What is a principles of morality or rules of conduct?

Some people talk about their personal ethics, others talk about a set of morals, and everyone in a society is governed by the same set of laws. They can be easy to conflate.

Knowing the difference and relationship between them is important though, because they can conflict with one another. If the law conflicts with our personal values or a moral system, we have to act – but to do so we need to be able to tell the difference between them.

Ethics

Ethics is a branch of philosophy that aims to answer the basic question, “What should I do?” It’s a process of reflection in which people’s decisions are shaped by their values, principles, and purpose rather than unthinking habits, social conventions, or self-interest.

Our values, principles, and purpose are what give us a sense of what’s good, right, and meaningful in our lives. They serve as a reference point for all the possible courses of action we could choose. On this definition, an ethical decision is one made based on reflection about the things we think are important and that is consistent with those beliefs.

While each person is able to reflect and discover their own sense of what’s good, right, and meaningful, the course of human history has seen different groups unify around different sets of values, purposes and principles. Christians, consequentialists, Buddhists, Stoics and the rest all provide different answers to that question, “What should I do?” Each of these answers is a ‘morality’.

Morality

Many people find morality extremely useful. Not everyone has the time and training to reflect on the kind of life they want to live, considering all the different combinations of values, principles, and purposes. It’s helpful for them to have a coherent, consistent account that has been refined through history and can be applied in their day to day lives.

Many people also inherit their morality from their family, community or culture – it’s rare for somebody to ‘shop around’ for the morality that most closely fits their personal beliefs. Usually the process is unconscious. There’s a challenge here: if we inherit a ready-made answer to the question of how we should live, it’s possible to apply it to our lives without ever assessing whether the answer is satisfactory or not.

We might live our whole lives under a moral system which, if we’d had the chance to think about, we would have rejected in part or in full.

Law

The law is different. It’s not a morality in the strict sense of the word because, at least in democratic nations, it tries to create a private space where individuals can live according to their own ethical beliefs or morality. Instead, the law tries to create a basic, enforceable standard of behaviour necessary in order for a community to succeed and in which all people are treated equally.

Because of this, the law is narrower in focus than ethics or morality. There are some matters the law will be agnostic on but which ethics and morality have a lot to say. For example, the law will be useless to you if you’re trying to decide whether to tell your competitor their new client has a reputation for not paying their invoices, but our ideas about what’s good and right will still guide our judgement here.

There is a temptation to see the law and ethics as the same – so long as we’re fulfilling our legal obligations we can consider ourselves ‘ethical’. This is mistaken on two fronts. First, the law outlines a basic standard of behaviour necessary for our social institutions to keep functioning. For example, it protects basic consumer rights. However, in certain situations the right thing to in solving a dispute with a customer might require us to go beyond our legal obligations.

Secondly, there may be times when obeying the law would require us to act against our ethics or morality. A doctor might be obligated to perform a procedure they believe is unethical or a public servant might believe it’s their duty to leak classified information to the press. Some philosophers have argued that a person’s conscience is more binding on them than any law, which suggests to the letter of the law won’t be an adequate substitute for ethical reflection.

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Join the conversation

Is morality outdated?

Adrienne Stevenson

In my opinion morality is not outdated. All humans need a starting point. That normally happens with your family, your culture, family beliefs and religion. As I was born into the catholic religion and went to catholic school, there was always a moral compass to follow. The teachings were strict at school and at home. At about 12, I started to question the morals of the religion. There were situations, attitudes and capital punishment that didn;t seem rational to me, at school and home. That’s when I began to think of a more equitable system. At 20, I started my search for more rational values, principles and purpose.
At 21, I became a Buddhist. That’s when I became more ethical. I realized that another person couldn’t determine my values or purpose or my thoughts. Even though it’s been more than half of my life, I am still evolving in my ethics.

I reaize most people have morals that are engrained from birth. However, it seems to me that most people re-evaluate their ethics during their life.

Nancy Griffin

Yes, morality is outdated. Morality will forever be in need of revision, and that revision is called Ethics.

By its very nature morality, as a sociocultural construct, must always be behind the times, outdated, historical, traditional, in constant conflict with the present and future. The best example I can give is the evolution of religious morality: Christians, think about how the Old Testament conflicts with the Gospel, and how Catholicism clashes with Protestantism. Muslims may wish to consider the Abrahamic basis of both Islam and Christianity and subsequent evolutions of Islam (Shia versus Sunni). Religious philosophers out in the ether may wish to consider the ethical repercussions of actions carried out in the name of of ‘morality’.

