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OK. They have different connotations. They arise from different aspects of culture. Regardless, they still mean the same thing.
Which matters because…
Huh? Why?
I think your just trying to save the idea that you’re amoral in the face of the difficulties that arise when you try to think of yourself as amoral/non-ethical - like, how then do I describe my actions?
You want to say that you’re amoral, but not unethical?
Is that what you’re saying? And, if so, why? Just to distinguish yourself from religion? OK, fair enough. But that really doesn’t seem like an important part of a philosophical discussion. That’s more just identifying which camp you’re in.
Or am I misunderstanding?
Commonly, the two words are synonymous. Sometimes, “morality” is used for a sort of overall view, and “ethics” is used for specific applications of “morals” - “buisness ethics” and “situational ethics”, for instance. Ethics is then, sometimes, used as a specific case of the more general term “morals”.
It’s just a matter of usage. Maybe the separation between the two words will grow over time. But, at present, there is no definitive distinction.
Any philosopher is free to use the words distinctly - to use stipulative definitions. But this process is not strictly descriptive of the two words, it is prescriptive. In other words, you’d have to create the distinctions. They are not present in current usage.
Aside from any common conventions I’ve always had certain feelings about these words - ‘ethics’ sounds like a social construct we utilize for pragmatic purposes and ‘morality’ sounds like something that arises genuinely and naturally from myself. Just an observation. In fact I use the terms almost interchangeably (or on a case by case basis) since I recognize that everyone has different relationships with the words.
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I see ethics as being guidelines for showing what is socially acceptable. Morals is the act of carrying out what ethics pronounces. From my point of view, the Bible sets the ethical guidelines while the act of showing them through thought and action is the moral side of it. The two can be synonymous in their basic forms, but are set apart when application is involved.
Mutual cooperation and morality is not the same.
Well, what if what guides my behavior is partly learned from religion and partly learned from other sources? Should I then invent a new word? Should I describe my behavior as “ethoral” and “un-ethoral”.
Plus, then you get into difficulties of what defines “religious” and “non-religous.” Was Plato religious? What about Kant? What about Buddhism? Is that religion? We usually categorize it as such, but it’s very different from western religion. Ghandi was religious, but he’s also seen as an icon for secular humanism. If we act on based on something Ghandi said, are we being ethical or moral?
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