Can an action be ethical but not moral or legal?

[belamy]

Of course. Ethics are moral prejudices supposedly independent from religion and cultural traditions, and law is the morals and ethics of certain individuals or communities taken as a political rule for a whole society.

 

[winterknight]

To quote Ducky Mallard:

The ethical man knows he shouldn't cheat on his wife, whereas the moral man actually wouldn't

 

[belamy]

I guess, stealing something you need to survive. Legally, stealing is wrong. Morally, we're taught it's a sin.

Ethically, if you didn't steal the loaf of bread, you would have gone hungry.

The action of stealing makes it wrong? I think not.

Morally and legally and even ethically is considered just as wrong, but you can legally and morally absolve the thief. Your "ethical" consideration is simply an amendment to the "legal" or the "moral", a subterfuge to get away from the constrictions of narrow-minded morals and laws, but morals, ethics and law is ultimately the same, which is, what "ought" to be and be done.
Morals are basically monolithic and irrefutable, that is, an antinatural construct since you can NOT reduce the vastness and complexity of nature to a closed set of rules (no matter how many or how few) and the vague enunciation of maxims of "wisdom".
But the consideration that there is a distinction to be made between what is, what ought to be and what can be (the naming of ethics, moral and legal being perfectly interchangeable) is what distinguishes a fairer society confident and faithful in its beliefs, from a stagnant merely superstitious and ruthless one in its ignorant dogmatism.

 

[belamy]

To quote belamy on Ducky Mallard:

The moral man knows he shouldn't cheat on his wife, whereas the ethicalman actually wouldn't

And makes the same sense, to some even better (depending of your own prejudices about the higher or lesser value of morals and ethics).

 

[2nd time round]

ethically we should not allow someone to suffer. Morally to end that suffering would require killing which is ethically, morally, and legally wrong

 

[unloadonme]

Not sure I know the difference between ethics and morality, and anyway they can mean different things to different people. But yes, looking at them as a whole they can potentially be quite different to what might me legal.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

Just wondering??

What exactly did you have in mind, Piggy?

 

[davy]

it's important to denote the three.

ethics pertain to a profession or shared practice that exists outside the person's being.

morality is determined and subjective to a region's current mores and byways.

legality is defined by the law.

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an example of something ethically right; but morally and legally wrong:

a truck driver pulls up to a stop light as it's red. there's no other traffic anywhere, so he doesn't wait for the green light and just starts driving along.

ethically right because the truck driver is taking an action that has no bad impact on his practice.

morally right because no one else gets harmed or inconvenienced for it.

legally wrong because the law says so.

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an example of something ethically and morally wrong; but legally right:

before 1982, it was illegal in the united states for any teacher to teach a black man how to read.

morally wrong because denying black people education isn't right under today's western culture's social mores

ethically wrong because any and all teachers have a responsibility to teach anyone regardless of background

legally right because the law said so.

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EDIT: it just occured to me that i gave two examples for the same circumstances.

here's something that's legally right, but morally and ethically wrong.

a hiring manager in chicago for a fortune 500 company denies the application of gay man because he's gay.

legally right because there's no law preventing the hiring manager's decision.

ethically wrong because it shouldn't factor into the hiring manager's decision.

morally wrong (almost) because the decision contradict's a majority of chicago resident's social mores. however, if the case had happened in west canaan, mississippi; then it may not be morally wrong.

 

[relaxin13]

I think anything ethical is inherently moral, but things that are illegal can be moral and/or ethical.

 

[davy]

I think anything ethical is inherently moral, but things that are illegal can be moral and/or ethical.

ever see the movie: the priest?

as a catholic priest, you're ethically obliged not to tell other people's secrets if they give it to you in confession. so if a father admits to sexually abusing his daughter; you can't tell the daughter's mother.

it's morally and legally wrong; but it's ethically right.

 

[relaxin13]

ever see the movie: the priest?

as a catholic priest, you're ethically obliged not to tell other people's secrets if they give it to you in confession. so if a father admits to sexually abusing his daughter; you can't tell the daughter's mother.

it's morally and legally wrong; but it's ethically right.

