Noun

Singular morality

Plural usually uncountable; plural moralities

morality (usually uncountable; plural moralities)

1. The ability to distinguish good and evil or right and wrong, right or good conduct.
2. (Can we verify this sense?) (ethics) Motivation based on ideas of right and wrong.
3. (countable) A system of moral beliefs or practices.

Antonyms

• amorality
• immorality

Related terms

• morale
• moralise
• moralism
• mores

Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") has three principal meanings.

In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct which is held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong. Morals are created and defined by society, philosophy, religion, or individual conscience. An example of the descriptive usage could be "common conceptions of morality have changed significantly over time."

In its second, normative and universal sense, morality refers to an ideal code of conduct, one which would be espoused in preference to alternatives by all rational people, under specified conditions. In this "prescriptive" sense of morality as opposed to the above described "descriptive" sort of sense, moral value judgments such as "murder is immoral" are made. To deny 'morality' in this sense is a position known as moral skepticism, in which the existence of objective moral "truths" is rejected.

In its third usage, 'morality' is synonymous with ethics. Ethics is the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain. Ethics seeks to address questions such as how a moral outcome can be achieved in a specific situation (applied ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), what morals people actually abide by (descriptive ethics), what the fundamental nature of ethics or morality is, including whether it has any objective justification (meta-ethics), and how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is (moral psychology).

In applied ethics, for example, the prohibition against taking human life is controversial with respect to capital punishment, euthanasia, abortion and wars of invasion.

In normative ethics, a typical question might be whether a lie told for the sake of protecting someone from harm is justified.

In meta-ethics, a key issue is the meaning of the terms "right" or "wrong". Moral realism would hold that there are true moral statements which report objective moral facts, whereas moral anti-realism would hold that morality is derived from any one of the norms prevalent in society (cultural relativism); the edicts of a god (divine command theory); is merely an expression of the speakers' sentiments (emotivism); an implied imperative (prescriptive); falsely presupposes that there are objective moral facts (error theory). Some thinkers hold that there is no correct definition of right behavior, that morality can only be judged with respect to particular situations, within the standards of particular belief systems and socio-historical contexts. This position, known as moral relativism, often cites empirical evidence from anthropology as evidence to support its claims. The opposite view, that there are universal, eternal moral truths are known as moral absolutism. Moral absolutists might concede that forces of social conformity significantly shape moral decisions, but deny that cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior.

Morality is the notion of right and wrong conducts.

Sourced

• MORALITY: A traditional code of decency that went out the window about the same time as belief in eternal damnation.
  • Rick Bayan, in The Cynic's Dictionary

• Morality is character and conduct such as is required by the circle or community in which the man's life happens to be placed. It shows how much good men require of us.
  • Henry Ward Beecher, in Life of Thoughts (1858)

• Morality's not practical. Morality's a gesture. A complicated gesture learnt from books.
  • Robert Bolt, in A Man For All Seasons (1960)

• All systems of morality are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 419.

• Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.
  • Lewis Carroll, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

• There are two principles of established acceptance in morals; first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value.
  • Charles Caleb Colton, in Lacon (1820)

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Fri Jul 10 18:45:12 2009