On 9/2/2012 5:45 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
That's all I mean morals; having values about your own actions so that you can
recognize that sometimes you do stupid or bad things - by your own standards - but
which are not unethical because they have little or no effect on other people.
OK. May be it is a difference between english and french, where, at least in my country,
moral is just a common term for ethical.
Yes, it is in english too. But I'm trying to change that. :-)
Maybe you can suggest a different word, but the morals/ethics distinction I suggest
seems close to common usage. And even if you want to keep the two words as
coextensive, it's still useful when someone refers to "immoral" to think whether he
means something he would regard as bad in himself (like enjoying some pot)
?
(I can understand but I have to replace pot by alcohol, for which statistics exists that
it is bad in himself).
or he means it harms other people and should be discouraged by society.
I appreciate that you seem to think that the society can only discouraged behavior which
harms the others.
And that's the main reason I think the distinction is useful. When a politician says "X
is immoral and we should pass a law against X." his audience thinks, "Yes. He's right. I
would feel badly if I did X or my child did X." Sometimes X is also bad for other
people, i.e. unethical and society should discourage it. But other times it is just
personally repugnant to the audience (like homosexuality or getting drunk) and the
audience should think, "Well I think it's immoral - but it's not unethical. We don't need
such a law." By not making the distinction they allow the inference
immoral->unethical->illegal.
Brent
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