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Thanks for the description. So are people wrong in using “ethics” when they meant “morals”? Eg “this company has bad ethics”: they mean this company has bad m

• barfbagginus 2y ago
  Yes, people are generally talking about morals in our sense when they talk about eg, business or work ethics. But I would not say that's wrong, because there are three common senses for the words: 1) Morals are principles, while ethics is the philosophy of how we develop them 2) Ethics and Morals are synonyms for principles 3) Morals are principles for individuals, and ethics are principles for groups Professional and work ethics are most in line with sense 3, because they are about groups. Sense 2 is also consistent and probably what most people actually mean. However, professional ethics ethics can also be seen as an example of our sense 1. It's a field of applied ethical philosophy, where we engineer codes of morals fit to a specific profession's needs. Business ethics fail when they end up choosing bad morals. So we can call the ethics themselves bad. And work ethic is not just a set of good morals, but also the ability to spontaneously reflect and improve on our own morals as workers. This gives it some of sense 1 as well. However it would be a stretch to say this is what people really mean, since most people subscribe to senses 2 or 3. Sense 1 is mainly useful for people interested in systematically developing morals.