What morality “means”
Do definitions matter?
One of our commenters on Friday raised an interesting question in response to Marc’s post about the morality of brain-enhancing drugs:
When you imagine that the use of brain enhancing drugs might be immoral, what conception of morality to you have in mind? Is it that this is immoral in the same sense of the term in which murder and torture are immoral? I mention this because it seems to me that there is serious question whether the terms ‘moral’ and ‘morality’ are always used to refer to the same thing. One thing that a public philosopher might profitably do is to call attention to this, and consider what alternative conceptions of morality seem to underlie various uses of these terms, and what we should think about the merits of and relations between these different conceptions.
It’s true that we’ve been a bit fast and loose with the word “morality” here at The Public Philosopher. In this post, I’m not sure I can offer a comprehensive or even uncontroversial account of some of the definitions of morality that I think are relevant to politics, but I can give some cursory thoughts about some of them. Perhaps this will provide some good fodder for continued discussion.
The term “morality,” quite broadly refers to all of the different ways that we talk about right and wrong. Sometimes morality refers to “normative” idea–an “ought” statement. For example, killing for fun is immoral because you ought not do it. Other times, morality might be used “descriptively”–talking about what “is” or “is not.” In this case, to say killing for fun is immoral would be to describe how a certain people in a particular time view killing. It indicates an accepted code of conduct as a part of given culture or society.
Here at The Public Philosopher I can think of at least four conceptions of morality that are central to what we talk about. Some of these fall within accepted philosophical branches like “applied ethics,” “normative ethics,” and “meta-ethics,” but I’ll leave those out for now (with the pardon of our scholarly audience).
A lot of our talk of morality has had to do with what would be considered right and wrong in specific contexts. Let’s call this contextual morality. Here are a few examples:
Legal morality
We sometimes weigh in on whether some kind of public conduct falls within what is allowed by our laws. Laws simply codify what a majority of both houses of Congress agrees is right and wrong. Some people think laws express deeper truths, while others see them as fleeting, but all agree that it’s wrong to break them.
Rights
We have also spent time on this blog figuring out whether something is a right, or violates a right, or creates a right. Some rights imply limits to the power of government over people, others describe things the government owes to people (our recent healthcare melee is a good example of this kind of discussion). Rights are different than laws. Many people think rights express something that government can’t negotiate. Our courts can interpret rights, but Congress can’t establish them. When we add or change rights, we amend our Constitution, which requires a more popular process than making laws.
In the case of rights, something that violates them is immoral. And if the right is something we’re owed by government, then it’s moral to provide it and immoral to withhold it.
Justice
According to some, standing behind laws and rights is a public idea of justice. Although justice can have different definitions, one basic approach has been to treat justice as the overall way our major institutions ought to treat people. Within the terrain of justice are laws and rights, as well as ideas of whether and how people should be treated equally, what government should look like, and how we ought to decide major public questions of right and wrong.
We haven’t taken on too many “big” questions of justice here at The Public Philosopher, but when we get into issues about who should pay for healthcare or how government ranks priorities, then we’re definitely dipping our toes into morality as justice.
Public duties
Because the people who administer public policy do so as a job, we’ve also spent some time thinking about morality as a set of public duties. Some of these duties issue from specific laws or regulations about what a job entails. Other times, they invoke a more complicated debate about how public officials should behave. Was it wrong for Mark Sanford to have an extra-marital affair or to lie about it (or both)?
The question of the duties attached to public office raises a distinction between public morality and private morality. Some of the things we think would be immoral in our friends are quite appropriate to public life, while others less so. For example, we expect the President to make decisions that may sacrifice the lives of citizens (say, sending them to war), but we’re less forgiving when we find out the President lied to us. The former is a duty of his or her office, the latter can result in his or her removal from it.
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So that’s a start and by no means a comprehensive one. I also avoided the last part of the comment (“what we should think about the merits of and relations between these different conceptions”). What do others think about the different kinds of morality at play in public affairs? How much do they matter? And how much should they?
–Sam
Related posts:
- Cash for Morality
- Do unto others
- Palin, we hardly knew thee
- Morality, meet the financial crisis
- Is “passing the buck” immoral?
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9 Responses to “What morality “means””
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This is why I try to avoid the word “moral” whenever possible. I think Aristotle’s examination of Ethics provides a damn good substitute.
To me, “moral” is more of a social norm, whereas “ethics” refers to the modus operendi of society and a wise behavioral system.
I think, in this way, “morals” are more of an ends, which are debatable, where “ethics” is a civilized means that happen to encompass what most people mean by “moral”.
[...] two approaches seem to focus on different categories of “contextual morality” that Sam lays out in his post yesterday. The “morality as outcome” camp seems to emphasize the category Sam calls “justice,” [...]
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