In my opinion, there is a code of ethics above that of the duties of a catholic priest (or any profession, for that matter). Certain situations, such as the one you described, call for action.

 

[belamy]

it's important to denote the three.

ethics pertain to a profession or shared practice that exists outside the person's being.

morality is determined and subjective to a region's current mores and byways.

legality is defined by the law.(...)

EDIT: it just occured to me that i gave two examples for the same circumstances.

here's something that's legally right, but morally and ethically wrong.

a hiring manager in chicago for a fortune 500 company denies the application of gay man because he's gay.

legally right because there's no law preventing the hiring manager's decision.

ethically wrong because it shouldn't factor into the hiring manager's decision.

morally wrong (almost) because the decision contradict's a majority of chicago resident's social mores. however, if the case had happened in west canaan, mississippi; then it may not be morally wrong.

You are not respecting your own definition of ethics and, like I said in my previous posts, you are showing that ethics is just morals outside the field of informal social habits or religious and cultural beliefs: how do you know that being gay is not an issue for investors, for the image of the company, for any other possible reason specifically tied to the field in which the company works, and not just for some general (moral) rules abstracted from that specific case?
Discrimination against gays, not only according to our general experience of life, but according to your own writings, can only be "wrong" in your case if it's morally wrong, because otherwise it's not clear how that sort of discrimination directly "pertains to the profession or shared practice that exists outside the person's being", if you haven't even specified that profession or practice in the first place.

 

[teadrinker]

An example that comes to mind is helping a terminally ill cancer patient with no quality of life and in constant severe pain take their own life. To my mind that's ethically and morally justified, but in the eyes of the law (at least in Australia), it's murder. And there have been several cases over the past few years where an (often elderly) person has been convicted of murder for helping their loved one to die and thus end their constant torment.

Peter Singer, in one of his books (it might be "Rethinking Life and Death") gives an interesting example: two newborn babies; one apparently healthy but with a severely damaged brain - it might live, with help, but have the quality of life of a cabbage. The other had a severe heart condition which required an immediate transplant if it was to live. Singer's view was that it should have been reasonable to transplant the heart of the "brainless" baby into the other - but that would mean taking a life. As it was, both babies died.

-T.

 

[frankfrank]

Or, for that matter, it can be argued very logically that some survivors in that plane crash in the Andes back in the 1970s (?), who only survived by eating some of the flesh of their deceased co-passengers, did what was justified - and it was ethically appropriate.

It certainly wasn't morally acceptable to practice cannibalism, and it certainly wasn't legal. However, it wouldn't surprise me if some of the people, knowing they were about to die, asked that the survivors use their flesh in whatever way was necessary to prolong survival in hopes of an eventual rescue. Of course, in the end, some people were rescued from the crash, only because they had eaten the flesh of the deceased.

A much lesser example of something being ethical, but NOT moral, is when one tells a "white lie" - the type of lie which doesn't really affect the status or outcome of anything, but which may save others from major emotional distress or the like.

Lying under oath (in a courtroom, etc.) is seriously illegal (PERJURY), but any kind of "white lie" scenario in a courtroom is improbable, as questions almost always have some bearing on the outcome of the case.

 

[belamy]

An example that comes to mind is helping a terminally ill cancer patient with no quality of life and in constant severe pain take their own life. To my mind that's ethically and morally justified, but in the eyes of the law (at least in Australia), it's murder. And there have been several cases over the past few years where an (often elderly) person has been convicted of murder for helping their loved one to die and thus end their constant torment.

Peter Singer, in one of his books (it might be "Rethinking Life and Death") gives an interesting example: two newborn babies; one apparently healthy but with a severely damaged brain - it might live, with help, but have the quality of life of a cabbage. The other had a severe heart condition which required an immediate transplant if it was to live. Singer's view was that it should have been reasonable to transplant the heart of the "brainless" baby into the other - but that would mean taking a life. As it was, both babies died.

-T.

It's legally condemned because there is a moral basis for it: in a Christian culture only God takes life and law only yields to that general conviction. It's a very "human" tendency either to blame others (like a higher entity or a disease) for our own mistakes, or to avoid making our own decisions by putting it "on somebody else's hands", thereby (supposedly) transferring all responsibility to someone else's "will".