Herein lies one of the inherent problems of linguistics, words have meaning only within a narrow context. Moral philosophy (aka ethics) is a branch (with numero

Herein lies one of the inherent problems of linguistics, words have meaning only within a narrow context. Moral philosophy (aka ethics) is a branch (with numerous sub-branches) of philosophy that tries to discover or design a heuristic by which one reliably tends to lean from the less moral towards the more moral, to build a system of ethics (rules that lead to moral actions) rather than a system of morals (rules that delineate moral actions). So society might provide you with a moral (lying is bad) but leave you with the burden of having to discern ways of actuating that moral value (say you’re presented with a situation in which lying protects someone from harm), well ethics is the body of thought meant to guide you to a rational (hopefully) and consistent (also hopefully) system where by you weigh actions to determine which to take because the action you take is relatively more moral than the action you don’t take. And yes, these societal biases must be critically examined and exposed in order that we can evolve our moral systems to better fit our (collective) needs. There are moral systems in the world right now that see chattel slavery as morally right, and where a woman having even the most basic knowledge required to have a tech job is deeply and perversely immoral. Moral systems have a way of outlasting both utility and developments in our understanding of ethics and what it means to be humane. Sadly only by pushing those would-be moralists towards (hopefully) taking up ethics can we get them to put down the cudgel of their morals, but the problem is that without a great deal of thought the ideas of ethics can be used to leave one active ethically within your moral system but unethically to anyone outside your moral system. That’s why meta-ethics exist… if my system of ethics only works within a less moral system of morals, am I required to abandon my system of ethics and forge a new one?