"Carrol Cox" <[email protected]> wrote > Morality is a set of ideas, and thus ethical principles are subordinate > to and flow from the practice which exists prior to any ethical ideas. > Hence those ideas cannot be used to determine the practice from which they > flow.
Morality and ethics are almost synonyms, at least for the sake of this discussion. Ideas are expressed as statements in a language and so moral principles are statements that are weak constraints on human behaviour. Let's term a collection of moral principles as a morality advocated by a group for the benefit of the group. So there are many different moralities that have advantages and disadvantages which we can compare. Because moralities are weak constraints on individual behaviour, groups turn them into laws with punishments for failure to comply. There are some problems discussing moral principles because some feel that moral principles are innate features of being human. That seems mystical to me and that moral principles should be susceptible to criticism. -- Ron
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