Morals, Morality, and Ethics: Suggested Terminology

Abstract

A RE THE terms and morals interchangeable terms, wholly or partially synonymous? What is the relation between them: what do they mean? Is the term used accurately in the naming of such subjects as Christian etc.? Are the studies of business ethics and legal ethics and journalistic ethics really studies of ethics, or are they studies of the accepted moral procedure of that particular profession? All these questions are pertinent in America today because the solution of many of the larger problems concerning the methods and objectives of the study of ethics depends in large measure upon the answer which we give to them. One meets an uncertainty in America today concerning the study of ethics, and this uncertainty seems to be fostered in part by the dispute over the relation between ethics and current morality. There seems to be a sentiment, encouraged by many specialists in the social sciences, that the objectives of a study of ethics should be determined by their practical import. There is a widespread feeling that the function of a study of ethics should be to aid in the solution of the problems of current morality. This feeling even goes so far sometimes as to lead one to suppose that ethics and current morality are the same. Many textbooks of general ethics use the terms and morals interchangeably, or else they do not distinguish between them with sufficient accuracy. Even in the case of those which do use the terms with discrimination, their accuracy is wholly unappreciated by the majority of students, even at the completion of their course. Specific attention needs to be called to the meaning of these terms and their relation to each other. In the first place the term morals may be used in two