Ethics development: understanding and application

Ethics, Morality, Values, And Beliefs

According to "the ethics site," an Internet resource for college instructors regarding the teaching of different ethical systems, ethics may be defined as "the explicit, philosophical reflection on moral beliefs and practices. The difference between ethics and morality is similar to the difference between musicology and music. Ethics is a conscious stepping back and reflecting on morality, just as musicology is a conscious reflection on music." ("Glossary," The Ethics Site, 2005) In other words, ethics is the philosophy of what is right and wrong, while morality is the practice of ethics, or virtue in action.

The analogy between a musician and a musicologist proposed by the positioning of ethics vs. morality is interesting, because one might understand music very well, and be able to explain its theory and teaching as a musicologist. However, a great musicologist might be only a middling musician. In contrast, there are sixteen-year-olds who are virtuosos at the violin, and even tiny children can be taught to play music, and appreciate music with great feeling an insight, without being able to articulate what pitch is, or why certain sounds appeal to the human ear. Someone can lead a moral life by instinct, without ever having an articulated concept of ethics. But having a formal code and system of articulated ethics, for those of us without such innate goodness or ethical compasses is helpful, just as classes in music theory are helpful for individuals with less than perfect 'ears.'

But simply knowing about ethics is not 'doing ethics.' After all, one could be a great ethics professor, and deconstruct the Kantian categorical imperative with great alacrity, but never volunteer in one's community, never say hello to one's neighbors, ignore one's children when one got home, and promptly refuse to leave one's insurance information upon the windshield of a car one blindsided in a parking lot. 'I know these things are unethical,' the immoral ethicist might say, 'yet I do them anyway.' The average person might say that such actions, even if one could, create Objectivist ethical justifications for them in theory, are just simply, instinctively immoral because they 'feel' wrong. Even though feeling is not always right, this sense of morality and feeling stresses that what we feel are moral actions often depend a constellation of emotional, instinctive, and community-based credos that may or may not be ethical according to a professional code of right and wrong. 'Just give me a hint,' begs a friend who wants a stock tip, 'I'm really struggling to put the kids through college.' The ethical broker must say no, even if it 'feels' immoral in terms of his friendship, and his knowledge that corporate bigwigs who don't need the money will benefit from a pending merger.

This is not to discount the importance of ethical, professional study and standards, merely to suggest that ethics is the thought or philosophy and morality is often the personal and emotional actions that come from one's ethics but also one's community and early teachings. Furthermore, ethical systems, one could even argue, can be immoral -- the legal code of ethics demands that one represent a client, once one has agreed to do so, even if one suspects the client's guilt. A lawyer cannot lie, but he or she must represent the client to the best of his or her ability once he or she agrees to be an advocate in the adversarial American legal system of justice. And if lawyers did not often agree to represent guilty clients, then the justice system could not function.

Morally, defense lawyers may feel a sense of repugnance on an emotional level, based on their childhood teachings, when representing guilty clients. But legal, ethical systems of professional conduct are constructed and articulated as absolutes, particularly for a profession may conflict with morality. Likewise, a businessperson who is a CEO has vowed to make a profit for the company -- it is unethical for him to better his once-humble family's home life with largess while stealing funds even from wealthy stockholders.

Beliefs, in contrast to ethics or morality do not have good/bad implications. I can believe in God, or believe in Darwinism, but that does not mean I believe God is good or evolution is good, merely that I believe they exist, based on my intellectual orientation. I may value the pursuit of education and having a family as one of my core values, or value upholding the virtues of being a good child and a good friend, but values are rather vague in terms of priority, for they do not instruct that one must do one or the other action -- ethically I am bound as someone with insider information about a stock not to reveal that information, even if I value someone's friend friendship, because I value my commitment to my professional code more than simple friendship.

In terms of my own development of ethics, probably the first ethical education any child receives comes when he or she is first tempted to swipe a piece of candy from a store. Unlike the moral commandment to 'be nice to your sister,' or else she will cry, or the value of friendship not to 'snitch' in class when your best friend doesn't have his homework, eventually one learns that one has an ethical obligation not to steal. This is true even if the store owner thinks it is cute to see a little person act like a thief and you suffers no consequences for the action, after your mother forces you to take the candy back. In other words, ethics is about right and wrong, rather than what might happen to you if you do a bad thing, and even if you gave the candy bar to your best friend and upheld the value of friendship and fellowship, it would still stand as an ethical wrong.