Morality enables us to think quickly, make decisions and act decisively. Morality provides useful social codes to follow ‘without thinking’… which is exactly where morality loses my vote of confidence – Any code of behaviour which removes the burden of thought from an individual is inherently dangerous: Removing the burden of thought also removes the burden of responsibility. ‘Just following orders!’ is the catch-phrase of endless crimes against humanity.

Ethics requires us to think slowly, to search inside ourselves for answers. Ethics is the quiet voice inside your head which asks the question, “Is that really the right call?” when your moral code decrees an action acceptable/unacceptable but you still feel vaguely uncomfortable about it. Ethics is the conscience of morality.

Karen

I know this article is from 2016 and I’m not even sure anyone will read this comment, but I think we are seeing in real time what happens when we push morals aside. When I say my needs as an individual override everyone and everything else, that has a ripple effect in the universe. There seems to be a larger group of people that have forgotten this connection. The earth can live without me, but I can’t live without the earth. Everyone here has agreed that morals are not outdated, and part of me wants to take the opposite side for the sake of argument, but I don’t need to, watching the events of 2020 unfold is the best example in recent history on a global scale of why morals are similar to universal laws. Does gravity ever get outdated? The consequences of not following them are certainly different, but they are always there in the background working whether we like it or not.

In the United States we have just seen a full 4 years of what this country looks like being run by someone who is overtly immoral. The ripple effect that has had, and continues to have, through our society has been very damaging and it is not over. I don’t think the question is, “Are morals outdated?” as much as maybe it should be, “How are we connected to morals?” Whether we do good or bad, right or wrong we are still dropping a rock into the pond and there is a ripple effect.

Josh Hyatt

I think this is a fascinating topic. I see these as interrelated yet distinct concepts. Morality is the foundational element of individual or communal beliefs in right/wrong when faced with situation, belief, etc. Our moral thermometer gives us a sense of where a particular moral belief falls within the threshold of acceptability: good/acceptable, morally neutral, wrong/unacceptable. The intensity of these feelings drives our convictions on a specific topic. When a moral belief is challenged, there are effects to the individual and society (from intellectual stimulation to negatives like moral injury, moral distress, moral disengagement) that requires an ethical re-evaluation and ultimate action, to either amend or reinforce that moral value stance. When there is enough social consensus on the moral belief, it will generally be codified as law and become a social value.

However, this approach does not always align for the individual. An individual who is morally and ethically opposed to abortion may never approve of a law that provides a woman to choose. Their moral thermometer for the issue(s) surrounding this topic will likely dictate their actions. They may not go out and protest abortion clinics, but they may become a one issue voter. Conversely, if the individual has strong moral convictions about a topic (i.e. LGBT human rights), they will find like-minded people to advocate through many means (political, media, protests, etc.) for social and legal acknowledgment and codification of this value as a positive law, as defined by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan.

Brian Jorgensen

Is morality outdated? Certainly not nor will it ever be so. One can readily observe the fluid aspects of politically correct mandates or on the other hand the degrees of tolerance for libertarians. Morality is nothing more that the customs of behavior for a particular culture, it can a does change frequently without formal consensus.

Ethics are codified behavior that is only applied to a subset of society or to an individual. The usage of this word unfortunately is also applied to behavior that is not codified on one hand or where a formal system of justice is employed. It is confusing when the term ethics is stretched to include all forms of right and wrong. Peer groups establish and modify their ethics code, in general it is not hierarchical.

Law is the written obligation on a society, it can only be changed in a manner allowed by other laws or contracts. Law is hierarchical and usually requires obeisance towards appointed administers. Holy law is hierarchical for example the Ten Commandments are obligations written by God and should not be confused with ethics or morality.

There are many divisions of law; civil, criminal, common, statute among others. One simple way to organizing the perception of law is into categories of positive and negative.

Negative law obligates people on what they are not allowed to do; everything outside of that restriction is permissible.

Positive law obligates people on what they must do, if they fail to perform specific things they have violated the law. Also in the defined restrictive areas of positive law nothing is permissible until it is made lawful. Privilege is a form of positive law.

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