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Kennedy Hawkins

Section 11

Final Report 

Morality & Ethics

Many people may think that morality and ethics are the same thing. Both morality and ethics loosely have to do with distinguishing the difference between “good and bad” or “right and wrong.” Many people think of morality as something that's personal and normative, whereas ethics is the standards of “good and bad” distinguished by a certain community or social setting. What is ethics? Ethics is the branch of philosophy which addresses questions of morality. The word “ethics” is commonly used interchangeable with morality and sometimes used narrowly to mean the moral principles of a tradition group or individual. 

Descriptive Sense "Morality" refers to cultural and values, codes of conduct or social mores from a society that provides these codes of conduct in which it applies and is accepted by an individual. It does not connote objective claims or wrong, but only refers to which is considered right and wrong. Normative Sense "Morality" Refers to whatever is actually right or wrong may be independent of the values or mores held by people or cultures.

This distinction is important because of an ongoing debate amongst philosophers. On the one hand there are those who believe that there are such things as ‘moral facts’. Examples might be, “Adultery is wrong”, “We should not tell lies”, “We ought to keep promises”, “People should be kind”. All of these claim to report facts, which might be expressed, “It is the case that X is wrong”, or “It is the case that we ought to do Y”. To those who believe in them, moral facts are very important because they can be seen as something certain, hard and fast, that we can appeal to when judging someone else’s behavior, or when seriously considering how we ourselves should act in a particular situation. They are real, and we can consult them as we would a reference book. “Should I do this: yes or no? What is the moral fact?” For this reason, people who believe in them are sometimes called Moral Realists.

Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg established his stages of moral development in 1958. He based much of his work on Jean Piaget's theory of moral judgment for children. Kohlberg's work addresses the process of how we think of right and wrong. His stages include pre-conventional, conventional, post-conventional. What we learn in one stage gets integrated into the following stages.

1.Pre-conventional:
Obedience and punishment: How can I avoid punishment?
Self-interest orientation: What's in it for me?

2.Conventional:
Social norms and the good boy and nice girl orientation: Do it for me
Law and order morality: Do your duty

3.Post-Conventional:
Social contract orientation: The consensus of thoughtful men
Universal ethical principles: What if everybody did that?

Quiz:

Distinction is important because of what amongst philosophers?

Defense morality refers to what?

What does normative morality refer to?

Work I have commented on:
https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2019/12/anderson-howie-schubert-section-13.html#comment-form

http://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2019/12/technology.html#comment-form

Works cited 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/ethics-and-morality

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11727