By Dr. David L. Perry on 8 June 2000
Defining Ethics

The words "ethics" and "morality" have Greek and Latin origins, respectively. Traditionally they referred to customary values and rules of conduct (as in "cultural ethos" and "social mores"), as well as insights about what counts as human excellence and flourishing. "Ethics" and "morality" are often used interchangeably by us today. But ethics also refers to moral philosophy, i.e., a discipline of critical analysis of the meaning and justification of moral beliefs.

Ethics and morality--along with law and etiquette--are essentially normative, that is, they prescribe human behavior as obligatory, prohibited, or permissible. There’s considerable overlap between ethics and law, and ethics and etiquette. Much of the law embodies ethical principles: respect for basic rights to life, property, and the right of citizens to participate in political life. It’s usually unethical to break the law. A breach of etiquette can also be unethical if it is done intentionally to offend someone simply for one’s own amusement.

Ethics goes beyond etiquette, though, to include matters that nearly every human society considers significant: actions such as lying, breaking a promise or killing someone are more serious than social faux pas. Ethics also has to do with human character and motivation, which in many cases are irrelevant to etiquette and law. And law and etiquette can sometimes be criticized on moral grounds: consider U.S. laws and customs that historically treated African Americans and women as less than full citizens.

In contrast to ethics and other normative disciplines, many fields of study such as the natural sciences, psychology, history and economics are empirical, meaning that they attempt to describe, explain or predict events or motives or actions. In general, empirical disciplines deal with facts and probabilities, while normative disciplines promote or assess values. Empirical disciplines study what exists, what happened, or what tends to happen under certain conditions; their claims can at least in theory be tested using controlled scientific methods or in light of the best available evidence. Moral principles state how human beings ought to treat one another; moral claims cannot be proven or disproven by empirical means alone.

Ethical arguments often rely on empirical assumptions, though. And empirical claims are often made in ways that attempt to persuade people to accept a moral conclusion. In order to be able to tell whether ethical arguments are sound or cogent, we need to be able to distinguish between different types of moral claims, and between moral and empirical claims. We also must determine whether those claims are being used properly in support of moral conclusions. I’ll come back to this later in connection with the issue of capital punishment.