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Philosophy 223
Morality and Ethics
Some Initial Distinctions
and Guiding Concepts
Business Ethics?
 “Ethics” comes from the Greek Ethos
(character, custom).
 Thus, at its most basic, ethics is the study of what it
means to be a good person and the rules or norms
that appropriately guide our actions.
 Business: any organization with the primary
objective of providing goods and services for
profit.
 Is there any overlap between these two
concepts?
Yes, there is!
 As we’ve provisionally characterized it, ethics
is the study of a specific set of standards that
organize our social experience.
 Address issues that concern human well being.
 Have priority over other standards.
 Legitimacy depends on the adequacy of the justification
offered for them.
 Business is just one form our social experience
takes, and there is no reason to believe that
the sort of standards studied by ethics don’t
apply to business activities.
A Key Distinction
 We often treat “Morality” and “Ethics” as
synonyms, but there is an important difference
that we need to be alert to.
 Morality: the actually or historically existing set
of social practices defining right and wrong.
 Not the only set of existing social practices (etiquette).
 Exists prior (both temporally and in precedence) to any
personal or group set.
 Ethics: reflection on the nature and
justification of right action.
 Attempt to develop “clarity, substance, and precision” (2)
in the employment of morality.
Morality v. Prudence
 One problem that moral agents often confront is
failing to distinguish the dictates of morality from
those of prudence.
 Prudence: The ability to recognize and follow the most
suitable or sensible course of action (OED).
 The problem arises because we are taught the rules
of prudence and the rules of morality at the same
time and with the same language.
 And it is the case that self-interest and moral responsibility
often coincide
 This confusion is endemic in business: “Good Ethics
is Good Business.” (See examples on pp.3-4.)
Morality v. Law
 Another set of dictates that is often confused with
morality is those of the law.
 Law: “the public’s agency for translating morality into
explicit social guidelines and practices and stipulating
punishments for offenses” (4).
 The difficulty that arises is that, like in all cases of
translation, much goes missing. Not everything that is
morally obligatory is legally regulated, and not
everything that is legally regulated has moral force.
(Examples, p. 5).
 That’s why the common business practice of relying on
the lawyers to take the lead on morally troublesome
matters is insufficient.
The Limitations of Conscience
 One last claim commonly offered by moral
agents of all sorts, including business people, is
that all we really need is our conscience.
 We all have good reason to doubt this if we
reflect on our own moral failings.
 In addition, it’s easy enough to identify
instances when our or other’s conscience have
led them to morally controversial positions. We
have to conclude that, “The reliability of
conscience…is not self-certifying” (7).
How Can Ethics Help?

Ethical reflection on the dictates of morality
can address these sorts of issues in at least
three different ways.
1.
2.
3.

Descriptive analysis of the actual content of morality.
Conceptual study of moral concepts.
Normative Ethics: “prescriptive study attempting to
formulate and defend basic moral norms…aims at
determining what ought to be done…[not] what is, in fact,
practiced” (7).
Applied Ethics: defined “misleadingly” as the
use of normative principles “to treat specific
moral problems” (8).
Defined “Misleadingly”
 “Applied” encourages a serious misunderstanding: that
the attempt to specify (8) the practical implications of
normative theory (normative principles) on specific
issues involves making moral judgments.
 Moral Judgments are made by Moral Agents (folks like
us, though in a way to be specified).
 When we are doing ethics (in either sense) we are not
actually making such judgments. Rather, we are
attempting to identify resources on the basis of which
such judgments are made.