However, English is not like French, which has the Acadàmie Fran�aises acting as its linguistic jury - establishing what is proper French. English changes at the whim of the populous. One can bomb (especially in stand-up comedy), and that's bad, but if one is the bomb (e.g., "Gee, you're swell!"), that's good.
The word "morality" has been co-opted by groups, such as the Moral Majority, making us think morality only deals with acts these religious groups think aren't proper, or are therefore …show more content…
We know that the foundations of Western philosophy came from the ancient Greeks. Thus, if one were to use a single term to describe the Greeks, it would be "philosophers."
On the other hand, the ancient Romans developed many of the techniques used in architecture, so much of their work still stands. Hence, one might describe the Romans as builders. As a result, words that come into the English language from the Greeks often have meanings that are primarily philosophical study, while the Latin-derived words imply "doing the thing."
Ethics comes from the Greek word ethos - moral character or custom. Morality comes from the Latin word moralis - custom or manner. The words both deal with the customs or the manner in which people do things. Their modern meanings relate to the way people act - either good or …show more content…
Morality is looking at how good or bad our conduct is, and our standards about conduct. Ethics is used to refer to the formal study of those standards or conduct. Sometimes, one refers to the study of conduct as moral philosophy, but that is less common than just saying "ethics." Hence, in most chiropractic colleges, there is an ethics class, rather than one named "morality." One might say that morality is ethics in action, but in the end, the two terms can be used interchangeably. The study of ethics or moral philosophy can be divided into three broad areas: descriptive, normative and analytical (or metaethics).
Descriptive ethics is simply describing how people behave. For example, people might say that they think that stealing is bad, but descriptive ethics might tell us, from observing these people, that they may have "downloaded" hundreds of media (in such forms as .mp3 audio or .bmp image) files from file-sharing programs on the Internet. Descriptive ethics let us see if we "walk the walk," and if we are just rationalizing our way past our own moral