Culture and Ethics Resource Centre – Definitions
So what is the difference between values, principles, ethics and morals?
Values are the things people determine to be the most important in their lives i.e. ‘I value making money’. Ethics and morals however, determine what is or is not considered appropriate behaviour in the pursuit of those values i.e. ‘how do I go about making money?’ ‘Do I pay workers fairly? Do I exploit people in third world countries?’ Etc.
If we only know someone’s values, we may know what is important to them, but we don’t know what they are prepared to do to achieve those values. We are therefore unable to assess morality. So we could say: our values motivate us, whilst our ethics and morals constrain us. Our principles play a role in informing our choice of values, ethics and morals.
‘Our values tell us what we want to achieve/do and our principles, ethics and morals evaluate the right or wrongness of our options.’ Occasionally you will hear people say that there is a difference between a person’s ethics and their morals. This attempt at a distinction can be very confusing because what some people mean by someone’s ethics, another person calls their morals. In reality, most people and most philosophers see no great distinction between the two i.e. a person’s ethics or a person’s morals. Furthermore, the vast majority of people and philosophers use the two words interchangeably; people say something is ethical or moral to describe an action they deem to be right and immoral or unethical to describe an action they deem to be wrong. For the purpose of this learning resource, we will apply this commonly accepted approach to the use of the two words.
Whilst values play a role in determining what we consider ethical, not all values are measures of ethics, for example: we may value hard work, but we would probably not classify someone as unethical if they were lazy. Values that relate to ethics and morality are those which have a component of rightness or wrongness to them. Therefore, if we value fairness and someone being lazy is contributing to a greater burden being placed on someone else, we may consider this unfair and thus unethical/immoral.
What it means to be ethical
Being ethical means more than simply identifying moral issues that exist in various life situations. We can only claim to be ethical when we follow the identification of these moral issues with ethical actions and behaviour. These ethical actions and behaviours are those that we think are the right/reasonable course of action in the situation and are based on a considered framework, which is a reflection of our personal beliefs. This ‘What’s up with that’ learning tool presents you with issues that involve ethical dilemmas and offers you an opportunity to consider your own choices and actions should you be faced with similar situations.
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