]
Your friends are pretty stupid as far as ethics go. There clearly ARE absolutes, like the case you described, or random genocide or whatever---but I think that there are far fewer absolutes than people like to admit. Pedophilia for one is certainly a case-by-case type of deal. It would be wrong for some children and probably some would not be harmed by it (and/or would enjoy it). I personally think that most children are far too young to think through everything (and they also just don't look good until they hit/pass puberty!)

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That's funny, I think there clearly AREN'T absolutes. Wouldn't an absolute wrong require that everyone aside from sociopaths believe that a certain action is evil? Clearly a large percentage of Nazi Germany was perfectly ok with genocide. Even though the vast majority of people believe in the morality of a particular action doesn't make it absolute.

In fact, you are pretty much conceding this by saying there aren't very many absolutes. As society progresses our morality progresses. It's never a fixed thing.