Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") has three principal meanings.

In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct or belief which is held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong. Morals are arbitrarily created and subjectively defined by society, philosophy, religion, and/or individual conscience. An example of the descriptive usage could be "common conceptions of morality have changed significantly over time." The arbitrariness of morality stems from the observation that actions that may be deemed moral in one culture in time may not be classified as such in others or in a different time. The subjectiveness of morality is shown by the observation that actions or beliefs which by themselves do not cause any harm may be by some considered immoral, e.g. marrying someone of same gender, being an atheist, etc. Descriptive morality does not explain why anything should be considered immoral, only that it may be classified so. While for the most part immoral acts are classified as such because they cause harm, this is not by any means an all encompassing criterion. Many acts or beliefs are often then classified as such because of prejudice, ignorance or even hatred.

In its second, normative and universal sense, morality refers to an ideal code of belief and conduct, one which would be espoused in preference to other alternatives by the sane "moral" person, under specified conditions. In this "prescriptive" sense , moral value judgments such as "murder is immoral" are made. While descriptive morality would not necessarily disagree that "murder is immoral", it would nevertheless propose that murder is immoral only because we so thought. A refined adherence to this latter position is known as moral skepticism, in which the unchanging existence of a rigid agreed by all objective moral "truth" is rejected.

In its third usage, 'morality' is synonymous with ethics. Ethics is the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain. Ethics seeks to address questions such as how a moral outcome can be achieved in a specific situation (applied ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), what morals people actually abide by (descriptive ethics), what the fundamental nature of ethics or morality is, including whether it has any objective justification (meta-ethics), and how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is (moral psychology).

In applied ethics, for example, the prohibition against taking human life is controversial with respect to capital punishment, euthanasia, abortion and wars of invasion.

In normative ethics, a typical question might be whether a lie told for the sake of protecting someone from harm is justified.

In meta-ethics, a key issue is the meaning of the terms "right" or "wrong". Moral realism would hold that there are true moral statements which report objective moral facts, whereas moral anti-realism would hold that morality is derived from any one of the norms prevalent in society (cultural relativism); the edicts of a god (divine command theory); is merely an expression of the speakers' sentiments (emotivism); an implied imperative (prescriptive); falsely presupposes that there are objective moral facts (error theory). Some thinkers hold that there is no correct definition of right behavior, that morality can only be judged with respect to particular situations, within the standards of particular belief systems and socio-historical contexts. This position, known as moral relativism, often cites empirical evidence from anthropology as evidence to support its claims. The opposite view, that there are universal, eternal moral truths are known as moral absolutism. Moral absolutists might concede that forces of social conformity significantly shape moral decisions, but deny that cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior.

Morality is the notion of right and wrong conducts.

Sourced

• MORALITY: A traditional code of decency that went out the window about the same time as belief in eternal damnation.
  • Rick Bayan, in The Cynic's Dictionary

• Morality is character and conduct such as is required by the circle or community in which the man's life happens to be placed. It shows how much good men require of us.
  • Henry Ward Beecher, in Life of Thoughts (1858)

• Morality's not practical. Morality's a gesture. A complicated gesture learnt from books.
  • Robert Bolt, in A Man For All Seasons (1960)

• All systems of morality are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 419.

• Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.
  • Lewis Carroll, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

• There are two principles of established acceptance in morals; first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value.
  • Charles Caleb Colton, in Lacon (1820)

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Wed Sep 16 18:42:23 2009